In the Streets with Beverley Smith: Keep Ya Head Up (Episode 14) - a podcast by the LMC Radio Network

When times are hard, how do we make it through? Marginalized and oppressed people have always turned to our hymns, great speeches and spirited work songs to get us through the bad times. In this episode, we are inspired by the speeches of James Baldwin, Sojourner Truth, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no, not the I Have a Dream speech). We gather strength and determination from the work songs of the Black convicts in the prison chain gangs of the American South. We find empathy and understanding in the writings of Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, and Dudley Randall. We thrill to the rewritten lyrics of Sojourner Truth's Battle Hymn, a battle song used by the all-Negro Union regiments during the Civil War. Our hymns draw on faith and the promise of a brighter day. We hope to understand it better by and by. Music by Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, the Davis Sisters, Sweet Honey in the Rock, In Process, and the prison chain gangs of Texas, South Carolina, and Mississippi.

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