John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, and Julian Bond\u2014giants of the Southern Freedom Movement in the mid-twentieth century\u2014have made the claim that without the music, there would have been no freedom movement. Singing was integral to creating a \u201cbeloved community\u201d as Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed the goal of racial and economic equality. Some social commentators today observe that the current wave of protesters do not sing. They chant. They have no widely-recognized \u201canthem.\u201d They do not sing together. How are we to understand what the shift from singing to chanting in social activism means? A closer investigation of the events in the Virginia cities of Charlottesville and Danville provides evidence for consideration.<\/p>\n
Two small cities in Virginia. Five decades apart. In both Danville (1963) and Charlottesville (2017) groups of activists took to the streets to assert their political and social agendas. The Danville Movement, as part of the Southern Freedom Movement, confronted entrenched racial segregation powers to contend for full access to educational, political, and community resources for persons of color. The Unite the Right demonstration in Charlottesville brought together members of multiple white supremacist organizations, ostensibly to protest the removal and relocation of statues celebrating the Confederacy, but more explicitly to appropriate first amendment protection for their inflammatory language of violence against people of color, Jews, Catholics, women, and non-heteronormative persons. Their convergence from around the nation prompted a corresponding response from counter protesters who rejected the Unite the Right\u2019s agenda. Music and chants in the Danville movement affirmed African Americans\u2019 identity and humanity. Music countered boredom and chronicled injustice; it comforted the incarcerated, energized the weary, and encouraged the down-hearted. Music created community. Chanting in Charlottesville built the Unite the Right\u2019s cohesion by taunting listeners, threatening observers, and challenging opponents. Charlottesville counter-protesters responded with their own chants and a few invoked music from the Southern Freedom Movement.<\/p>\n
While both Charlottesville and Danville are small cities in Virginia, their origins and histories differ considerably. Charlottesville is a county seat and education center of roughly 48,000. It is the home of the prestigious University of Virginia whose founder and original architect, Thomas Jefferson, brought a mixed legacy of neoclassical values and slaveholding economics to the city. Today, the University, including the Health complex, employs 28,000 people. Charlottesville census figures show 69% of the residents are white; 19% Black or African American; 6% Asian. Demographics reported by the UVA<\/a> show 61% of UVA students are white; 12% Asian; and 10% Black or African American.<\/p>\n Danville, by contrast, hugs the Southern border of the state along the Dan River which separates Virginia from North Carolina. An industrial town devoted to tobacco and textile production, Danville has been literally controlled by the Dan River Mills Corporation in terms of town governance and its judicial system. Roughly two-thirds<\/a> of Danville\u2019s 50,000 residents in 1960 were white. Racial segregation was in full force as the Southern Freedom Movement simmered and boiled both near and far.<\/p>\n \u201cFreedom\u201d<\/p>\n All: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom (Additional verses)<\/p>\n Let me hear you sing for (Freedom) Refrain: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom (Core Freedom Songs<\/a>, 17)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, many Americans were shocked when they saw Southern Freedom Movement violence: Sheriff \u201cBull\u201d Connor\u2019s brutal responses to non-violent direct-action demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. Men, women, and children peacefully protested on behalf of African American freedoms. Images of fire hoses blasting protesters off their feet and attack dogs biting adults and school children filled the nightly TV news and major Northern newspapers. That same summer, only five hundred miles away, authorities used similar brutal techniques in the little-known textile town of Danville, VA.<\/p>\n Frustrated by the inability of the local NAACP to change racial segregation and political exclusion of people of color in Danville, organizers created The Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA) as an affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In keeping with SCLC expectations, the DCPA clearly articulated its goals: to have equal access to the town facilities, to include Blacks in town governance, and to employ Blacks in downtown businesses. Both SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent staff to Danville to help organize the protests and to teach non-violent protest strategies.