“We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger's 1963 album takes its title from "We Shall Overcome", a gospel song whose roots are murky: it may descend from Charles Albert Tindley's hymn "I'll Overcome Some Day", and striking tobacco workers led by Lucille Simmons are said to have sung the modern version at the Charleston Cigar Factory in 1945 and 1946. Zilphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee got it printed in 1947 as "We Will Overcome" and taught it to Seeger.

When Guy Carawan led his and Seeger's version at Highlander in 1959, the song crossed into the civil rights movement and became its unofficial anthem, and Seeger, Joan Baez and other folk singers carried it to rallies, festivals and concerts up North. In 2025 Rolling Stone ranked Seeger's adaptation number 8 among the greatest protest songs ever.

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