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All Rights Reserved: Behind the Strategic Copyright of “We Shall Overcome”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2022

Lizzy Cooper Davis
Lizzy Cooper Davis*
Affiliation:
Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 2015, musician and non-profit director Isaías Gamboa and filmmaker Lee Butler sued The Richmond Organization (TRO) and its offshoot Ludlow Music over their copyright to the anthem of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.” The copyright had initially been registered in 1960 and named four white folksingers: Guy Carawan, Frank Hamilton, Zilphia Horton, and Pete Seeger. Suspicious of the white names on the copyright, Gamboa wanted to liberate the song from what appeared to be corporate control. The suit was ultimately successful and the song was placed in the public domain. However, while Gamboa and Butler celebrated their win in a Manhattan court, activists across the South took it as a loss. Although overseen by TRO and Ludlow, the copyright's royalties had long gone to the Highlander Research and Education Center (formerly The Highlander Folk School), a pre-eminent and decades-old grassroots organizing hub best known for its work with such icons as Rosa Parks, Septima Clark, and Dr. Martin Luther King. The money was housed there in the We Shall Overcome Fund, which had been created by cultural workers of the civil rights movement in collaboration with those named on the copyright to facilitate the redistribution of royalties to Black artist-activists across the South. Far from facilitating theft, the copyright had strategically scaffolded Black-led community organizing for nearly 60 years. This article traces the history and work of this remarkable effort to turn the civil rights movement's anthem into its most lasting cultural tool.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 253 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Music

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Footnotes

Thank you to Ingrid Monson, Koritha Mitchell, and Bob Colby for their guidance, the Ford Foundation for their support, the anonymous reviewers from JSAM for their feedback, Susan Williams and those interviewed for this article for their time, and Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon for teaching so many to sing for freedom.

Parts of this copyright story were referenced in my earlier article, Lizzy Cooper Davis, “Culture and Struggle: The Organizing History of ‘We Shall Overcome,’” No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music (Fall 2016): 34–41.

