I Shall Not Be Moved
"I Shall Not Be Moved", also known as "We Shall Not Be Moved", is an African-American slave spiritual, hymn, and protest song dating to the early 19th century American south.[1] It was likely originally sung at revivalist camp-meetings as a slave jubilee. The song describes being "like a tree planted by the waters" who "shall not be moved" because of faith in God. Secularly, as "We Shall Not Be Moved" it gained popularity as a protest and union song of the Civil Rights Movement.[2]
The text is based on biblical scripture:
Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
— Jeremiah 17:7–8
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
— Psalm 1:3
He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.
— Psalm 62:6
In 1908 Alfred H. and B. D. Ackley copyrighted a hymn by the name "I Shall Not Be Moved".[3]
Civil rights movement
As "We Shall Not Be Moved" the song gained popularity as a protest and union song of the Civil rights movement.[2]
The song became popular in the Swedish anti-nuclear and peace movements in the late 1970s, in a Swedish translation by Roland von Malmborg, "Aldrig ger vi upp" ('Never shall we give up').[4]
Recorded versions
Among others, the following artists recorded "I (We) Shall Not Be Moved":
- Blind Roosevelt Graves (1929)[5] – reissued on The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (2006)
- Charley Patton (1929)[6]
- The Almanac Singers with Pete Seeger on The Original Talking Union and Other Union Songs (1955)[7]
- The Harmonizing Four (single; Gotham 1954)[8]
- Lonnie Donegan on Lonnie Donegan Showcase (1956)[9]
- The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) (1956)[10]
- The Freedom Singers at the March on Washington (1963)[11] in a medley with other songs
- Mississippi John Hurt on The Best Of Mississippi John Hurt (recorded 1965, published 1970)[12]
- Ella Fitzgerald on Brighten the Corner (1967)[13]
- Oktoberklub on Der Oktober-Klub singt (1967)[14]
- The Seekers, on several albums including The Best of The Seekers (1968)[15]
- Son House on The Real Delta Blues – 14 songs from the man who taught Robert Johnson (recorded 1960, published 1974)[16]
- Joan Baez ("No Nos Moverán") on her Spanish-language album Gracias a la Vida (1974)[17]
- Henry Qualls on Blues from Elmo, Texas (1994)[18]
- Underground Ministries featuring Kenny Bobien (Vinyl, 12", Single, Promo) (1999)[19]
- Sweet Honey in the Rock on Still the Same Me (2000)[20]
- This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb on Front Seat Solidarity (2002)[21]
- Peter, Paul and Mary on In These Times (2003)[22]
- Johnny Cash on My Mother's Hymn Book (2004)[23]
- Mavis Staples on We'll Never Turn Back (2007)[24]
- Public Enemy on Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp (2012)[25]
- Owen McDonagh & The Bogside Men on Songs of Irish Civil Rights (1970)[26]
- Rhiannon Giddens on They're Calling Me Home (2021)[27]
- Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder on GET ON BOARD[28]
The Housemartins on the 12 inch version of their 1985 UK number 1 single "Caravan of Love"
In popular culture
The Spinners set the musical tone of the 1975 Thames Television comedy about a Liverpool working-class family, The Wackers. The closing credits medley featured them singing "We Shall Not Be Moved" and "You'll Never Walk Alone".[29]
In Great Britain in the 1980s the song was used by the popular British wrestler Big Daddy as his walk-on music, which would be greeted by cheers from the fans.[30]
David Spener has written a book documenting the history of this song title, including how it was translated into Spanish, changing the first singular to third person plural, "No Nos Moverán"[31] (meaning "They will not move us"). That version was part of the soundtrack of the well-known popular tv series Verano azul, which popularized the song among the Spanish youth.[32]
JB Burnett covered the song for the first episode of the third season of Supernatural ("The Magnificent Seven").[citation needed]
Playwright Isaiah Reaves used the name for his show describing his grandmother's experiences as a Freedom Rider.[33]
See also
References
- ^ David Spener (2016). We Shall Not Be Moved: Biography of a Song of Struggle. Temple University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-439-91299-7.
