That we shall overcome some day
Oh deep in my heart, I do believe
We shall overcome some day
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
This was first song my parents taught me to sing.
No one would mistake my parents for activists. There was an underpinning of conservativeness to their outlook. But according to family lore, I was about three years old, and we were driving to visit my mother’s childhood friend. I performed it upon arrival! And while I won’t claim to recollect the memory exactly, a big song like that can take up a lot of space in the mind of a girl child. I continued to sing it long afterwards, because it always felt good to sing.
I asked my mother decades later why she taught it to me, and she said she’d been struck by how powerful and clear the message was—and, it was easy to teach. (I think she may have wanted to demonstrate that even if she wasn’t an activist, she still had a mind of her own). Regardless of the initial intent, it made a considerable impression on me at an impressionable age.
I chose to share this family story as an offering of hope. There is much work to be done in this country to surmount the centuries of injustice wrought by white hands. White supremacy was conceived in a fever dream, and that fever can and must be broken. Yet through music, literature, and art, the Holy Spirit has been and is still at work, weaving connective tissue, working on the imaginations of new generations, and bringing forth a new nation.
We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid today
For deep in my heart, I do believe
That we shall overcome some day
Caroline Prugh
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