Geepereet, Dec 2, 2008
****
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video of Sweet Honey In The Rock performing "Ella's Song". This song is also known as "We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest".
The lyrics for "Ella's Song" are also included in this post along with information about Ella Baker, the Civil Rights activist who is lauded in that song. This post also presents information about Bernice Johnson Reagon, the founder of that a cappella singing group Sweet Honey In The Rock and the composer of "Ella's Song".
The Addendum to this post presents a portion of the campaign speech that Vice President and 2024 presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris gave in Atlanta, Georgia on July 30, 2024. That portion of that speech is patterned after the "We who believe in freedom" line in Bernice Johnson Reagon's composition entitled "Ella's Song".
The content of this post is presented for inspirational, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners,
Thanks to Bernice Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Ella Baker, and Kamala Harris. Thanks also to the all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to all those who are associated with this video and the publisher of this video on YouTube.
****
LYRICS FOR ELLA'S SONG
(composer Bernice Johnson Reagon)
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons
Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers' sons
That which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me
To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
And if I can but shed some light as they carry us through the gale
The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hands of the young, who dare to run against the storm
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny
Struggling myself don't mean a whole lot, I've come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survives
I'm a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At times I can be quite difficult, I'll bow to no man's word
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Source: http://thue.stanford.edu/jacquie/songs/ella.html
****
INFORMATION ABOUT ELLA BAKER
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker
"Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986)
was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a
largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five
decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most
noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois,
Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also
mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and
Bob Moses, as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC).[1][2]
Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership;
she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the
oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves. She realized
this vision most fully in the 1960s as the primary advisor and strategist of
the SNCC.[1][3] Biographer Barbara Ransby calls Baker "one of the most
important American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most
influential woman in the civil rights movement".[3] She is known for her
critiques of both racism in American culture and sexism in the civil rights
movement.[4][5][6][7]"...
****
INFORMATION ABOUT BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernice_Johnson_Reagon
"Bernice Johnson Reagon (October 4, 1942 – July 16,
2024) was an American song leader, professor of American history, composer,
historian, musician, scholar, curator at the Smithsonian, and social activist
who, in the early 1960s, was a founding member of the Freedom Singers,
organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the
Albany Movement for civil rights in Georgia.[1][2] In 1973, she founded the
all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington,
D.C.[3] Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized
the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work
together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.[4]
The Albany Singing Movement became a vital catalyst for
change through music in the early 1960s protests of the Civil Rights era.[5][6]
Reagon devoted her life to social justice through music via recordings,
activism, community singing, and scholarship.[7][8][9][10]
She earned her Ph.D. from Howard University, becoming a
cultural historian, centered on the role of music. She was professor emerita in
the Department of History at The American University.[11] She had also been a
scholar-in-residence at Stanford[12] and received an honorary doctorate of
music from Berklee College of Music.
[...]
Reagon was a specialist in African-American oral history,
performance and protest traditions. She served as music consultant, producer,
composer, and performer on several award-winning film projects, notably PBS
television productions such as Eyes on the Prize (1987) (in which she also
appeared) and Ken Burns' The Civil War (1990). Reagon was also featured in a
film, We Shall Overcome, which was about the song and its placement in the
movement, being produced by Ginger Records and made by Henry Hampton, the
creator of Eyes on The Prize.[23]She was the conceptual producer and narrator
of the Peabody Award-winning radio series, Wade in the Water, African American
Sacred Music Traditions.[24] Reagon claimed: "These days, I come as a
'songtalker', one who balances talk and song in the creation of a live
performance conversation with those who gather within the sound of my voice." "...
****
ADDENDUM - A PORTION OF KAMALA HARRIS' PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SPEECH (Atlanta Georgia, July 30, 2024) that is patterned after the line "We who believe in freedom cannot rest."
From the auto-generated transcript of that speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g1nLZiUNps "Harris to Trump: Say it to my face! I Full Atlanta Rally", MSNBC, July 30, 2024
"And so we who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will finally passed the Freedom To Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act .
We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban.We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as President of the United States, I will sign it into law."...
*Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/07/kamala-harris-atlanta-georgia-campaign_30.html for the post entitled "Kamala Harris' Atlanta, Georgia Campaign Speech July 30, 2024 (from the auto-generated transcript)"
****
Thanks for visiting pancocojams.
Visitor comments are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment