Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr used elements of the song in his final sermon.
Photograph: Agence France Presse/Getty Images
John Malveaux of
writes:
WE SHALL OVERCOME copyright issue https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/11/we-shall-overcome-civil-rights-anthem-copyright-lawsuit
The first verse of the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome is no longer under copyright, a New York federal judge ruled on Friday.
Described as the “most powerful song of the 20th century” by the Library of Congress, the suit against the existing copyright holders was brought last year by the same legal team who had successfully disputed longstanding ownership claims over Happy Birthday to You.
Lawyers leading the class action against the Richmond Organization
and Ludlow Music, claimed We Shall Overcome was an adaptation of an
African American spiritual and therefore in the public domain and had
only later been adopted by folk singer Pete Seeger, copyrighted, and established as an anthem of the 1940s labor protest movement.
They pointed to Seeger’s 1963 memoir in which he wrote that he’d been
advised by his music publishers: “If you don’t copyright this now, some
Hollywood types will have a version out next year like ‘Come on baby,
we shall overcome tonight.’”
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