The song that became the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome had its first widely acknowledged performance as a protest song on the picket line at the American Tobacco Company's cigar factory, 701 East Bay Street, during a strike that began on 22 October 1945. The plant employed about 1,400 people, some 900 of them Black women. About 1,000 members of Local 15 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers union, most of them Black women, walked out for a raise of 25 cents an hour, back pay and a closed shop. To close each day's picketing, the striker Lucille Simmons led a slow version of an old gospel hymn, and she is credited with changing its words from I to We.
The strike ran through the winter. In November 1945 the company agreed to pay about $120,000 in back pay ordered by the National Labor Relations Board. A settlement reached in late March 1946 brought a smaller raise than demanded and eased racial barriers to some skilled jobs, and the strikers went back to work on 1 April 1946.
Accounts differ on who taught the song to Zilphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, but she passed it to Pete Seeger, and it was printed as We Will Overcome in his People's Songs bulletin. Seeger changed Will to Shall, and Guy Carawan taught it at Highlander in 1960 to students who went on to form SNCC. The factory, built in 1881 as a cotton mill, made cigars from 1912 until 1973 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2024.
Getting there
32.7976, -79.9348
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
