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"We Shall Overcome" And Gangsta Rap : An Investigation Of The Role Of Music In The Civil Rights Movement And In Contemporary Urban Society, Christopher Yurchuck

Honors Theses

The non-violent protestors of the Civil Rights Movement found in their music, a sense of healing and of cohesion within their group, a group of blacks and whites alike, fighting the injustices of a supposedly just society. They used the Freedom Songs to express dissention with the system, to disseminate information to other movement participants, and to bind the group together. The black militants of the '60s in the Civil Rights Movement did not use music as a form of their expression; rather, their silence, an absence of music, said it all. Today, gangsta rappers are a fusion of the …