Civil Rights Songs: A Chronological Listing

This Civil Rights Song List is not a comprehensive catalogue. This list is merely the culmination of a set of lists that I will continue to augment on my own as more songs are created or discovered and added. The data presented here were amassed as a special project during the COVID-19 pandemic and as part of my duties as reference librarian at Oyster Bay-East Norwich Public Library in Oyster Bay, NY. Any opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not represent those of the library, its staff, or the Board of Trustees.

My own interest in civil rights, and in the power of music, dates back to the early 1960s, when my mother took me to a “Ban the Bomb” demonstration at the United Nations, and my father took me to the August 28, 1963, March on Washington. Their examples and these events would inspire a life of activism expressed through music, including my first musical on atomic testing and imperialism. I also formed the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus in 1988 to perform works no other chorus would or could do, including the cantata I Have A Dream written by my teacher and mentor Elie Siegmeister and performed in its Manhattan premiere with William Warfield on January 15, 1989, at the Harlem School of the Arts. The attendance of Pete Seeger at that performance prompted him to approach me, leading to wonderful collaborative opportunities in workshops, performances, arrangements, and compositions.

This project is intended as a starting point for others to build on. The list appended to this article is merely a snapshot in time of both a work in progress and, so to speak, a work about progress—social progress. Viewed chronologically, these songs have much to tell about the history of our country—and a few others, as well. Strictly speaking, the list is not exactly chronological: precise months and dates are not taken into account; only years, with titles alphabetized within each year. They begin half a millennium ago, and include every year since 1930 (except 1944, 1950, 1952, 1955, 1961, 1986–7, 1995, and 1997).

The names most frequently recurring here are: Bob Dylan (9); Pete Seeger and Bob Marley (8); Si Kahn and Langston Hughes (7); Elie Siegmeister and Phil Ochs (6); Bernice Johnson Reagon, Marvin Gaye, Tom Paxton, Peace Poets, Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and Nina Simone (5); Charon Hribar, Kendrick Lamar, Curtis Mayfield, Earl Robinson, and Staple Singers (4); Yara Allen, Marc Blitzstein, Oscar Brown, Jr., Mos Def, Anne Feeney, Rhiannon Giddens, Bertha Gober, Woody Guthrie, Jay-Z, Lead Belly, Tom Lehrer, Gil Scott-Heron, Barrett Strong, Kanye West, and Norman J. Whitfield (3).[1]

Many songs are associated more with their performers than with the writers and composers who created them, the best example being “Strange Fruit,” which is often (mis)attributed to Billie Holiday, though it was written by Abel Meeropol under the pen-name Lewis Allan. Likewise, Lesley Gore is most closely associated with “You Don’t Own Me,” though it was written by John Madara and David White. Many of the songs Elvis Presley sang were also co-copyrighted by him, though he wrote none of them, and he is therefore not listed here. And, of course, “cover” artists like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Mara Levine often sing songs by writers like Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, and Malvina Reynolds, sometimes bringing out the lyricism of the melodies even more than their creators did.  

In defining “song” for this list, I included conventional settings of music for voice(s) with or without accompaniment, chants, talking blues, rap, hip-hop, and some hymns. Purely instrumental pieces, even with political titles, and even if called “songs without words,” are not found here.

Then there is the question of the meaning of “civil rights.” A dictionary definition includes the rights “to political and social freedom and equality.” In general parlance, the term also denotes struggling against racism, prejudice and bigotry. But no matter how political, or relevant, or powerful, or good, not every song of struggle, labor, prison, protest, peace, or even identity—racial or otherwise—is necessarily a civil rights song. Most of the great Spanish Civil War songs are not conventionally considered civil rights songs (even if many have been called “Songs for Democracy”), but I did include Tom Lehrer’s lampoon of them, because of his message, even though satirical, on “the fight against poverty, war and ‘injestice.’” Likewise, I included songs about freedom, slavery, abolition, and the Underground Railroad. Spirituals and religious songs are also on this list if they have been adapted for use in the struggle for civil rights.

