For the past few weeks we have been learning lots about the segregation in the south. I have found this subject very engaging. I find it inspiring how african americans won their rights without fighting back with violence even when they were brutally beaten and even killed.It really shocks me how people were so ignorant and straight minded just to keep communitys segregated.

The freedom songs sung by activists on the frontlines of the civil rights struggle rightly hold an heroic place in any musical history of the Southern movement. Other forms of popular music with which the freedom songs often consisted of blues, gospel, folk, jazz, rock and roll, and soul offer deep insights into the twisted histories of the freedom struggle and race relations. Indeed, it is important to recognize that African Americans were not the only ones singing about the movement in the 1950s and early 60s. white folk artists Jeff Beck played a roll in the movement by releasing a song called “people get ready”.

“That was taken from my church or from the upbringing of messages from the church. Like there’s no hiding place and get on board, and images of that sort. I must have been in a very deep mood of that type of religious inspiration when I wrote that song.” ~ Curtis Mayfield

People Get Ready is in a long tradition of Black American freedom songs to use the train imagery. The imagery comes from the Underground Railroad, not a real train but an escape route North to freedom for escaped slaves in the American pre-civil war, with characters such as Harriet Tubman going back again and again to the South to show people the route of the “railroad”.