Odetta — a must-know titan of American music and culture — once noted that young people “learn about American history through battles.” But her dream of liberation was shaped much differently: “I learned about the United States through this music, through the songs that I sing.”

As we live through the kind of historical moment that makes most folks want to lie down and die, we can — like many heroes before us, from MLK to Maya Angelou — look to the legacy of 1964 and Odetta for strength to insist upon our lives.

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