We Shall Overcome

"We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Deep
in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome." You know,
I've joined hands so often with students and others behind
jail bars singing it, "We shall overcome."

Sometimes we've had tears in our eyes when we joined
together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it, "We
shall overcome." Oh, before this victory's won, some will
have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall overcome.

Don't worry about us. Before the victory's won, some of us
will lose jobs, but we shall overcome. Before the victory's
won, even some will have to face physical death.

But if physical death is the price that some must pay to
free their children from a permanent psychological death,
then nothing shall be more redemptive. We shall overcome.
Before the victory's won, some would be misunderstood and
called bad names and dismissed as rabble rousers and
agitators, but we shall overcome.

And I tell you why: We shall overcome because the arc of the
moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. We shall
overcome because Carlisle is right, "No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right:
"Truth crushed to earth will rise again."

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right:
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,