<\/p>\n Archival film footage of local news coverage shows African American protesters marching up the streets in Danville. Five and six abreast, they sing \u201cWe shall not be moved\u201d and \u201cFreedom\u201d as well as rhythmically chant \u201cHey! Hey! Hey!\u201d and \u201cFreedom Now!\u201d Similarly, television film of protesters on the City Hall steps captures a sit-in where participants sang \u201cFreedom\u201d as they clapped in time. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) published \u201cFreedom\u201d and \u201cWe Shall Not Be Moved\u201d in the 1962 CORE Sit-in Songs. Inexpensively produced, the booklet contained 19 songs that were recorded as an album following the Freedom Highways project in 1962. The Freedom Highways project was direct action \u201cto open chain restaurants along major federal highways to all persons.\u201d These songs had been part of the Southern Freedom Movement for years, some since the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 (Core Sit-in Songs<\/a>, Foreword). The tune for \u201cFreedom\u201d originally was an African American spiritual with a call and response format. The lead voice told a story or made observations and the group responded with \u201cAmen. Amen. Amen.\u201d Structurally, the song was readily adapted to Southern Freedom Movement purposes by substituting \u201cAmen\u201d for \u201cFreedom\u201d and creating verses that either were relevant to the large-scale struggle for rights and freedom or spoke to the specific needs and conditions of a local movement.<\/p>\n Other film footage from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities shows police and firemen dragging hoses into position. Still photographs present the destruction and violence of the hoses. What has been called \u201cA Night of Infamy\u201d in Danville began with a gathering of protesters to respond to the incarceration of young people the week before (\u201cDanville,”\u00a0\u00a0Virginia Historical Society<\/a>).<\/p>\n On June 10, Rev. H.G. McGhee had led a group of about 50 people to city hall. McGhee\u2019s group knelt en masse between the municipal building and the jail \u201cto pray for our brothers and sisters.\u201d As they prayed, State troopers blocked the end of the ally, cutting off any exit for the praying activists. When they stood up, they heard the command \u201cLet them have it!\u201d At that point, city police, firemen, and garbage collectors who had been deputized for this purpose, attacked the demonstrators with clubs. Then high intensity fire hoses blasted the stunned crowd, \u201cwashing people down the street like so much trash. Gloria Campbell (wife of the influential Rev. Lawrence G. Campbell) received such a high-intensity stream of water, it tore her dress off\u2026\u201d (Katherine Calos, \u201cCivil rights participants remember Danville\u2019s \u2018Night of Infamy,’”\u00a0Richmond Times-Dispatch<\/a>, February 3, 2013). While the network television and major newspapers reported Birmingham, Alabama\u2019s violent strategies, the same approach in Danville escaped the same level of national attention.<\/p>\n Inside the Danville jail that night, 17-year old Randy Adams didn\u2019t feel the fire hoses\u2019 punishment. But he did experience the harshness of prison conditions. \u201cIn jail, the demonstrators sang freedom songs and prayed with the black ministers who were among the leaders,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI remember us singing and hearing other people singing as well. I think it was just the point of us being together and doing something to pass the time and, especially the younger people, to make them feel comfortable and to know they were not alone\u201d (Calos, “Civil rights participants remember Danville’s ‘Night of Infamy’”). Like the demonstrators depicted in the films broadcast on local TV, Adams probably sang \u201cFreedom\u201d and \u201cWe Shall Not Be Moved.\u201d<\/p>\n SNCC operative Mary King wrote about her front-line experience in Danville in her memoir of the movement, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement<\/em>. King had familial ties to Danville extending back five generations. She recalled her father reminiscing about waking to the shrill whistle of the cotton mills when he was a thirteen-year-old school boy. In the summer of 1963, King went to Danville and participated in the picketing at the mills to press for fair employment: \u201cOf the mills\u2019 twelve thousand employees approximately eleven hundred were black, most of them doing menial work (Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,\u00a0<\/em>New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1987).