elizabeth mitchell  you are my
You are My Flower
You are My Sunshine
Catch the Moon
You Are My Little Bird
Sunny Day
Little Seed
Clouds
Turn, Turn, Turn
Joy
Flor
 
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This well known spiritual is a song that, like “We Shall Overcome”, found popularity and took on great significance during the civil rights movement in the USA. Fannie Lou Hamer, a true freedom fighter, sang this song and showed the world that the civil rights movement was both a spiritual and a political struggle. Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper, who became an activist and eventually founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party. She fought for the rights of all Americans to have the right to vote. With SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating committee) she registered countless African Americans to vote in the 1960s. She travelled around the country and spoke out fearlessly against racism at the height of the segregation era. Though people threatened her life and tried to silence her, she continued to speak out for freedom, and inspired people everywhere to fight for equal rights and justice. She truly lived the words to this song.

You can see fanny Lou Hamer singing this song in “Eyes on the Prize”, a profoundly powerful documentary on the history of the civil rights movement. Singing beside her in the film is a young Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock.