Common elements like memorability, teachability and timelessness can lead to songs moving from the stage to the streets.

An African American woman's voice, a child of Southwest Georgia, a voice raised in song, born in the struggle against racism in America during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s ...

The 'Freedom Movement' for civil rights was a turning point in history - Martin Luther King Jr said there was one genre of music essential to powering it.

Aretha Franklin grew up in 1950s Detroit, surrounded from childhood by the now-famous faces of the civil rights movement. Her songs would become their anthems. Her Baptist minister father was the ...

Set to a melancholy arrangement of strings and horns, “A Change Is Gonna Come” became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, historians say. It was named the third greatest song ...