Poetry Friday: We Shall Overcome

Last week was the 50^th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s the perfect time to read poet Debbie Levy’s new picture book WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE STORY OF A SONG.

Read more about it at Debbie's website.

I’m featuring the book for Poetry Friday today, but be sure to stop back next week when Debbie visits Author Amok. She’s joining me for “5 Questions for the Author.”

Today's host is my friend
Linda Kulp at Write Time!

I picked up WE SHALL OVERCOME for several reasons:

1.   Debbie Levy is a local author whose work I’ve enjoyed and admired. 

2.   “The Story of a Song” is an intriguing topic for a picture book.

3.  This is the kind of book I like to recommend to educators when I visit our diverse local schools.

WE SHALL OVERCOME lived up to my expectations on all three counts. But it also made me cry. Like big, blubbery, I-can’t-see-what-I’m-reading-because-tears kind of cry.

With a deceptively light tough, WE SHALL OVERCOME traces the song that became a Civil Rights anthem to its roots in American slavery. The book opens with these lines:

Back in slavery times—

when enslaved people worked long days

with no pay and no say,

no freedom, no fairness,

no choice and no change—

the people sang.

They suffered, yet they sang—

to soothe the hurt,

to fight the cruelty,

to declare that—yes!—they were human beings.

Each spread shows how the song moved from cotton fields to black churches, from community to community, evolving over time. “I’ll overcome” became “We will overcome” during the early years of the Civil Rights movement.

They started to protest.

They brought a church song, “I Will Overcome,”

to the streets.

But since they were marching and working together,

they sang “We will Overcome.”

We, together, will overcome.

We see the song’s power to comfort protesters at segregated lunch counters. It is taken on the road by a group called the Freedom Singers, and sung at the historic 1963 March on Washington. But the story doesn’t end when the Civil Rights Act passes. Debbie continues to follow “We Shall Overcome” as it travels to South Africa and throughout the world.

I loved this book’s combination of music, history, and human rights. But I think what made me cry was how Debbie gets this point across: the words of “We Shall Overcome” represent a deep faith in humanity and in our ability to—someday—value all human beings as equals.

Debbie was kind enough to provide this wonderful photograph of herself and the book's illustrator, Vanessa Brantley-Newton, at the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC.

King incorporated the words "We shall overcome" into his speeches.

A spread from WE SHALL OVERCOME
from Vanessa Brantley-Newton's website.

One feature of the book I’d like to highlight comes after the text. WE SHALL OVERCOME includes an easy-to-follow timeline of the events mentioned in the book. Thumbnails of Vanessa's wonderful art brings these dates to life.

Thanks to Debbie Levy for giving me permission to post excerpts from WE SHALL OVERCOME today. For more information about the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, visit the Civil Rights 50 website.

Next week, Debbie will be here in person to tell us about her writing process. I can’t wait to hear how she developed, researched, and wrote the story of this important song.

Poetry Friday: Eye Witness Poetry

It's 7 AM on the last Poetry Friday before the Shovan kids head back to school. How are we celebrating? With a trip to Gettysburg, PA.

Our best family vacations (Williamsburg, VA, Concord, MA, London and Edinburgh) have had a historical element, and Gettysburg is just 90 minutes from our home in central Maryland.

A side note -- on our drive up to Concord, Mass (see my post on touring Louisa May Alcott's home), we listened to The Killer Angels on audio. It's a historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the best audio books we've ever listened to. Michael Shaara's insights into the minds of the generals and other leaders is amazing.

The Killer Angels won the Pulitzer Prize
and was the basis of the film Gettysburg.

Today, we're hoping to arrive at the Gettysburg National Park Service Museum and Visitors' Center early enough to reserve a private tour guide. It's just $60 for our four person family -- great deal. The guide gets in your car and drives you through Gettysburg, narrating the events of the battle and answering your questions! The teens, my husband and I are really looking forward to it.

One of the most famous moments of the three day battle, which celebrated a 150th anniversary in July, is Pickett's Charge. Here is a poem by Will Henry Thompson, a Confederate Veteran who, according to the poem, participated in the doomed charge. At History Engine, I found a short bio of Thompson with some worth-reading insights into his poem.

The High Tide at Gettysburg
by Will Henry Thompson

A CLOUD possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle’s smoky shield.
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,
And from the heights the thunder pealed.	5
Then at the brief command of Lee
Moved out that matchless infantry,
With Pickett leading grandly down,
To rush against the roaring crown
Of those dread heights of destiny.	10
Far heard above the angry guns
A cry across the tumult runs,—
The voice that rang through Shiloh’s woods
And Chickamauga’s solitudes,
The fierce South cheering on her sons!	15
Ah, how the withering tempest blew
Against the front of Pettigrew!
A Khamsin wind that scorched and singed
Like that infernal flame that fringed
The British squares at Waterloo!	20
A thousand fell where Kemper led;
A thousand died where Garnett bled:
In blinding flame and strangling smoke
The remnant through the batteries broke
And crossed the works with Armistead.	25
“Once more in Glory’s van with me!”
Virginia cried to Tennessee;
“We two together, come what may,
Shall stand upon these works to-day!”
(The reddest day in history.)	30
Brave Tennessee! In reckless way
Virginia heard her comrade say:
“Close round this rent and riddled rag!”
What time she set her battle-flag
Amid the guns of Doubleday.	35
But who shall break the guards that wait
Before the awful face of Fate?
The tattered standards of the South
Were shriveled at the cannon’s mouth,
And all her hopes were desolate.	40
In vain the Tennesseean set
His breast against the bayonet!
In vain Virginia charged and raged,
A tigress in her wrath uncaged,
Till all the hill was red and wet!	45
Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle-could,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death-cry of a nation lost!

Read the rest at Bartleby.

Today's Poetry Friday host with the posts is Betsy at I Think in Poems. Thanks, Besty! Take a short trip over to Betsy's blog for more Poetry Friday posts.