Odetta, civil rights inspiration, dies at 77: 'I never knew I had a voice that could sing.'

Image from M.C. Records


Her voice was an accompaniment to the black-and-white images of the freedom marchers who walked the roads of Alabama and Mississippi and the boulevards of Washington in quest of an end to racial discrimination.

Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, has died. She was 77.

Link to Odetta video ...

Read more about this famed singer ...

Remembering the Past While Celebrating the Present

Let Freedom Sing: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement on January 27, 2009

FAIRFAX, Va., Nov 14, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Let Freedom Sing: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement
It is one of the most inspiring stories in American history. Within a generation, Americans of African descent overturned several hundred years of slavery and brutally enforced segregation to win their Civil Rights. Civil Rights wasn't the first movement in American history to generate memorable songs, but it was the first in which music not only reflected the movement but drove it. The songs of the Civil Rights movement are the subject of a stunning new 3-CD set from Time Life Music that will be released during Black History Month 2009.
Let Freedom Sing--The Music of the Civil Rights Movement traces a seventy-year journey with songs that reflect the thoughts and feelings of those at the forefront affected by the movement as well as those simply trying to make sense of a troubled period in our history. Some of the songs are well-known (Respect, Change Is Gonna Come, Blowin' in the Wind, We Shall Overcome, Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud, People Get Ready, Get up--Stand up, and many more) but the set also includes extremely rare recordings such as Brother Will Hairston's account of the Montgomery bus boycott, The Alabama Bus, and Nat King Cole's unreleased protest song from that era, We Are Americans Too.
The story begins with Go Down Moses ("let my people go"), one of many spirituals that led African Americans on their quest for Civil Rights. It continues with a bitter indictment of the lynchings that plagued the South after the Civil War (Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit) and an equally bitter indictment of the treatment of African Americans in the armed forces during World War II (Josh White's Uncle Sam Says). No Restricted Signs and Black, Brown and White protested the segregation that greeted returning servicemen. The call for change became more clamorous during the 1950s with the bus boycotts, the lynching of Emmett Till, the enforced integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the lunch counter sit-ins. All were etched memorably in song.

Continued --

Teacher Offers Civil Rights Music Collection

Hi Susan,

My name is Dave Mort and I'm a History teacher living in England. I
always use music in the classroom to teach, particularly post war American history and especially Bob Dylan. I have written historical novels before but my latest work details the rise of the civil rights movement and anti Vietnam war protests in 50's and 60's America.

To this end I have chosen sixty songs from the period that chart the progress of both and relate the story through them. If you go to my website

www.playitagainunclesam.com

you will be able to read the intro.

Fairly soon there will be an interactive jukebox installed where you will be able to hear the 60 tracks and see some pictures.

Your comments would be appreciated.

Regards and respect
Dave Mort

Home of the Blues; Yazoo-Mississippi Delta

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Get your own

This IS the home of the blues. Here are some pictures to enjoy. Susan

Blog Across the Mississippi Delta Civil Rights History Tour

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Bloggers Set to Revisit Mississippi Delta Civil Rights People and Places

Mount. Pleasant, Iowa (USA), May 29, 2007--Two friends from Cleveland, Mississippi and Mount Pleasant, Iowa, are spending ten days roaming and blogging the Mississippi Delta while visiting civil rights people and places. Their pictures and stories will be placed daily at http://mississippimurders.com on the Internet. (Photo at left, courthouse in Belzoni, home of the Rev. George Lee who was murdered in 1955.)

Margaret Block, an early civil rights advocate, and Susan Klopfer, author of Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, plan to roam the Mississippi Delta starting June 1, visiting people and places of the modern civil rights movement. “We'll be traveling in and out of the Delta for ten days as we photograph important spots and talk about the region's history,” Klopfer said.

“We plan to visit the towns of Money, Drew, Glendora, Greenwood and other spots connected to the murders of Emmett Till, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett and Cleve McDowell, among others who were killed for their civil rights activities or just for being black.”

Block, an early SNCC volunteer, spent her first years out of high school in the small town of Charleston where they will kick off their blogging venture by attending a program June 1 honoring Keglar. The NAACP leader was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1966 on her way home from a Jackson meeting with Sen. Robert Kennedy. Keglar once saved Block’s life by moving her out of Charleston in a hearse from the funeral home that Keglar managed.

“We have very few scheduled stops, but we will also leave the Delta to attend the funeral of Mrs. Chaney, James Chaney's mother in Meridian,” Block said. The two also plan to visit with Unita Blackwell, Mississippi’s first black woman mayor, and will take pictures as they roam the historical Brooks Farm, Parchman penitentiary, and Clarksdale, home of Aaron Henry, an early civil rights leader who Block also knew.

The two women met when Klopfer was researching a book on the civil rights movement, “Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.” Klopfer was living on the grounds of Parchman at the time, where her husband was the chief psychologist.

...Contact:
Susan Klopfer
775-340-3585 (cell) sklopfer@gmail.com
http://mississippimurders.blogspot.com
http://themiddleoftheinternet.com

# # #

Blog Across the Mississippi Delta Civil Rights History Tour

Blog Across Mississippi Civil Rights History Tour

On June 30, I'm leaving for the Mississippi Delta to visit Margaret Block, Unita Blackwell and others involved in the modern civil rights movement. We'll be traveling in and out of the Delta for 10 days as we photograph important spots and talk about the region's history. You are invited to "travel" along on this blog. We have very few scheduled stops, but here are the first two:

June 1 - Charleston, Miss.
Margaret Block and I will attend the program honoring Birdia Keglar, civil rights advocate, who was killed in 1966.

June 2 - Meridian, Miss.
We will attend the funeral of Mrs. Chaney, James Chaney's mother.

Other points we'll be visiting:

Rolling Fork (home of early Delta bluesmen), Drew (home of the Staples family and other blues musicians), Ruleville, the Brooks Farm, Parchman, Clarksdale, Glendora, Holly Springs, Cleveland ...

Stay tuned.

Susan

A Lesson in Music, History; Betty Jackson Cotman Ahead of Her Time

In 1929, some 26 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, young Betty Jackson was one of only three black students enrolled at Washington. The other two were prominent athletes, she recalls.

Today, at a still young 84, Betty remembers many of her teachers and friends. "We all got along. There weren't any problems," she said last Friday at A Place for Grace, her former church which sits adjacent to Washington School.

Last week, Betty was a special guest of Hillsboro philanthropist Mary Brown Turner. Betty had the honor - actually, she honored us - of playing the final chords on an 1865 Decker Brothers piano that has been part of the former Wesleyan Methodist Church since the 1930s.

The church never sounded so good in all its 133 years.

Before playing, Betty winked at her small, but enthusiastic audience, and said "Never get old."

Continued ..