Dawson describes the use of music at the sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement and how singing connected activists all over the country while providing support during arrests during civil disobedience actions.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hundreds of us laughed at the police and we sang – oh, did we sing!
We sang all the songs that we knew of the civil rights movement, which was a movement built on music. There is a reason for that, because music gives everyone a chance to say the same things at the same time and to feel everybody else around you saying the same things at the same time in a way that your soul can respond to.
That was absolutely essential to everything that we did, especially when we got arrested.