The Freedom Singers

The Freedom Singers originated as a student quartet formed in 1962 at Albany State College in Albany, Georgia. After folk singer Pete Seeger witnessed the power of their congregational-style of singing, which fused black Baptist acapella church singing with protest songs and chants, their performances drew aid and support to SNCC during the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Seeger suggested The Freedom Singers as a touring group to the SNCC executive secretary James Forman as a way to fuel future campaigns. As a result, communal song became essential to empowering and educating audiences about civil rights issues and a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation. Without the music force of broad communal singing, the Civil Rights Movement may not have resonated beyond of the struggles of the Jim Crow South.

The original group consisted of four, then known as Negro, members all under the age of 21, including Rutha Mae Harris (soprano), Bernice Johnson Reagon (alto), Cordell Reagon (tenor), and Charles Neblett (bass). After witnessing the power of song as a veteran of the sit-in movement in the Nashville sit-ins and as a field secretary for SNCC, Cordell Reagon was the founding member of the group. He recruited Albany natives and local singers in the black church Rutha Mae Harris and Bernice Johnson, whom he later married. Reagon recruited Charles Neblett, a veteran of civil rights demonstrations in Cairo, Illinois. Together, they traveled over 50,000 miles in a Buick station wagon performing in over 40 cities culminating in a performance at the March on Washington in their first year.

Later, in 1965, they were joined by Bill Perlman, a young, white guitarist whose parents were SNCC field secretaries in New York City. At the age of 17, Perlman got into a station wagon and traveled through the deep south to fight injustice with the group for two years. He continued to perform with the Freedom Singers, appearing in venues all over the world residing in Ashfield. MA, where he remained dedicated to local politics and social justice.^{[citation needed]} Among the others who performed with the Freedom Singers at concerts and movement events since the 1960s are Bertha Gober, Emory Harris, Marshall Jones, and Matthew Jones. The Freedom Singers toured the South, sometimes performing as many as four concerts a day. The songs were mostly spirituals and hymns, with "characteristic call-and-response" and improvisation. Venues included around 200 college campuses, churches, house parties, demonstrations, marches, and jails. Often, the Freedom Singers were jailed for refusing to leave an area, while supporters and sympathizers also risked police brutality.

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