<\/p>\n Walking back and forth carrying a sign, King soon discovered that demonstrating was hard work: \u201cPicketing was not exciting. It was not fun. It was not even interesting. It was boring, tiresome, dull, and tedious.\u201d She decided that she could better serve the Danville movement by spending time in the local SNCC office. There she applied her expertise: coordinating communications with the media and with the SNCC office in Atlanta. \u201cDirect action without good communications was of little consequence\u201d (Mary King, Freedom Song<\/em>, 113).<\/p>\n In contrast to the tedium of picketing, King found more energy and enthusiasm at the mass meetings held nearly every night in Danville churches. She observed that \u201cThe mass meetings and the singing of freedom songs were a form of inchoate planning for the community\u2026The soul-stirring singing, a crucial part of the black community\u2019s mobilization in Danville as everywhere, bonded participants together emotionally, giving individuals strength, and forming a collective shield\u201d (Mary King, Freedom Song<\/em>, 98).<\/p>\n Freedom chants helped demonstrators deal with the boredom of picket lines and long marches. Freedom songs helped participants in the struggle feel a sense of community in the face of violent oppression. Freedom songs served another purpose in the Southern Freedom movement: recording grassroots history.<\/p>\n \u201cLegend of Danville\u201d as Grassroots History<\/b><\/p>\n 1. In Danville on June the tenth 2. The night was dark and the journey long 3. As they fell down on their knees 4. They heard the voice of Chief McCann 5. And as they heard those brutal words 6. And as they fell down on the ground CHORUS and INTERLUDE<\/p>\n Don\u2019t you stumble brother, don\u2019t you falter, 7. On June 13th we marched again 8. In Danville town\u2019s corrupted courts Chorus: Move on. Move on, Move on with the Freedom fight. (Matthew Jones, \u201cLegend of Danville,\u201d Sing for freedom: the story of the civil rights movement through its songs,\u00a0<\/em>Guy and Candie Carawan, eds., 120-121)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Danville native, and U.S. Army veteran, Matthew Jones wrote this ballad, \u201cThe Legend of Danville,\u201d which documents the night marches, as well as the daytime protests and names the leaders of the civil rights advocates, Rev. McGhee, and Police Chief McCann. Jones\u2019s lyric recalls the power of the firehoses that \u201cknocked them to the ground\u201d and being beaten by policemen with billy clubs. The last two verses also witness to the police violence and the judicial system controlled by the Dan River Mills company.<\/p>\n The judge referred to in \u201cThe Legend of Danville\u201d was Archibald M. Aiken, Jr. who did, indeed wear a gun. He invoked an 1859 Virginia statue prohibiting anyone from \u201cconspiring to incite the colored population of the State to acts of violence and war against the white population.” The statute had first come to light in the wake of the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion and was the legal basis for John Brown\u2019s execution after the Harper\u2019s Ferry raid. In the Danville freedom movement, legal actions using this statute extended to SNCC organizers who worked behind the scenes as well as lawyers representing the individuals who had been arrested. SNCC workers Bob Zellner and Dottie Miller fled the city when they learned the grand jury was on the verge of indicting them. Dottie and photographer Danny Lyon \u201cwere driven out of town, hiding on the floor of a car, at high speed by a local resident.\u201d They used pseudonyms to make their plane reservations at the airport, for fear that their actual names would be recognized and lead to their apprehension (Mary King, Freedom Song<\/em>, 113-114). In a time when local media ignored the protests and national news coverage focused on larger urban demonstrations, Matthew Jones\u2019s ballad kept alive the experience and details about the Danville movement.<\/p>\n Like SNCC staff Bob Zellner, Dottie Miller, and Danny Lyon before her, Mary King escaped Danville under threat of grand jury indictment. Hunched down on the floor of a local resident\u2019s car to make her getaway, she took up temporary residence across the Dan River in a Roman Catholic convent in North Carolina. The grand jury delivered on their threat against her in absentia. So, unable to be of any use to the Danville movement from the far side of the river, Mary returned to Atlanta and continued her work in communications with Julian Bond and others at the SNCC central office. Her case continued on the books until 1973 when it was part of the last group of sentences that was finally suspended (Mary King, Freedom Song<\/em>, 114-119).