Inspired by the wave of protests against police violence in 2020, this song echoes the protest music of the 1960s in intention and intensity. ![]() Listen to their words - confident and deep in conviction - and maybe you, too, will rest easier tonight, knowing that tomorrow is in their hands. I've put out a call to young people across the United States, asking them to share what they believe in, to create a "Credo" for our present, a design for our future. Du Bois' "Credo." The feel of these notes under my fingers reminds me to reflect on the struggles and triumphs that came before us and also urges me to look ahead at the brightness of what can come next. In 1964, Margaret Bonds wrote this intimate yet infinitely powerful piece of music, inspired by the words of W.E.B. Teen mothers on their way to a conference on teen pregnancy. ![]() Music that brings us hope and faith and even joy, urging us to stand and fight another day, reminding us that what we are celebrating on this holiday is our freedom to believe, even in the hardest of times. Songs that ground us with the steadiness of their rhythms and embrace us in the lines of their melodies. Music that counters the shrieking dissonance of conflict with the radiant warmth of its harmonies, that offers us comfort in our sorrow and sustenance in our struggle. I offer you a collection of music that insists on the promise of freedom, however long in coming. This Juneteenth, I turn to Du Bois' words and Bonds' music - to all the lessons of our history. In his poem "Credo," he states his belief that all people deserve "the space to stretch their arms and their souls the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color thinking, dreaming, working as they will." Sixty years later, the composer Margaret Bonds took inspiration from his words to write a piece of music full of pure passion and soaring beauty, even as violence raged and fires burned across America, as the civil rights movement fought on for the promise of those same freedoms, still unattained. ![]() Du Bois imagined a world that defied the realities of Jim Crow America. Jesse Jackson on the campaign trail.Īt the turn of the 20th century, the sociologist, historian and civil rights activist W.E.B.
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