Pete Seeger on "We Shall Overcome," 2006

Seeger tells the story of how he, along with Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan, and Zilphia Horton, copyrighted their version of "We Shall Overcome" to prevent it from becoming an "insipid pop song":

"It was my late manager, Harold Leventhal—a very wonderful guy, a close friend—who said, 'Pete, you know if you don’t copyright this, some character out in Hollywood will copyright it, and next thing you know they’ll have a version where it says, "Come on, baby, you and me will overcome tonight." If we want to keep it from being mistreated, you’ve got to copyright it.'

"I said, 'I didn’t write the song. I just arranged the guitar arrangement.' 'That’s good enough,' he said. So Frank, Guy, and also Zilphia Horton, our names are on the copyright. Four white people. At that time we didn’t know the name of Lucille Simmons, who had sung it [when Horton learned it from striking tobacco workers].

We put down that all royalties go the We Shall Overcome Fund. Bernice Reagon, of Sweet Honey in the Rock, is the chairman of that fund, and she and others get together every year down in Tennessee and give out several thousand dollars for black music in the South. [Royalties] come in from all over the world. You know it’s sung in every part of India in the local language.

From an Acoustic Guitar interview published in the February issue, with a transcription of Seeger's 12-string guitar rendition of "We Shall Overcome." See photos taken during the interview here.