References

References

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Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917–2005. Wisconsin Historical Society. University of Wisconsin at Madison.Google Scholar
Highlander Research and Education Center Records. Highlander Research and Education Center. Monteagle, Tennessee.Google Scholar
Zilphia Horton Folk Music Collection. Tennessee State Library and Archives. Nashville.Google Scholar
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Cohen, Ronald D. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.Google Scholar
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Denisoff, Serge. Great Day Coming; Folk Music and the American Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Dunaway, David King and Beer, Molly. Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
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Hamilton, Marybeth. In Search of the Blues: Black Voices, White Visions. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.Google Scholar
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Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2019.Google Scholar
Horton, Aimee I. “The Highlander Folk School: A History of the Development of its Major Programs Related to Social Movements in the South, 1932–1961.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1971.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther Jr.. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.Google Scholar
“Leadbelly's ‘Cottonfields’ Hits Charts and Cues Unique Copyright Angles.” Variety (Archive: 1905–2000) 226, no. 9 (1962): 51.Google Scholar
Legman, Gershon. “Who Owns Folklore?” Western Folklore 21, no. 1 (January 1962): 1–12.Google Scholar
Lester, Julius. “The Angry Children of Malcolm X,” Sing Out! 16, no. 5 (1966): 21–25.Google Scholar
Lloyd, A. L. “Who Owns What in Folk Song?” Sing Out! 12, no. 1 (1963): 41–43.Google Scholar
Lomax, Alan. The Rainbow Sign, a Southern Documentary, 1st ed. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959.Google Scholar
Lomax, John A. “‘Sinful Songs’ of the Southern Negro.” The Musical Quarterly 20, no. 2 (April 1, 1934): 177–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mack, Kenneth W. “Legal History Dialogue: Bringing the Law Back into the History of the Civil Rights Movement.” Law and History Review 27 (2009): 657–671.Google Scholar
Malcolm, X. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Neal, Brandi Amanda. “‘We Shall Overcome’: From Black Church Music to Freedom Song.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2006.Google Scholar
Patry, William F. Copyright Law and Practice. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1994.Google Scholar
People's Songs: Bulletin of People's Songs Inc. 1, no. 1 (February 1945). The People's Songs Archive. Singout.org. https://singout.org/ps-archive/#.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Songs of the Civil Rights Movement 1955–1965: A Study in Culture History.” PhD diss., Howard University, 1975.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music.” Sing Out! 24, no. 6 (1976): 1–5.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “‘Oh Freedom’: The Music of the Movement.” In A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, edited by Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, 110–26. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Redmond, Shana L. Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora. New York: NYU Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Reuss, Richard A. and Reuss, JoAnne C.. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957. American Folk Music and Musicians Series, no. 4. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Seeger, Charles. “Who Owns Folklore?—A Rejoinder.” Western Folklore 21, no. 2 (April 1962): 93–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “How to Copyright a Song.” People's Songs 1, no. 1 (February 1945): 2.Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “I Knew Leadbelly.” Sing Magazine 4, no. 3 (September 1957).Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “The Copyright Hassle.” Sing Out! 13, no. 5 (1964): 41–45.Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies. Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out, 1993.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. “Folksongs and Copyrights.” Sing Out! 9, no. 4 (1960): 31–36.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. Reprints from the People's Songs Bulletin: 1946–1949. New York: Oak Publications, 1961.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. “Folk Music—1963.” Sing Out! 13, no. 4 (1963): 2–4.Google Scholar
Stone, Desmond. Alec Wilder in Spite of Himself: A Life of the Composer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Street, Joe. The Culture War in the Civil Rights Movement. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.Google Scholar
Suisman, David. Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svec, Henry Adam. American Folk Music as Tactical Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Szwed, John. Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World. New York: Penguin, 2010.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy D. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alan Lomax Collection of the American Folklife Center. The Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917–2005. Wisconsin Historical Society. University of Wisconsin at Madison.Google Scholar
Highlander Research and Education Center Records. Highlander Research and Education Center. Monteagle, Tennessee.Google Scholar
Zilphia Horton Folk Music Collection. Tennessee State Library and Archives. Nashville.Google Scholar
“Newport Folk Festival Program.” 1963. Festival Files Collection (#300007). Southern Folklife Collection. Manuscripts Department. Wilson Library. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Adams, Noah. “The Inspiring Force of ‘We Shall Overcome.’” All Things Considered, NPR, August 28, 2013. http://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/216482943/the-inspiring-force-of-we-shall-overcome.Google Scholar
Barretta, Scott, ed. The Conscience of the Folk Revival: The Writings of Israel “Izzy” Young. American Folk Music and Musicians Series, no. 18. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Bobetsky, Victor V., ed. We Shall Overcome: Essays on a Great American Song. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.Google Scholar
Bond, Julian. Foreword to Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through its Songs, edited by Carawan, Guy, Carawan, Candie, Bond, Julian, and Reece, Florence, ix–x. Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2007.Google Scholar
Brown, James. Say It Loud—I'm Black and I'm Proud. King Records KSD-1047, 1969, LP.Google Scholar
