For the past several years, I have delivered the civil rights lectures in my husband's second-half US History courses. Taking a page from the book of our dear friend and mentor Andy Wiest, I've typically started class with music. Since I'm enjoying that playlist today, I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you. Join hands and dance across the Orange Pastry of Power and we'll have a sing-along!
First, this is by no means a comprehensive list! Feel free to add your favorite tunes in the comments - I'd love to find some tunes to add to my collection. Tell your stories, too - I look forward to reading them all and sharing my own.
Josh White's Uncle Sam Says, 1941
I like to use this one if I'm going to have to start my part of the discussion with WWII vets' experience overseas. So many of our students still think the Movement is only about the 1960s, only about Dr. King, that talking about Medgar Evers walking in to register to vote in uniform is completely foreign to them.
In classes where I have a little more time, I usually pick a varied selection of blues:
Leadbelly's Bourgeois Blues, 1938
and his
Jim Crow Blues
J.B. Lenoir's Eisenhower Blues is a longtime favorite.
Lenoir's Vietnam Blues is one I like to use if I come in the course a little later.
Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit
Nina Simone's I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free
The SNCC Singers - We Shall Overcome. (Pete Seeger's interview on the song is spectacular, too.)
Odetta's version of The Times They Are A-Changin'
I've used a lot of Pete Seeger through the years, obviously - it'd be impossible to do the second half of US history without Seeger and Woody Guthrie. But there are two I like that are particularly incisive reflections on postwar society that don't seem to get as much "play".
I love his version of Little Boxes. Yes, I know some of our people must have heard it while watching Weeds, but I like to try to use it in a more illustrative sense, when talking about Levittown, etc.
This is the full LP of Seeger's 1963 performance at Carnegie Hall. Little Boxes is the second song.
One of the goals of higher education is to get students to question the status quo. When I'm able, I like to start off classes generally with Pete's What Did You Learn in School, to give an idea of the preconceived notions and easy answers we're going to try to break down.
When I talk about Vietnam, we do other songs entirely, but I keep them in the same playlist on my computer, so I'm going to share some of them, too.
I really like John Prine's Sam Stone, but I've cut back on using it quite so much with our student population. Serving the vast numbers of soldiers and dependents that we do, especially with our incredibly high suicide and drug use rate, has made me question employing something quite so pointed about the impossibility of painless reintegration for our GIs. The times that I have used it, I vastly prefer the rawer demo track from The Singing Mailman Delivers, but this one will do in a pinch.
Another Prine song that is especially useful is his Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore, though my favorite cut is from his 2010 "In Person and On Stage," live at the Ryman.
There's so much great protest-infused Soul/R&B that I could do nothing but that for our students, instead of trying to mix it up some. But I love it. So here are a few:
Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On always makes an appearance, as does the 2006 Preservation Hall + Chuck D cover of the tune as commentary on Katrina, class, and corruption.
Most people think of the Temptations, if they think of them at all, as a soft touch group that made its living on love songs. While they certainly did to a degree, I love their protest music.
The Temptations - Ball of Confusion
Sometimes, I use James Brown's Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto if it's in the fall semester, and I almost always pair it with Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.
I use Stevie Wonder's Living for the City pretty regularly, and this version, because it shows glimpses of life in the city that our rural students rarely, if ever, see.
I like to try to cut the dark songs with lighter ones, as with the James Brown pair. Two of my favorite "warm and fuzzy" songs are:
Sam Cooke - A Change is Gonna Come
Curtis Mayfield - People Get Ready
So - what powers you up to bring about some change?