One of the best known songs of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome” is a gospel song which became a protest song. It is most commonly thought to be lyrically descended (though not directly taken) from “I’ll Overcome Some Day”, a hymn by Charles Albert Tindley that was first published in 1901

In its modern form, it can first be attributed to Lucille Simmons and the tobacco workers she led during a cigar workers strike in 1945 in Charleston, South Carolina, singing “We Will Overcome”source

Under the same name, the song was published in an edition of the People’s Songs Bulletin in 1947 — the People’s Songs organization was run by Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays, and others, and formed a model for publications such as Sing Out! — contributed and introduced by Zilphia Horton,who said she had learned the song from Simmons.

She taught it to many others, including Pete Seeger, who included it in his repertoire, as did many other activist singers. These renditions of this song, along with Joan Baez’s performance of it to the crowds at the national mall during the March on Washington, implanted it in the American civil rights and labor zeitgeist forever.

March on Washington performance:

Documentary about the song’s history