Every year around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I teach my elementary music students the song “We Shall Overcome,” and we discuss the song’s history in conjunction with the Civil Rights Movement. I use Debbie Levy’s book, “We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song” to introduce the song and spur a discussion. This book traces the history of the
song from a spiritual sung by enslaved workers, to a hymn popular in Black churches, to a beloved freedom song of the Civil Rights movement, and finally describing its legacy as an anthem in justice movements across the world. It uses child-friendly language to cover heavy topics, and introduces specific events such as student sit-ins, the Freedom Singers’ tour across the South, and the March on Washington. The illustrations are eye-catching and cute, if a bit cartoony. My one quibble with the book is the way it implies that racism ended when Barack Obama was elected president, which makes it painfully obvious that this book was written by a white lady in 2013. All in all though, I think this book is an excellent resource for teaching kids about the Civil Rights Movement.
This year, for the first time, I also decided to use Bryan Collier’s picture book “We Shall Overcome.” Where Levy’s “We Shall Overcome” describes the history of the song, Collier’s book is an illustrated setting of the song itself. It contains 7 full verses of the song, which gives me the chance to really get the melody into the kids’ ears before I have them sing it. The real hero of this book, however, is Collier’s gorgeous artwork. The illustrations depict a young African American girl walking to school, riding the bus with her friends, and helping to paint a mural. The girl is in full color, but the background of each illustration depicts a historical event in black and white, including the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and the Little Rock Five being escorted into school by the National Guard. Collier uses collage to contrast the “past” and “present” segments of each vignette. He also includes visual nods to the Black Lives Matter movement, reminding the reader that the fight continues on. The book ends with a gorgeous picture of the girl wearing a set of collage-paper butterfly wings made up of the faces of those who came before her. Collier also includes extensive notes at the back of the book with background information about each of the scenes presented in the illustrations. This book is definitely my new go-to for teaching “We Shall Overcome” to the younger grades, though I will probably still use Levy’s book with my older kids, since it has a little more historical detail.