IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE | Joan Baez - "We Shall Overcome" | PBS

Here is Joan Baez singing We Shall Overcome at the White House soon after Obama became President in 2009. Decades had past since she first made this song famous at the height of the Civil Rights Movement started by the blacks in the 1950s/60s. Imagine how she must have looked in her younger days and of course her voice then. If I am not mistaken, she sang this song during the March on Washington led by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, during Woodstock and again during Obama's inauguration. Anybody can confirm this? I will appreciate it. I have suddenly become interested in US history especially the Civil Rights Movement because there is a lot to be learnt from it, though unfortunately man's memory is short. Pay attention to the wordings and you will understand why I'm so much into it. Simple though the wordings may be, the song together with A Change Is Gonna Come was enough to capture the imagination of the black Americans which eventually won them freedom from slavery and equal rights with the whites especially the right to vote and education and health. Which reminds me of the song Berjaya which was the 'anthem' of the Berjaya Party which defeated the Usno-led Alliance Party in 1976 in Sabah. During the April 1976 State general election, nobody would dare bet that the all-powerful Alliance would fall to the 9-month-old Berjaya; not with memories of detention at the infamous 'Kepayan University' still fresh in their minds. I mean, before the Federal Government took away the special detention powers of former Usno strongman and former Chief Minister Tun Datu Mustapha, the mere mention of his name or Kepayan (prison) was enough to make the average Sabahan shiver! Indeed, in April 1976 Sabahans (majority of them at least) OVERCAME! although a different song (Berjaya) was used.