On Monday I handed in an essay for my American Sixties history course, focusing on the impact of television. As much as I absolutely loathe writing essays, I really enjoyed doing the research for this one, perhaps because I got to focus on two pretty disparate topics: the civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968.
Anyway, as part of my research for the essay I watched all of the absolutely wonderful documentary Berkeley in the Sixties. Towards the beginning of the documentary there's a bit on how many students started out in the civil rights movement, before moving onto bigger and more radical things. The film has a fantastic soundtrack, but one song in this section got stuck in my head for days - 'I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom', sung by the SNCC Freedom Singers. Desperate to hear it again, I did a bit of searching, and came across Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals, a project from the University of Denver, and the actual point of this post.
It's a really interesting site, with lots of information. Best of all, however, are the many many music samples you can listen to, including I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom (the version of This Little Light of Mine on that page is also wonderful). Highly recommended: have a look around and a listen!
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2 comments:
bloglines might be rooted... apparently you posted this last night (got a sense of deja vu)
ummm but anyways, loathe as I am to suggest the loss of the term "uberscullys" from your page, maybe it's time for a new "quote of the week"?
It's been a very long drawn out week :-)
No, bloglines just had it because I updated the post last night - found a typo! If you look at the bottom of each item in bloglines, it'll say whether the post has been updated or not.
I'll see what I can do about a new quote...
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