Doc/Fest - Sheffield

In this stirring documentary a host of American civil rights leaders take us through the powerful narrative of the 1960s, and the vital role that songs, many of them resurrected negro spirituals, played in the struggle to end segregation.
In 1960s America there was a law called “reckless eyeballing” which could jail a black man for looking at a white woman the wrong way. But the times they were a-changing, and Martin Luther King Jr led millions in the quest to end segregation. Throughout the many battles that followed, as activists sought their rightful place on buses and at lunch counters, and demonstrated on streets where they were beaten and arrested, one thing kept them going: the power of song. In this stirring doc a host of civil rights leaders take us through the riveting narrative of their movement, and the vital role that the resurrected negro spirituals played in the struggle. “All of the songs had one purpose,” recalls Harry Belafonte, “and that was to reach deep into the moments of our greatest anguish and to say ‘we have had worse than this – we can endure.’” Against the backdrop of often astonishing archive, modern musicians including Joss Stone and John Legend, play the soundtrack to a revolution.