By Annie Hays, Staff Writer
On Monday, Feb. 4, Lea Morris took her audience from the island Jamaica to the Antebellum South to the Civil Rights Protests of the 1960s.
Morris’ performance called Songs of the Civil Rights Movement mainly focused on the African- American movement of the 1960s with songs like “Blowing in the Wind” by Bob Dylan and “Long Time Comin” by Sam Cooke. However, Morris does not want people to only look at the African movement.
“Civil Rights is a human issue,” said Morris. “It’s not just for Africans, even though that’s what most Americans think.”
The first song “One Love” by Bob Marley drew the audience “to get together and feel alright.” After that, Morris soulfully launched into the black spirituals she heard as a child in her southern Baptist church.
Each of these songs had a hidden meaning for the slaves who sang them in the fields. For example “Follow the Drinking Gourd” referred to following the Little Dipper to the North, and “Wading in the Water” referred to jumping in the river to escape the dogs chasing after the slaves as they ran North.
In the 1960s, these all became popular protest songs, but so were some contemporary folk songs including Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and Aretha Franklin’s “Think” which Morris belted out.
At the end of the show, Morris played an original song that she and a boy named Deshan had written together while she was helping Deshan at a program for troubled boys in D.C. “Mind that’s Free” called on the audience to always remember that as long as someone has a mind that’s free you can always get through it.
At the beginning of the show, Morris said, “A folk song is a song sung by the people.”
That night her audience simply heard songs from people: people who lived through slavery, people who fought oppression, and people not unlike themselves.