Cantwell, Robert. When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Carmichael, Stokely. “What We Want.” The New York Review of Books, September 22, 1966.Google Scholar
Cohen, Ronald D. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Cohen, Ronald D. Depression Folk: Grassroots Music and Left-Wing Politics in 1930s America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Ronald D. and Petrus, Stephen. Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
“Correspondence.” Sing Out! 10, no. 2 (1960): 42–44.Google Scholar
Davis, Lizzy Cooper. “Culture and Struggle: The Organizing History of ‘We Shall Overcome.’” No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music (Fall 2016): 34–41.Google Scholar
Denisoff, Serge. Great Day Coming; Folk Music and the American Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Dunaway, David King and Beer, Molly. Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Editorial. “Concerning Hootenannies, Copyrights, and Loyalty Oaths.” Sing Out! 13, no. 5 (1964): 3.Google Scholar
Eitman, Bill. “Tenth Anniversary Issue: Copyrights and Collectors.” Sing Out! 10, no. 3 (1960): 20–22.Google Scholar
Filene, Benjamin. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Fuentes, Marisa J. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamboa, Isaias. We Shall Overcome: Sacred Song on the Devil's Tongue, 2nd ed. Edited by Henry, JoAnne and Owen, Audrey. Beverly Hills: Gamboa Music Group Publications, 2012.Google Scholar
Gelder, Sarah Van. “We're Going to Keep Fighting for That Song.” Yes! Magazine, September 28, 2017. https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2017/09/28/we-shall-overcome-is-now-unlicensed-and-free-to-the-public-and-thats-a-bad-thing/.Google Scholar
Glen, John M. Highlander: No Ordinary School, 2nd ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, Peter David. Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Gooding, Cynthia. “Concerning Copyright.” Sing Out! 11, no. 1 (1962): 24–25.Google Scholar
Greene, K. J. “‘Copynorms,’ Black Cultural Production, and the Debate over African-American Reparations.” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 25, no. 3 (2008): 1179–227.Google Scholar
Greene, K. J. “Intellectual Property at the Intersection of Race and Gender: Lady Sings the Blues.” American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law 16, no. 3 (2008): 365–85.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Marybeth. In Search of the Blues: Black Voices, White Visions. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.Google Scholar
Harold, Ellen and Flemming, Don. “Lead Belly and the Lomaxes.” Cultural Equity. Accessed April 12, 2017. http://www.culturalequity.org/currents/ce_currents_leadbelly_faqs.php.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2019.Google Scholar
Horton, Aimee I. “The Highlander Folk School: A History of the Development of its Major Programs Related to Social Movements in the South, 1932–1961.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1971.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther Jr.. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.Google Scholar
“Leadbelly's ‘Cottonfields’ Hits Charts and Cues Unique Copyright Angles.” Variety (Archive: 1905–2000) 226, no. 9 (1962): 51.Google Scholar
Legman, Gershon. “Who Owns Folklore?” Western Folklore 21, no. 1 (January 1962): 1–12.Google Scholar
Lester, Julius. “The Angry Children of Malcolm X,” Sing Out! 16, no. 5 (1966): 21–25.Google Scholar
Lloyd, A. L. “Who Owns What in Folk Song?” Sing Out! 12, no. 1 (1963): 41–43.Google Scholar
Lomax, Alan. The Rainbow Sign, a Southern Documentary, 1st ed. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959.Google Scholar
Lomax, John A. “‘Sinful Songs’ of the Southern Negro.” The Musical Quarterly 20, no. 2 (April 1, 1934): 177–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mack, Kenneth W. “Legal History Dialogue: Bringing the Law Back into the History of the Civil Rights Movement.” Law and History Review 27 (2009): 657–671.Google Scholar
Malcolm, X. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Neal, Brandi Amanda. “‘We Shall Overcome’: From Black Church Music to Freedom Song.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2006.Google Scholar
Patry, William F. Copyright Law and Practice. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1994.Google Scholar
People's Songs: Bulletin of People's Songs Inc. 1, no. 1 (February 1945). The People's Songs Archive. Singout.org. https://singout.org/ps-archive/#.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Songs of the Civil Rights Movement 1955–1965: A Study in Culture History.” PhD diss., Howard University, 1975.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music.” Sing Out! 24, no. 6 (1976): 1–5.Google Scholar
Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “‘Oh Freedom’: The Music of the Movement.” In A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, edited by Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, 110–26. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Redmond, Shana L. Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora. New York: NYU Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Reuss, Richard A. and Reuss, JoAnne C.. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957. American Folk Music and Musicians Series, no. 4. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Seeger, Charles. “Who Owns Folklore?—A Rejoinder.” Western Folklore 21, no. 2 (April 1962): 93–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “How to Copyright a Song.” People's Songs 1, no. 1 (February 1945): 2.Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “I Knew Leadbelly.” Sing Magazine 4, no. 3 (September 1957).Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. “The Copyright Hassle.” Sing Out! 13, no. 5 (1964): 41–45.Google Scholar
Seeger, Pete. Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies. Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out, 1993.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. “Folksongs and Copyrights.” Sing Out! 9, no. 4 (1960): 31–36.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. Reprints from the People's Songs Bulletin: 1946–1949. New York: Oak Publications, 1961.Google Scholar
Silber, Irwin. “Folk Music—1963.” Sing Out! 13, no. 4 (1963): 2–4.Google Scholar
Stone, Desmond. Alec Wilder in Spite of Himself: A Life of the Composer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Street, Joe. The Culture War in the Civil Rights Movement. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.Google Scholar
Suisman, David. Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svec, Henry Adam. American Folk Music as Tactical Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Szwed, John. Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World. New York: Penguin, 2010.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy D. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar