Murphy – With more than 70 attendees, Common Ground and One Dozen Who Care hosted a Community Sing to celebrate Black History Month and Songs of the Civil Rights Movement on Feb. 18 at Murphy First United Methodist Church.
Facilitated and hosted by lead performer and featured singer Kristen George of One Dozen Who Care, the evening led off with George’s offering the crowd what she called an “educational experiential musical workshop of song.”
Introduced by Karah Thompson of the grassroots organization Common Ground to a “welcoming evening to come together, to relax and to celebrate,” George began by discussing both the origins and the contemporary and historical contextual circumstances of a wide array of songs. That included the James Weldon Johnson-penned black national anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” with its overtones of the Exodus story and the freedom of finding a promised land, to Pete Seeger’s popularized version of The Freedom Singers’ Charles Neblett’s tune “If You Miss Me
From The Back of the Bus,” which was a wellspring advocating equality of place during the height of the Civil Rights movement in 1963 under a climate of desegregation.
Highlighted under the glowing arc of the sanctuary, symbolic itself of God’s promise-filled rainbow and framed by the stunning though dusk-darkened stained glass windows, George’s two young children, Eli and Natalie, joined her in the opening anthem as she provided piano accompaniment, proving George’s statements about the need for educating both the young and ourselves again about “these songs of the marches, these ballads, these story songs which impact us every one.”
Drawing on her 16 years of experience as both a music educator and performer, George edified and elucidated each song’s deeper and integral meanings both during the struggles of the 1960s as well as implications in today’s time by explaining the use of several of the songs’ “call and response” methods as ways to keep marchers’ “morale boosted” both by cadence and “focused on freedom and strengthened for whatever they may encounter during those marches and what we may encounter in some places to this day.”
With the crowd of both home church and community members from across Cherokee County joining in, George led the group in resounding renditions of gospel standards “This Little Light of Mine” and the reinterpreted “We Shall Not Be Moved” which take its basis from “I Shall Not Be Moved” to the oft-sung Gullah spiritual “Come By Here” sometimes stylized as “Kumbaya” with its prayerful pleading the Lord’s presence in times of difficulty and turmoil.
Handouts with song lyrics were provided for the sing-a-long and on that sheet George included a scan of Dr. Martin Luther King’s list of “Freedom Songs,” which were sung at the only Northeastern United States march he led in Boston on April 23, 1965.
George, hailing from the Boston area, went on to discuss her personal familial experience in relating both mother and aunt’s participation in marching with Dr. King during that very day to oppose segregation within Boston’s public schools and how it inspired her mother to write a children’s book based on the experience entitled “The Day I Marched With Martin.”
Also with Common Ground, Sue Corley added that this event was actually “brainstormed last year, but it didn’t quite come together. So we’re glad that we were able to work again with One Dozen Who Care and have Kristen put this evening together finally.”
Common Ground works closely with One Dozen Who Care and, according to both Thompson and George, the groups look forward to collaborating on more community events in 2025.
To cap off the evening the entirety of the congregated clasped arms, encircled the sanctuary and indeed lifted every voice to rejoin in that most associated hymn of the Civil Rights Movement “We Shall Overcome,” with its themes of living unafraid in peace and freedom.
Too, George has curated a Spotify playlist for those unable to attend but interested in exploring both the Civil Rights Movement and African-American culture through music.
Details: Visit onedozenwhocare.org.