<\/p>\n Many people today consider the violence of the local and state authorities against the Danville freedom movement as an aberration in Virginia\u2019s record of civil rights activity during the 1950s-60s. In other Virginia cities at the time, direct actions were non-violent and led to negotiations that produced changes in access to public facilities, in expanded enrollment of eligible voters, and in hiring practices that included African Americans. The results in Danville were uneven: an African American policeman was hired in 1963. In 1966 Danville voters elected a Black councilman. However, it would take until 1970 to desegregate the Danville public schools.<\/p>\n In Danville, anti-segregation activists used chants and songs to advance their goal of a \u201cbeloved community,\u201d a town where all residents had equal access to political participation, to employment opportunities, and to tax-supported services. Chants and songs countered the boredom of the picket line, energized the gathering of the activists and their allies, and chronicled the violence perpetrated against nonviolent protesters. Over five decades later, the Charlottesville \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally took to the streets to promote a completely different agenda.<\/p>\n On Monday, August 14, 2017, Joe Heim of The Washington Post <\/i>produced a thorough outline of the Charlottesville events. Heim identified three groups involved at Charlottesville: the white nationalists, the counter-protesters, and state and local law officers (Joe Heim, \u201cRecounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death,\u201d The Washington Post<\/i><\/a>, August 14, 2017). Keep in mind that each of Heim\u2019s terms is an umbrella term. \u201cWhite nationalists\u201d is a collection of right-wing groups including neo-Nazis, white militia, and other alt-right affiliates. \u201cCounter-protesters\u201d include UVA students, #BlackLivesMatter marchers, clergy who came at the invitation of Charlottesville clergy, and anti-fascists (known as Antifa).<\/p>\n Starting with the rumored but so-called \u201csurprise\u201d tiki torch march for Friday night before the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally on Saturday, the article\u2019s timeline continues on through the next day\u2019s demonstration and counter demonstration. The article culminates with the three deaths related to the Charlottesville protests: the death of counter protester Heather Heyer hit by a car allegedly driven by James Alex Fields, Jr. a \u201cUnite the Right\u201d participant, and the deaths of two state police troopers, Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Berke M. M. Bates, whose helicopter crashed after they had been observing the rally (Joe Heim, \u201cRecounting a day of rage). Understandings of what happened at Charlottesville depend on what individuals observed, when they made their observations, and what their sympathies were prior to the event.<\/p>\n Visual footage of the \u201csurprise\u201d march on Friday night shows about 250 khaki-clad white nationalists, most of them men, carrying tiki torches and chanting. \u201cYou will not replace us!\u201d and \u201cJews will not replace us!\u201d Another chant came in a call and response format, part of the group shouting \u201cWhose streets?\u201d and the remainder yelling \u201cOur streets!\u201d The long line marching in pairs wound across Nameless Field on the UVA campus and toward the statue of Thomas Jefferson. At the statue a small group of students faced the torch-bearers. Behind a sign reading \u201cVA students against white supremacy,\u201d these counter-protesters encircled the statue, arms linked. They chanted \u201cBlack lives matter!\u201d and \u201cNo Nazis! No KKK! No fascist USA!\u201d The white supremacists surrounded the statue and the counter protesters (Vice News Tonight<\/a>, HBO). Once they confronted the counter-protesters at Jefferson\u2019s statue, the white-supremacists chanted \u201cWhite lives matter!\u201d Initially a single campus police officer was at the statue. Eventually a phalanx of law enforcement personnel in riot gear took position and moved to disperse the crowd. Reporter Heim described what happened: \u201cShoves. Punches. Both groups sprayed chemical irritants. Many marchers threw their torches toward the statue and the students.\u201d Individuals in both groups sustained injuries before law officer reinforcements arrived. Casualties were eventually treated by first responders (Joe Heim, \u201cRecounting a day of rage).<\/p>\n Heim\u2019s timeline for Saturday includes an entry about counter-protesters who gathered at Emancipation Park. \u201c9:30 a.m. Strains of the Civil Rights Freedom Song \u2018This Little Light of Mine\u2019 wafted across the park.\u201d<\/p>\n This little light of mine (\u201cThis Little Light of Mine,\u201d Sing for freedom: the story of the civil rights movement through its songs,\u00a0<\/i>Guy and Candie Carawan, eds. 21-23).