We Shall Overcome

“Open your hymnals to page 540 and sing along with me.”

I handed my wife the book of hymns as he began to sing, and I and the rest of the congregation began to sing the so-called Negro national anthem.

Lift every voice and sing

'til earth and heaven ring,

ring with the harmony of liberty.

Let our rejoicing rise

high as the listening skies.

Let it resound

loud as the rolling sea.

As the second verse began, I stopped singing. That was all I knew of the song, but it was enough for me.

My wife whispered to me, “How do you know that song?”

“I sang it in high school.”

Was that the last time I sang the song out loud? Maybe not. In 1957, I was a freshman at the University of Maryland (don’t ask why I decided to go there). On a Saturday afternoon in September, the air warmer than on the fall days I was used to, I went to my first and last college football game. After all, I was a freshman, and this was college, and this was one of the experiences one was supposed to have.

The crowd was raucous, as college crowds are wont to be. A lot of beer was being chug-a-luged down throats, as is or was to be expected. At half-time, the Terrapin marching band strutted proudly onto the field, playing “Dixie.” Was that the Confederate flag in their midst? The crowd stood and roared. Without thinking, I started singing, “Lift every voice and sing …” My mouth was moving, articulating the words. Was I singing out loud, “’til earth and heaven ring,” those sounds floating into the air, unheard by the cheering crowd around me, “ring with the harmony of liberty?”

Was this what is called “making memories?” Intentionally or unintentionally doing something you will remember for the rest of your life? It certainly wasn’t intentional, but it certainly is a memory, one that I recalled sixty-eight years later while standing in the Shiloh Baptist Church in Hudson, NY, on Sunday, January 19, 2025, the day before Martin Luther King’s birthday celebration, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States.

The irony of the simultaneity of the two events was, I’m sure, oblivious to no one in the church. On the one hand, there was the celebration of the righteous desire to manifest the equality of all, live up to the ideals of the Constitution, and be free of the shackles of bigotry and prejudice that enslave oneself and others. On the other hand, there was the desire of Donald Trump to put a halt to any progress in civil rights, to give license to racism and bigotry, all the while spouting notions of a meritocratic ideal of a color-blind society while trying to remove any programs that might advance that ideal. In other words, Trump would try to reduce or eliminate any efforts to counter systemic racism, whether conscious or unconscious and would thus give license to permit it. The double-speak of authoritarianism: Assigning a virtuous name to something you know will have the opposite result. Thank you, George Orwell.

Sitting in Shiloh Baptist Church that Sunday, I remembered two other incidents that made a powerful impression on me. In 1985, I was in Chicago to meet with Clarence Page, the Chicago Tribune’s Black columnist, for the first time. Clarence had been recruited to become one of the writers in my group of essayists for the NewsHour, and we were to have dinner together to get to know each other. He asked if we could make a stop beforehand. He had been scheduled to attend a party and would like to appear at least briefly. When we got to the party, I was surprised to find myself in an apartment filled with members of Chicago’s Black middle-class. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, financiers. I was used to seeing crowds of the poor, of being wary of groups of Black youths standing on street corners, of the Blacks I usually saw on local television news: victims of crimes or their perpetrators. The crowd of professionals at Clarence’s party made a powerful impression on me. They were not an isolated few; there were many of them, but they were rarely seen together in large numbers by people like me. Clarence and I worked together for the next twenty-four years. I learned much from him.

Roger Rosenblatt was another NewsHour colleague and friend for just as many years (well, he’s still a friend even if I retired 16 years ago). Listening to the testimonials, Martin Luther King quotes, and the sermon that Sunday, I remembered an essay that Roger and I had done many years before about Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist and symbolic leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Eventually, the Supreme Court decided in 1956 that the segregation of buses was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, the same amendment elements of which are under direct attack by the Trump administration. But Roger said something in that essay that I’ve never forgotten. He noted that Parks hadn’t freed only Blacks; “she also freed you and me.” I had never thought of it that way, that the existence of racism and bigotry affects everyone, whatever their personal beliefs.

In church that afternoon, I heard more than once that carrying hatred in your heart is too great a burden for any man, black or white. It is better to cast it out and replace it with love. That was Martin Luther King’s belief. It is better to love one’s enemy than to hate him. Through love, reconciliation is possible. With hate, it is not.

As we were about to leave the church, the congregation was asked to stand and sing “We Shall Overcome.”

We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome someday.
Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

Will we? Will we overcome? So many people seem to want to reverse all the gains we have made in civil rights—of the rights of Blacks and other ethnic minorities, of women’s rights, of gay rights, of marital rights, of sexual rights, of religious tolerance (including the rights of the non-religious), of voting rights—and take us back to the 1950s or even earlier. If most American voters don’t really want to go backward, they seem willing to let the newly elected federal government take them there. At least for now.

Singing those words, “We shall overcome,” I can’t help but wonder, will we? Will we overcome? I hope so, but I don’t know.