Fight the Power Respect Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) I Ain't Marching Anymore Strange Fruit Lift Every Voice and Sing

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Sociologist group names 'essential' protest songs

Washington Post Mar. 24, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Those professional bleeding hearts over at the American Sociological Association have helpfully put together a list of the "essential" protest songs of the past five decades and published it in the latest issue of the journal Contexts.

Fourteen tunes made the cut, including such standards as We Shall Overcome, Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' and the 1930s union anthem Which Side Are You On?

Other notable selections:

Fight the Power by Public Enemy. "An exuberant hip-hop call to arms," the editors declared of this 1989 mega-hit.

Respect by Otis Redding and performed by Aretha Franklin, a song that proves "the personal is political."

Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) by James Brown. The Godfather of Soul also had a way with Black-power anthems.

I Ain't Marching Anymore by Phil Ochs. "An antiwar classic, complete with a revisionist history of American militarism," the editors wrote.

Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol and performed by Billie Holiday. "Chilling protest against lynching. Maybe the greatest protest song of all time." (Meeropol, a New York City schoolteacher, later adopted the children of executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.)

Lift Every Voice and Sing lyrics by James Weldon Johnson; music by J. Rosamond Johnson. These accomplished brothers wrote what is "known as the 'Black National Anthem,' the antidote to America, the Beautiful."