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This song was a staple of the Southern Freedom Movement. A traditional African American spiritual, it became a mainstay for a number of reasons. Its repetition and simple tune made it easy to learn and remember. Verses could readily be improvised depending on the location of the singers and the conditions of the protest. The imagery of light can be interpreted creatively and dynamically. So it is not surprising that \u201cThis Little Light of Mine\u201d formed part of the soundtrack for Charlottesville. There the 30 singing clergy clasped their arms as they sang only 20 feet from the shouting demonstrators. Their voices prompted white nationalists to respond with chants \u201cOur blood, our soil!\u201d\u2014a common chant of the 20th century Nazi movement in Germany. The contest between voices of the Unite the Right conglomerate and the counter protesters would continue throughout the day (Joe Heim, \u201cRecounting a day of rage\u201d).<\/p>\n One of the counter-protesters, Kristen Adolphson, a 41-year old UVA alumna now living in New York City, had come to Charlottesville previously when the KKK had demonstrated there. As a Buddhist, she eschews violence: \u201cI was vacillating between fear of violence and the importance of standing up against this hatred as a white person. By not going out there, I\u2019d be basically saying, \u2018Everything is fine.\u2019\u201d On Saturday morning, she faced her fears about the armed alt-right protesters and went to participate with the counter-protesters. According to Adolphson, \u201cMany of the counter-protesters were occupying Lee Park\u2014or Emancipation Park, as it\u2019s now known\u2014which has the Robert E. Lee statue, supposedly the issue of contention\u2026 Some skirmishes started breaking out and the state police, in their riot gear, started clearing everyone out. Generally, I didn\u2019t feel like the cops were out there to be violent toward us, or valuing\u2014like at the K.K.K. rally\u2014certain people\u2019s rights versus others.\u201d (Charles Bethea, \u201cA Witness to Terrorism in Charlottesville,\u201d The New Yorker<\/i><\/a>). After leaving Emancipation Park, Adolphson walked through other parts of the city. The word had spread that white supremacists had marched through Friendship Court and reportedly \u201ctried to cause problems\u201d in the \u201ca low income housing area where many minorities live.\u201d \u201cSo,\u201d she explained, \u201cwe marched by, in silence. We didn\u2019t want to make a scene. We just wanted to be in solidarity with the people there.\u201d After leaving Friendship Court, she saw a different group of counter-protesters on Second Street. \u201cWe all were cheering together, marching together, clapping and chanting. There was no one else around. No standoff. We were just marching, being peaceful. This was around two o\u2019clock, I guess. It was a very exuberant feeling of solidarity, community, all that\u201d (Charles Bethea, \u201cA Witness to Terrorism\u201d).<\/p>\n In his article for the Los Angeles Times, Matt Pearce quoted \u201cLeftist anti-fascist organizers from Washington, DC\u201d: \u201cBefore the attack occurred, we chased the Nazis out of their park, removing their platform\u2026 We were at our most powerful, all of us together chanting with enthusiastic support from the people of Charlottesville. That was the moment that we were attacked\u201d (Matt Pearce, \u201cWho was responsible for violence at Charlottesville? Here\u2019s what witnesses say,\u201d LA Times<\/i><\/a>, August 15, 2017.).<\/p>\n Pearce also cited reports from Charlottesville posted on the far-right website Occidental Dissent. One blogger using the name \u201cMarcus Cicero\u201d mobilized as part of a group called League of the South. He stood in a line of shield bearers. \u201cAs we advanced down the street toward the park, I immediately noticed a horde of Antifa, BLM terrorists, and other assorted genetic refuse ready and willing to block the street leading up to our destination.\u201d Another Occidental Dissent blogger, Hunter Wallace, described the same scene: \u201c[The counter protesters] immediately launched an attack on our group with mace, pepper spray, bricks, sticks and foul liquids. The police stood idly by on the sidelines while a brawl was allowed to ensue. We had to fight our way into Lee Park and dozens of our people were injured by mace and pepper spray as we marched through the gauntlet.\u201d Matt Parrott of the white supremacist group Traditionalist Youth Network noted: \u201cWith a full-throated rebel yell, the League broke through the wall of degenerates [blocking the Lee Park entrance]\u201d( Matt Pearce, \u201cWho was responsible\u201d).