Our first day was a lot of driving, eating and watching documentaries. So for your entertainment, I bring you Joe Morse and the WSU Travel Study Choir.
The people in the Civil Rights Movement had a lot of activities to keep them on the task of integrating cities in the South.
One of those activities was singing “freedom songs.” These are songs that had origins in during slavery in the 19th century and continued to be sang through the Civil Rights Movement.
The lyrics usually talk of happiness, sadness, joy, and determination. They also have an element of religion in them also, since church and religion was a large part of African American cultural.
Joe Morse, a Civil Rights veteran from Winona, Minn. printed out the lyrics to a handful of songs and he taught us how to sing them yesterday. I recorded the songs and it’s linked below; we sound pretty good, if we do say so ourselves.
Civil Rights Road 