The Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s featuring the SNCC Freedom Singers

How did music and the SNCC Freedom Singers inform the tactics and advance the goals of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s?

Know (knowledge):

• Historic events of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s
• The general history of the music of the Civil Rights Movement, especially during the 1960s
• How the SNCC Freedom Singers uniquely represented both college student participation and music performance within the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s
• The achievements of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and how they happened
• Important individuals and groups of the Civil Rights Movement

Mastery Objective:

• Students will be able to explain the history of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and the unique role of music within the Movement at that time by analyzing primary source images and text, critically listening to music, reading secondary sources, viewing videos, and defining terms.

In this lesson, students will examine how music and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers informed the tactics and advanced the goals of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) during the 1960s. As part of their examination, students will analyze numerous Freedom Songs and connect that music to individuals and groups that led the CRM in that era. Additionally, students will identify key historic events of the CRM during that decade by analyzing contemporaneous media. Throughout the lesson, students will participate in activities to identify how the Freedom Singers’ activism and the songs they sang informed the nonviolent strategies of the CRM and greatly assisted in achieving its social justice goals during the 1960s.

“A Singing Newspaper” - Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon of the SNCC Freedom Singers describing the music group’s purpose in the Civil Rights Movement.

The 1960s was an era of significant achievement for the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). Within four years, three foundational Civil Rights Bills came into law: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 - often referred to as the “Fair Housing Act”.

Becoming law on July 2nd, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed numerous forms of discrimination as well as segregation in public spaces, integrated public schools and facilities, and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In attendance when President Johnson signed the bill into law were many leaders of the CRM, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Nearly thirteen months later on August 6th 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law, again with President Johnson’s signature. Its lengthy full title summarizes its historic purpose: “An Act to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and for other purposes.” The 15th Amendment (1870) granted Black American men the right to vote and is considered the last of three “Reconstruction Amendments” (including the 13th and 14th) that were ratified shortly after and in response to the U.S. Civil War. However, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 needed to be passed in order to dismantle the Jim Crow laws and customs throughout the South that had been erected over the past 100 years to disenfranchise Black Americans from accessing their legal right to vote.

On April 11th 1968, one week after the assassination of Dr. King, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 went into effect at another signing ceremony by President Johnson. The Act is popularly known as the “Fair Housing Act” due to provisions within the law that ban discrimination in a variety of housing-related transactions. The law also provides protections for civil rights protestors and extends many of the protections within the Bill of Rights to Indigenous Americans. However, the bill also contained, and has been criticized for, “Anti-Riot Provisions” due to it becoming law during a time of extensive civil unrest throughout the nation following Dr. King’s murder on April 4th 1968.

These laws were not passed overnight: numerous organizations, groups, and individuals had worked tirelessly to bring them into effect. One group in particular was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC or “snick”). The SNCC was founded in April 1960 by Black American college students while they were attending a civil rights conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina organized by SCLC official and civil rights leader, Ella Baker.

The impetus for founding the SNCC were the nonviolent student sit-ins that had taken place earlier that year at lunch counters and restaurants to protest racial segregation in private-sector businesses. At the Shaw University conference, student attendees decided to form an organization that would coordinate national student civil rights activism and Ella Baker mentored the founders. A decades-long veteran of the CRM, Baker encouraged young people to recognize their own leadership capabilities and assemble their own independent organizations.

The SNCC soon became a major force in the CRM via its nonviolent protest work throughout the South, including the Freedom Rides campaign from May to December of 1961. During the Freedom Rides, SNCC riders experienced extreme violence and imprisonment while attempting to desegregate inter-state bus travel by coordinating integrated bus rides into and throughout the segregated South. With the violence reported in the media, the SNCC put pressure on President John F. Kennedy’s newly-inaugurated administration to intervene in support of desegregation. It worked, as President Kennedy soon spoke to the nation in a televised address calling for new civil rights legislation. The SNCC’s later shift to long-term voter education and registration campaigns in the South over the following years further pressured President Johnson’s administration to make progress on what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In December 1962, SNCC field secretary Cordell Reagon established an a cappella group, the SNCC Freedom Singers, to raise funds for the organization and promote its grassroots efforts throughout the South and beyond. Reagon formed the group during a SNCC desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia where he witnessed the congregational and improvisational singing of Spirituals by local college student activists. The singing provided a means of strength and comfort for the activists while also acting as a powerful tactic of nonviolent resistance to those that opposed and sought to disrupt their desegregation efforts. The SNCC Freedom Singers were typically a quartet that featured members Cordell Reagon, Rutha Mae Harris, Bernice Johnson, and Charles Neblett. Active until 1965, the group would travel nearly 50,000 miles its first year, share concert bills with legendary musicians, and perform in a variety of locations, both small and large, including the Newport Folk Festival and the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963.

The March on Washington was the culmination of decades of advocacy and effort. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the nation and the world attended and participated in it. Perhaps the most iconic moment of the March was Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that articulated a vision of a post-racial American society. But numerous speeches were given that day, and there was a lot of music performed, too. This included Folk artists Odetta, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, contralto Marian Anderson, and the SNCC Freedom Singers performing the Spiritual, “We Shall Not Be Moved”.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the following year, the CRM had achieved a significant goal and the civil rights acts that followed built on that success. However, the Movement began to fracture. The SNCC would seek a more militant approach to civil rights activism in the later years of the 1960s and strain its relationship with Dr. King’s SCLC. After Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968, the Movement lost an irreplaceable leader. Unfortunately, the renewed hope of continued progress with the presidential campaign of civil rights ally Senator Robert F. Kennedy was also extinguished with his assassination on June 12th 1968 during the California Democratic Party presidential primary.

Republican candidate and former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon won the 1968 presidential election and was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States on January 20th 1969. Not considered a dependable supporter of the CRM, Nixon’s ascendency to the presidency called into question the continued progress of the Movement. However, President Nixon did strengthen the EEOC, aided in desegregating public schools in the South, and his administration did produce the first affirmative action program during his time in office even if his commitment to the CRM was mixed.

In July 1969, during the first year of President Nixon’s first term, NASA’s Apollo program reached its goal of landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely to earth before the end of the 1960s. While a worldwide celebratory moment, the extensive costs to fund the Apollo program were questioned by many Americans, including the CRM - who held a peaceful demonstration about those costs during the Apollo 11 mission. Poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken word poem, “Whitey on the Moon” powerfully and succinctly articulated the concern that billions of dollars were being spent on space missions while Americans were still struggling at the end of the 1960s with issues of inequality that were central to the Civil Rights Movement, especially during a decade when so many goals had been achieved.

This lesson contains primary source documents and other materials that may include terms and images reflecting the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times that today are considered offensive and demeaning. TeachRock does not endorse the views expressed in these documents, but recognizes the value such materials provide for historical inquiry. For guidance on introducing controversial historical materials into the classroom, we suggest reviewing this document from the Library of Congress.

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