<\/p>\n These accounts from Charlottesville vary in intensity and each bears the marks of the participant\u2019s alliances. Chanting without an opponent was, at least for Adolphson, part of a peaceful camaraderie on the Charlottesville streets. Both \u201cleftist anti-fascists\u201d and right wing bloggers associated chants with power and aggression. The difference between Kristen Adolphson\u2019s account and the others may be due to her pacifist beliefs as well as the non-confrontational atmosphere at that particular moment and place. By contrast, in different contexts, shouting chants at each other encourages aggressive behavior which can escalate dangerously. Chanting may not have caused Heather Heyer\u2019s death, but it contributed to an environment of verbal and physical aggression that led to her murder. The Unite the Right \u201csurprise\u201d tiki torch march started aggressive chanting on Friday night.<\/p>\n The Charlottesville \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally scheduled for Saturday, August 12, 2017 and the unscheduled night march August 11 contrast in many ways with the June 1963 Danville movement. The white supremacist participants who gathered in Charlottesville in 2017 held political and philosophical views in diametrical opposition to the cause of the 1963 Danville movement protesters. While the Danville movement organizers worked with telephones and the mass media of television, newspapers, and radio, most of their organizing efforts were face-to-face. Fifty-four years later, Charlottesville demonstrators and counter-demonstrators largely used the Internet and social media, particularly to communicate with their support base; they provided information to electronic and print news media outlets for wider distribution outside their right-wing networks. On television in 1963, Americans viewed the physical oppression by law enforcement agencies, violently wielding firehoses and attack dogs against the Southern Freedom Movement non-violent activists. TV coverage of movement violence has been credited with motivating President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy to abandon their conciliatory political tactics with Southern white politicians, eventually becoming more supportive of racial equity. In contrast, the Charlottesville rally emerged in the midst of a national environment where the agendas of white supremacists have been given increasing visibility and legitimacy at the highest levels of government and in public venues.<\/p>\n The contemporary protest scenario in Charlottesville and elsewhere has taken to chanting as a means of expressing group cohesion and force. The Saturday morning performance of \u201cThis Little Light of Mine\u201d\u2014a flashback to the Southern Freedom Movement\u2014prompted white supremacist yelling, and one might wonder if the sound of singing prevailed despite the shouting. In contemporary American culture, group singing has dwindled for several reasons. Popular culture characterizes singing as \u201cweak\u201d and ineffective, even though countless participants in the Southern Freedom Movement at large and in Danville specifically vouched for the power of group singing to establish communal connection across space and time. Comic parodies of children or naive campers sitting around the fire singing \u201cKum Ba Yah\u201d have effectively made group singing a joke. The relationship of congregational singing and religious services in an increasingly secular society may also undermine the popularity of informal music-making. Furthermore, self-consciousness among singers seems to have increased in the intervening decades, especially since the 1980s, when public school budgets began cutting monies for music teachers and music programs. And one more nail in the coffin of widespread group singing is the ready availability of commercially recorded music for individual listening. Commercially successful songs in rap, hip-hop, and other genres now include spoken word, so chanting in lieu of singing may be a more comfortable group expression due to its familiarity. R&B, rock and roll, Motown, and folk-rock of the 1960s, along with spirituals like \u201cThis Little Light of Mine,\u201d powered the Southern Freedom movement through amateur voices accustomed to singing to entertain themselves. Increasingly sophisticated technology now brings professionally mastered and remixed performances into any spare moment of people\u2019s lives. The highly produced professional recordings help lead potential singers to claim they \u201caren\u2019t good enough\u201d to sing anywhere other than in the shower.<\/p>\n Chanting on the front lines of social activism is a current practice and may well continue to be so in future direct actions. Shouting chants can offer group members a sense of belonging and solidarity, whether their political affiliation supports or rejects human equality. Shouting Nazi chants such as \u201cBlood and soil!