Talk:The Freedom Singers

"I Have a Dream"

From the article: The Freedom Singers accompanied the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington D.C. when he gave his "Dream of an Equal America" speech. The event drew upwards of 350,000 civil rights advocates to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Do you mean the "I Have a Dream" speech given at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom held on August 28, 1963? That attracted over 250,000 people. I am going to change it unless someone objects. Risssa (talk) 21:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Editing

I rewrote this article cutting it by about a third, and adding much-needed links. The article has almost no citations listed and appears to be either personal knowledge or taken from the few references, in which case those need to be added.

I am not sure if the "Freedom Singers Members" section should be included. Three of the nine members link to their own pages so it seems silly to included them with anything but their names. Of the remaining six singers, only two have biographical information while the other four have just their names listed. All the names are listed at the top of the article. I'd appreciate guidance about this.

I added the "See also" reference.

I am going to alphabetize the song list. Risssa (talk) 02:11, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for all of the citations you added back in 2013. Unfortunately, many of the links no longer work. If you are able, please replace them with Wayback Machine links or the like. Aspotoftea (talk) 16:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Unintended bias towards white members evident in previous edits

When I made my edits today, I noticed that there was little in the beginning of the article (2nd paragraph) that described the original black members of this historic civil rights singing group. There were more lines about Perlman than about all four original members before my edit. And there was info about his kids which had little to no relevance or notability in this particular article. So I removed the preponderance of biographical info on Perlman and left the relevant info.

I also see there are references to the Carawans but no citation of where this info came from and no context for why their role in "we shall overcome" is significant relative to The Freedom Singers. I will return to document that "We Shall Overcome" was not necessarily popularized by the Carawans in the black community and the civil rights South. The recorded, perhaps a song, but the song itself was popular, it was as staple in Baptist church singing long before the Carawans. Bernice Johnson Reagon, a founding member of The Freedom Singers, talks about the shift from "I" in "I Shall Overcome" to "We" as in "We Shall Overcome" to integrate the movement; to essentially make whites feel included. http://billmoyers.com/2013/05/03/moyers-moment-1991-bernice-johnson-reagon-on-this-little-light-of-mine/

This is the kind of systemic bias we Wikipedians need to learn to recognize and revise or clean up. Rooting out the racial bias in a free knowledge community takes compassion and work. It's not easy to notice one's own inherent biases of white, patriarchal privilege which even black people carry. Test your own implicit bias with this Harvard tool: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexrk.htm

In this particular moment in the US, this kind of cognitive self-awareness is critical to our shared project.--sheridanford (talk) 14:04, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Link Rot

There is considerable link rot in the references for this article. The Smithsonian links and others have changed. I am not sure if there is an established way to flag an article for link rot other than noting it in the Talk in this way, but it seems especially prevalent in many Civil Rights-related articles, so I would urge editors to replace as many links as possible with archival links. Aspotoftea (talk) 16:16, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: HIST 121 - U.S. History since 1877

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 February 2023 and 18 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Heruiter21, Alb7791, Marcelvacation7791 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Kawilke22, Wikitalks22.

— Assignment last updated by Public-historian-90 (talk) 19:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Outline For Contributions to the article

Lead

We added a connection to the churches and talked about the new group of freedom singers.

Connection of Churches to The Freedom Singers

Added a whole paragraph talking about the connection of churches to the freedom singers

Freedom Singers' Connection to SNCC

The Albany Movement brought the original Freedom Singers, then the second group of Freedom Singers, which still included Charles Neblett of the original group. Finally, came the Freedom Voices, made up of field secretaries from SNCC.

Notable Songs

Talked about the song "We shall not be Moved" a little more. Talked about their performance at MLKs speech. Also added a picture of the freedom singers performing

References

1. Spener, David (2016), "From Union Song to Freedom Song: Civil Rights Activists Sing an Old Tune for a New Cause", We Shall Not Be Moved/No nos moverán, Biography of a Song of Struggle, Temple University Press, pp. 62–76, ISBN 978-1-4399-1297-3, retrieved 2023-03-30
2. York, Victor V. Bobetsky, associate professor and Director of the Teacher Education Program in Music at Hunter College of the City University of New (2014-12-23). We Shall Overcome: Essays on a Great American Song. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-3603-5.
3. Reagon, Bernice Johnson (1987). "Let the Church Sing "Freedom"". Black Music Research Journal. 7: 105–118. doi:10.2307/779452. ISSN 0276-3605.

Heruiter21 (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sentence fragment in first paragraph -- how to repair?

The second sentence of the first paragraph is a fragment: "After folk singer Pete Seeger witnessed the power of their congregational-style of singing, which fused black Baptist a cappella church singing with popular music at the time, as well as protest songs and chants." I don't know enough of the history here to conjecture what the missing part is, but right now, it's not making sense. Lgilman909 (talk) 01:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)