The list contains a number of songs that have been repurposed and refocused by adaptation and parody. Many of our nation’s most important songs are indeed parodies or contain satire as a kind of critique, including “America” (“God Save the King”), “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (“John Brown’s Body,” and earlier than that, probably some revival hymns), and “This Land Is Your Land” (a Carter Family tune). Two songs of earlier generations, “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” and “We’re Marching to Pretoria,” became adapted as civil rights songs in the 1950s, promoted especially by the Weavers. The first was discovered by Tony Saletan in the Boston Public Library, with roots in the Underground Railroad. The second was actually a British Army song from the Boer War, whose repurposing may be viewed retrospectively as somewhat humorous but effective nonetheless.

Quite a few Broadway shows and songs have dealt with civil rights, at least obliquely, such as Finian’s Rainbow in 1947; “Carefully Taught” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 South Pacific; “Simple,” which refers to the NAACP, in Anyone Can Whistle by Stephen Sondheim; and as an important theme in Hair, Ragtime, and Raisin—Judd Woldin’s musicalization of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play A Raisin in the Sun. The earliest Broadway civil rights song, though, did not begin as one. Paul Robeson transformed “Ol’ Man River” in Jerome Kern’s and Oscar Hammerstein’s Showboat of 1927 from a plaint of resignation into a fighting anthem during the Spanish Civil War, ten years later. Robeson also championed John LaTouche’s and Earl Robinson’s 1939 “Ballad for Americans” and Marc Blitzstein’s 1941 song “Purest Kind of a Guy,” and was particularly fond of its line “black or white or tan . . .” (as attested to by Blitzstein’s sister, Josephine Davis, in interviews with me and Blitzstein biographer Eric Gordon).

Other songs mention civil rights specifically, like Tom Paxton’s “Daily News” or Joel Mandelbaum’s and Leah Fichandler’s “The Causes Are Waiting for You.” Many recent songs have tended toward street chants—for instance, those at Black Lives Matter marches.[2] But I have also tried to include songs from operas and oratorios, such as those about Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, the three civil rights workers killed in Mississippi in 1964, and many more about recent victims like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Michael Brown.

During the 2020 pandemic, the York Theatre sponsored a seven-round contest for songwriters on a different theme every two weeks. In Week 4, in response to Black Lives Matter, the theme was “What Matters to You.” A few interesting civil rights songs resulted from that assignment. I composed seven songs for the first six rounds, perhaps the most memorable being a collaboration with Suffolk County’s first poet laureate, George Wallace (not to be confused with the late governor of Alabama, about whom there have also been quite a few civil rights songs written). An excerpt from George’s text reads:

In eschewing capital letters, George admitted to having been influenced by E. E. Cummings, and one of Cummings’s poems also made it into this list—a 1926 anti-war send-up of political hypocrisy, in a couple of settings (mine of 1982; Declan McKenna’s of 2016). The most frequently occurring of any of the writers is Langston Hughes. Hughes’s poems have also been a source of inspiration for quite a few composers, most notably Elie Siegmeister, who set more of his poetry than anyone else. The Hughes poem that seems to have been set by more composers than any other in my lists (eight in total) is “Dreams,” which arguably inspired Dr. King, about whom more civil rights songs seem to have been written than anyone else.

Civil rights songs are constantly being written and could be added to similar lists of your own making. At the time of this writing, I think this is the largest list of its kind (522 items) and so a significant foundation for researchers and others. I encourage anyone who wants to take up the mantle to continue the work.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments are in order to the authors of various online lists posted by The Progressive, The Nation, Rolling Stone, the Poor People’s March, and Students4Khazei on Spotify; along with Zalmen Mlotek, Si Kahn, Philip Aaberg, Bennet Zurofsky & the Solidarity Singers of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council, and Forward March’s Dave Williams. Also to Ralph Locke and Michael Beckerman, who encouraged me to submit this to Music & Politics.

1. My own name appears quite a few times as well since, as a composer, I know my own works catalog more thoroughly than anyone else’s.

2. On June 19, 2020, I joined and spoke at one such march, recalling words I had heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., say in Washington and in Great Neck.