Whatever Happened to Folk Music
Guy Carawan died on May 2. He was 87. Sadly, he was suffering from dementia, that terrible disease. Carawan introduced We Shall Overcome to the civil rights movement in the spring of 1960. It had been picked up by the union movement in the late 1940’s. Pete Seeger was one of the early popularizers of the song, but Carawan made it famous. Thinking back today, the song has survived. The trade union movement is pretty much moribund in the United States, and the civil rights movement has evolved into something very different from what it was in the South in … Continue reading →