- ^ a b Robert V. Wells (2009). Life flows on in endless song: folk songs and American history. University of Illinois Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-252-07650-3.
- ^ Henry Date; Chas H Gabriel; George C. Stebbins; William J. Kirkpatrick (1911). Pentecostal hymns, nos. 5 & 6 combined : a winnowed collection for young people's societies, church prayer meetings, evangelistic services and Sunday schools. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Music Library. Chicago : Hope Pub. Co. p. 10.
- ^ Louise Pettersson (2010). "På jakt efter miljörörelsens sångtradition" [In search of the Swedish environmental movement's song tradition]. Hgo.diva-Portal.org (in Swedish). Retrieved 2019-03-25.
- ^ Thom Owens (1994-06-02). "Complete Recorded Works (1929-1936) - Blind Roosevelt Graves | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2017-01-11.
- ^ "Charley Patton Vol 2 1929 - Document Records Vintage Blues and Jazz". Document-records.com. Retrieved 2017-01-11.
- ^ "The original talking union and other union songs sound recording / with the Almanac Singers ; with Pete Seeger and chorus". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2021-05-20.
- ^ "The Harmonizing Four – I Shall Not Be Moved / I'll Go, Lord, Send Me! (1954, Shellac)". Discogs. Retrieved 2023-05-22.
- ^ "Lonnie Donegan Showcase - Lonnie Donegan". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-16.
- ^ Fricke, David (1988-02-25). "Million Dollar Quartet: Complete Million Dollar Session : Music Reviews". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2009-04-27. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
- ^ Mohdin, Aamna (2020-09-10). "'They couldn't arrest us all': civil rights veteran Rutha Mae Harris on MLK, protest and prison". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
- ^ "The Best of Mississippi John Hurt sound recording". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2021-05-20.
- ^ "Brighten the Corner - Ella Fitzgerald". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-16.
- ^ "Oktoberklub". Deutsche Mugge. Retrieved 2021-05-16.
- ^ Bruce Eder. "The Best of the Seekers - The Seekers". AllMusic. Retrieved 2017-01-11.
- ^ "An unofficial Blue Goose Records Homepage". Wirz. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ "Gracias a la Vida - Joan Baez". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-16.
- ^ "Blues from Elmo, Texas - Henry Qualls | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. 1995-11-22. Retrieved 2017-01-10.
- ^ "I Shall Not Be Moved - Underground Ministries". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-22.
- ^ "Still the Same Me - Sweet Honey in the Rock". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ "Front Seat Solidarity - This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ "The music - In these times". "Peter, Paul and Mary" official website. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ "My Mother's Hymn Book - Johnny Cash". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ Sullivan, Caroline (2007-04-20). "CD: Mavis Staples, We'll Never Turn Back". The Guardian. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
- ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp - Public Enemy". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
- ^ McDonagh, Owen; Bogside Men (1970). "Songs of Irish civil rights". Library of Congress. Belfast: Outlet. Retrieved 2021-05-22.
- ^ "They're Calling Me Home - Rhiannon Giddens". AllMusic. Retrieved 2021-05-18.
- ^ "Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee". Allmusic. Retrieved 2022-07-08.
- ^ "The Wackers, 1975". British Classic Comedy. 2021-03-03. (the song can be heard at the end of the clips embedded in the article). Retrieved 2021-05-30.
- ^ "Big Daddy". Wilde Life: Official Kim Wilde Fansite. Retrieved 2021-05-22.
- ^ David Spener. 2016. We Shall Not Be Moved / No Nos Moverán: Biography of a Song of Struggle. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
- ^ "¡No nos moverán!". La Voz de Galicia (in Spanish). 2019-08-30. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
- ^ "Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati Presents a Double Bill of I SHALL NOT BE MOVED and YOUR NEGRO TOUR GUIDE". 29 March 2022.
