Lyrics
(This is not the standard version. Links to other versions below.)
We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome one day. Oh deep in my heart, I do perceive, we shall overcome one day.
From the rivers to the seas, from the mountains to the shores, from the South to the North, we shall overcome. Oh deep in my heart, I do perceive, we shall overcome one day.
We walk hand-in-hand. We walk hand-in-hand. We walk hand-in-hand today. Oh deep in my heart, I do perceive, we walk hand-in-hand today.
Childhood music
I don’t remember when I first heard “We Shall Overcome,” but I couldn’t have been older than five or six.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my parents were somewhere left of center and right of officially left.
Protest music was a regular feature of my childhood. Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez were household names. At an early age, I could belt out whole albums, albums that are still stored somewhere in my aging brain.
Looking back, I feel that the most important gift my white, bohemian parents gave me was a strong orientation toward caring about and standing up for people whose circumstances were significantly different from my own.
My mother held up the more radical side of things. She admired the Black Panthers and defended their right to carry arms as well as their use of guns-as-theater. She also had a pretty sophisticated take on the misuse and abuse by the powers that be of the label “terrorism”.
Both of my parents were of Jewish ancestry, although my mother was a staunch atheist. Zionism was not a thing in our house.
Camp Miquon
Both of my parents worked as high school art teachers. For a few summers during my early childhood, my mother taught art at a day camp run by The Miquon School, a progressive education movement elementary school out in the Pennsylvania countryside.
Miquon got started during the 1930s when the American communist movement was gaining traction. Most of the teachers were some kind of Marxist-style lefties. In 1970, one of the teachers started a 7th-12th grade upper school from which I graduated in 1973.
Some of the singers I most loved visited our camp and held sing-alongs for us kids. Pete Seeger was a regular. I remember a visit from Joan Baez.
The songs I learned then, including We Shall Overcome, followed me through successive anti-war, civil rights, and social justice movements rippling like never-ending waves through the years of my life.
As the decades unfolded, the songs collected memories, feelings, resonances.
We shall overcome
“We Shall Overcome” was originally a hymn titled “I’ll Overcome Someday,” written by the Black Methodist minister Charles Albert Tindley in 1901.
The song has accompanied the yearnings and activism of millions of people, including labor activists and civil rights leaders, for more than a century .
Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and many others disseminated the song, which attained near-anthem status, through performances at political rallies and marches.
October 10th, 2025
On October 10th, 2025, we woke up to scenes of people in Gaza celebrating a ceasefire.
It’s now only four days later, and I haven’t written much. My heart is so full of flows moving in all directions, words feel impossible.
I’ve preferred listening to the voices and cries of those inside Gaza and in the diasporic and refugee communities as the genocide continues, although in a slightly stealthier mode.
In this ragged gap where cessation is partial but also drunk deeply, there is some space made for different kinds of expressions and conversations to emerge.
We’re holding many conflicting feelings in this moment, feelings that include tenderness, anger, sadness, relief, resolve, and dread. A couple of mornings ago, “We Shall Overcome” began playing like grace notes over my own emotional score.
I started singing, and this is what came out.
Feel free to sing along, share, copy, mix—whatever serves you. But I hope you feel accompanied, too.
with infinite love,
Shambhavi
Links to other versions of We Shall Overcome
Martin Luther King Jr. “We Shall Overcome” speech»
Nina Simone did sing a powerful version of We Shall Overcome, but it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere for streaming.
There are dozens of versions on Tidal.
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