\u201d provides a quick connection with fascism that satisfies its members and chills its opponents. In that sense, chanting may be meeting the white supremacists\u2019 groups\u2019 needs for expressing their anger and violence. Chanting may meet the needs of counter protesters to validate their determination and strength, to express their power as well. But the chants fall short of telling and preserving a current history, like Matthew Jones accomplished in his \u201cLegend of Danville.\u201d Neither can chants provide a diversion and solace like Randy Adams experienced in the Danville jail. Shouted slogans as performances produce a sparse rhetoric that discourages thoughtful\u2014even if contradictory\u2014exchanges of ideas. In these challenging times, we need to find ways to communicate across chasms of difference to work toward unity, not unanimity. Finding ways to expand our conversations, not constrict them, will move us closer to being a community, if not a \u201cbeloved\u201d one.<\/p>\n Bethea, Charles. \u201cA Witness to Terrorism in Charlottesville\u201d The New Yorker.<\/em> www.newyorker.com\/news\/as-told-to\/a-witness-to-terrorism-in-charlottesville<\/a>\u00a0 Accessed Oct. 24, 2017.<\/p>\n Calos, Katherine. \u201cCivil rights participants remember Danville\u2019s \u2018Night of Infamy\u2019 Richmond Times-Dispatch.<\/em> February 3, 2013. http:\/\/www.richmond.com\/special-section\/black-history\/civil-rights-participants-remember-danville-s-night-of-infamy\/article_f12c761c-85e2-5bbd-8af7-993f712ccd36.html<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Accessed October 23, 2017.<\/p>\n Congress on Racial Equality. Core Sit-in Songs<\/em>. n.d. http:\/\/www.crmvet.org\/docs\/core_sitin-songs.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Heim, Joe. \u201cRecounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death.\u201d\u00a0 The<\/em> Washington Post<\/em>. August 14, 2017. https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2017\/local\/charlottesville-timeline\/?utm_term=.e040d7e70149<\/a> Accessed 10\/16-17\/2018.<\/p>\n HBO. Vice News Tonight<\/em> . https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RIrcB1sAN8I<\/a>\u00a0 Accessed 10\/16-17\/2017.<\/p>\n King, Mary. Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. <\/em>New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1987.<\/p>\n Pearce, Matt. \u201cWho was responsible for violence at Charlottesville? Here\u2019s what witnesses say LA Times<\/em> Aug. 15, 2017 http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/nation\/la-na-charlottesville-witnesses-20170815-story.html<\/em><\/a> \u00a0Accessed October 24, 2017.<\/p>\n Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs.<\/em> Guy and Candie Carawan, eds. Montgomery & Louisville: New South Books, 2007.<\/p>\n University of Virginia. \u201cFacts\u201d http:\/\/www.virginia.edu\/facts<\/a>\u00a0 Accessed October 21, 2017.<\/p>\nDANVILLE, VIRGINIA 1963<\/h4>\n
\nLeader: Everybody wants
\nAll: Freedom
\nLeader: Everybody wants
\nAll: Freedom
\nLeader: Everybody wants
\nAll: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom
\nLeader: Got to have my
\nAll: Freedom
\nLeader: Got to have my
\nAll: Freedom
\nLeader: Got to have my
\nAll: Freedom, Freedom, Freedom<\/p>\n
\nDon\u2019t you want to have your (Freedom)
\nTell the people \u2018bout your (Freedom)
\nSing it louder \u2018bout your (Freedom)<\/p>\n
\nIn the year of sixty-three,
\nFrom Bibleway Church to the courthouse
\nSome people marched to be free.<\/p>\n
\nAs they marched two abreast
\nBut with the spirit of freedom\u2019s song
\nThey didn\u2019t need no rest.<\/p>\n
\nLed by Reverend McGhee
\nHe looked up and cried, \u201cLord, please
\nWe want to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAs it cut across the prayer
\nI\u2019ll never forget those violent words
\n\u201cNigger, get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThey didn\u2019t turn around
\nAnd the water from the firehose
\nKnocked them to the ground.<\/p>\n
\nThey were hit with the billy sticks
\nI\u2019ll never forget that terrible sound
\nAs the people\u2019s heads did split.<\/p>\n
\nOh mother, don\u2019t you weep,
\nWe\u2019re climbing up to our freedom
\nAlthough the road is steep.<\/p>\n
\nThey used the tear gas bombs.
\nThe grand jury indicted us
\nOn five thousand dollar bond.<\/p>\n
\nWe got no justice done.
\nWe were found guilty before the trial
\nAnd the judge he wore a gun.<\/p>\n
\nMove on. Move on. We\u2019re fighting for equal rights.<\/p>\nCHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 2017<\/b><\/h4>\n
\nI\u2019m gonna let it shine.
\nThis little light of mine,
\nI\u2019m gonna let it shine.
\nThis little light of mine
\nI\u2019m gonna let it shine.
\nLet it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.<\/p>\nWorks Cited<\/h4>\n