- v
- t
- e
(timeline)
groups
- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Georgia Council on Human Relations
- Highlander Folk School
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Lowndes County Freedom Organization
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- NAACP
- Nashville Student Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Northern Student Movement
- National Council of Negro Women
- National Urban League
- Operation Breadbasket
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
- United Auto Workers (UAW)
- Wednesdays in Mississippi
- Women's Political Council
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Zev Aelony
- Mathew Ahmann
- Muhammad Ali
- William G. Anderson
- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Harry Belafonte
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Gloria Blackwell
- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
- Joanne Bland
- Julian Bond
- Joseph E. Boone
- William Holmes Borders
- Amelia Boynton
- Bruce Boynton
- Raylawni Branch
- Stanley Branche
- Ruby Bridges
- Aurelia Browder
- H. Rap Brown
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Stokely Carmichael
- Johnnie Carr
- James Chaney
- J. L. Chestnut
- Shirley Chisholm
- Colia Lafayette Clark
- Ramsey Clark
- Septima Clark
- Xernona Clayton
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Kathleen Cleaver
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Vernon Dahmer
- Jonathan Daniels
- Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Angela Davis
- Joseph DeLaine
- Dave Dennis
- Annie Devine
- Patricia Stephens Due
- Joseph Ellwanger
- Charles Evers
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- Chuck Fager
- James Farmer
- Walter Fauntroy
- James Forman
- Marie Foster
- Golden Frinks
- Andrew Goodman
- Robert Graetz
- Fred Gray
- Jack Greenberg
- Dick Gregory
- Lawrence Guyot
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Fred Hampton
- William E. Harbour
- Vincent Harding
- Dorothy Height
- Audrey Faye Hendricks
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Oliver Hill
- Donald L. Hollowell
- James Hood
- Myles Horton
- Zilphia Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Ruby Hurley
- Cecil Ivory
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Richie Jean Jackson
- T. J. Jemison
- Esau Jenkins
- Barbara Rose Johns
- Vernon Johns
- Frank Minis Johnson
- Clarence Jones
- J. Charles Jones
- Matthew Jones
- Vernon Jordan
- Tom Kahn
- Clyde Kennard
- A. D. King
- C.B. King
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Sr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- James Lawson
- Bernard Lee
- Sanford R. Leigh
- Jim Letherer
- Stanley Levison
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Z. Alexander Looby
- Joseph Lowery
- Clara Luper
- Danny Lyon
- Malcolm X
- Mae Mallory
- Vivian Malone
- Bob Mants
- Thurgood Marshall
- Benjamin Mays
- Franklin McCain
- Charles McDew
- Ralph McGill
- Floyd McKissick
- Joseph McNeil
- James Meredith
- William Ming
- Jack Minnis
- Amzie Moore
- Cecil B. Moore
- Douglas E. Moore
- Harriette Moore
- Harry T. Moore
- Queen Mother Moore
- William Lewis Moore
- Irene Morgan
- Bob Moses
- William Moyer
- Elijah Muhammad
- Diane Nash
- Charles Neblett
- Huey P. Newton
- Edgar Nixon
- Jack O'Dell
- James Orange
- Rosa Parks
- James Peck
- Charles Person
- Homer Plessy
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- Rodney N. Powell
- Al Raby
- Lincoln Ragsdale
- A. Philip Randolph
- George Raymond
- George Raymond Jr.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
- Cordell Reagon
- James Reeb
- Frederick D. Reese
- Walter Reuther
- Gloria Richardson
- David Richmond
- Bernice Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Angela Russell
- Bayard Rustin
- Bernie Sanders
- Michael Schwerner
- Bobby Seale
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Alexander D. Shimkin
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
- Mary Louise Smith
- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
- Dorothy Tillman
- A. P. Tureaud
- Hartman Turnbow
- Albert Turner
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
- Lynching in the United States
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Buchanan v. Warley
- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
- African-American women in the movement
- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- March on Washington Movement
- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
- Civil Rights Memorial
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
- Freedom Rides Museum
- Freedom Riders National Monument
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians