Nothing but Love in God’s Water by Robert Darden

Author:Robert Darden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780271075761
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press

Thursday, March 25

On the triumphal entry into Montgomery the next morning, many of those present—and the march had swelled to twenty-five thousand—knew they were experiencing a historic moment. Coretta Scott King reflected on how, ten years earlier, the Montgomery bus boycott had begun in Montgomery and how the occasion “had a very special meaning” for her.72 “To me, there was never a march like this one before and hasn’t been once since,” John Lewis said. “It was a sense of community moving there. And as you walked, you saw people coming, waving, bringing you food or bringing you something to drink. You saw the power of the most powerful country on the face of the Earth.”73 Seeger marched into the former capital of the Confederacy with African-American folk singers Len Chandler and Jimmy Collier. At one point, Seeger, his notebook poised, asked a woman who had been singing if she could tell him the words to “Oh, Wallace.” “The words?” she said. “Why, there are no words!” Nonplussed, Seeger asked her, “Well, do you know any of the verses?” She said, “Why sure. You just make ’em up. Here’s a few.” As Seeger wrote furiously, she paused. “Don’t you know you can’t write down freedom songs?” Seeger continued to try, eventually capturing at least some of the lyrics. If a song was only sung for a few minutes, he noted, it meant that “the spiritual isn’t moving the singers.” If a freely improvised freedom song is “going well,” it might last ten minutes or longer. Anyone along the march was free to start a song and the song would continue “as long as anyone within earshot wanted to keep it going.” Seeger and his wife Toshi found themselves just ahead of a group of teenage girls who sang constantly throughout the day. While the teenagers would occasionally sing a song they had learned in school, such as “America the Beautiful” or “Theme from Exodus,” more often they sang freedom songs: “Ain’t Gonna Let Segregation Turn Me ’Round,” “Hold On,” “Which Side Are You On?,” “Woke Up This Morning,” or “We Shall Overcome.”74 Collier, who walked with Seeger much of the way, said that despite the presence of the troops, the marchers had been scared the entire journey from Selma. “You know what happens when people are really scareder than shit?” he asked writer David King Dunaway. “They sing like they’re not going to ever be able to sing again. And they eat, and it was that kind of atmosphere. People were really scared but they felt that they had to carry on. So the music was very important to making people feel good. Many of the songs were old Union songs, you know, right out of the thirties and so on, just different words.”75

The Alabama Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery culminated at noon on the steps of the capitol building. King was flanked by most of the best-known movement leaders in the United States, including Rosa Parks, A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin, along with dozens of popular musicians and actors.

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