Will Kaufman The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement used freedom songs to spread their message, adapting folk and pop tunes with contemporary topical lyrics, or writing new songs addressing social injustice in general, and injustice for African-Americans in particular. This is a two-CD, 43-song compilation of such songs, recorded live in mass meetings in churches between 1960 and 1966. The SNCC Freedom Singers, including in their ranks future Sweet Honey in the Rock mainstay Bernice Johnson Reagon (who wrote the liner notes), contribute quite a few tracks, but the majority are by less professional soloists and choirs.

The civil rights movement used freedom songs to spread their message, adapting folk and pop tunes with contemporary topical lyrics, or writing new songs addressing social injustice in general, and injustice for African-Americans in particular. This is a two-CD, 43-song compilation of such songs, recorded live in mass meetings in churches between 1960 and 1966.