I Shall Not Be Moved: A Song History

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"I Shall Not Be Moved" is a song of steadfast faith long sung in African American churches, though David Spener, author of a book-length history of the song, regards its exact beginnings as unclear.[1][2] Spener hears echoes of Psalms 1, 16, and 62 in its words, and he argues that it most likely grew out of the camp-meeting revivals of the early nineteenth-century South, which drew Black and white worshippers alike, though he could not find it in any printed camp-meeting songbook.[2] After the Civil War it was sung in white as well as Black Protestant churches in the South, and Edward Boatner's arrangement in the 1927 collection Spirituals Triumphant: Old and New became a standard version in African American congregations.[2] Early commercial recordings include one by the Taskiana Four, made in New York on July 21, 1926, and issued on Victor 20183, and another by Blind Roosevelt Graves and his brother Uaroy, recorded in Richmond, Indiana, on September 20, 1929, and issued on Paramount 12974.[3][4] The Ballad Index also lists a 1929 recording by Charley Patton.[1]

Etching of a large tree on a riverbank with a town across the water

Augustin Hirschvogel, River Landscape with Large Tree at Left, etching, 1546. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

As "We Shall Not Be Moved," the song became a labor anthem, and Spener traces its first documented use as a union song to a 1931 wildcat strike of some twenty thousand coal miners in Kanawha County, West Virginia.[2] From there it spread quickly to other industries, reaching Southern textile and garment workers in 1934.[2][5] At the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, music director Zilphia Horton helped carry such songs to CIO unions and picket lines across the South in the late 1930s.[2] Her successor, Guy Carawan, sang it with student sit-in leaders at a Highlander workshop in April 1960, and the Freedom Singers performed it at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.[2][5] As "No nos moverán," it was sung in protests against Franco's dictatorship in Spain by the late 1960s and by supporters of Chile's socialist government in the early 1970s.[2]

Boatner's version went on to shape later African American hymnals, among them Songs of Zion (1981) and the African American Heritage Hymnal (2001).[5] Maureen Sellers includes it in Simply Gospel, Book Two, a collection of gospel tunes arranged for solo mountain dulcimer with lyrics included, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "I Shall Not Be Moved"

Sources

  1. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index): "I Shall Not Be Moved".
  2. Temple University Press: "David Spener, We Shall Not Be Moved/No nos moverán: Biography of a Song of Struggle (2016)".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-35597. I shall not be moved / Taskiana Four".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Gennett matrix 15647. I shall not be moved / Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother".
  5. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'I Shall Not Be Moved'".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Gospel, Book Two".
  7. Image: Augustin Hirschvogel, River Landscape with Large Tree at Left, etching, 1546. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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