Clergy protests against ICE turned to a classic – and powerful – American playlist

On Jan. 28, 2026, Bruce Springsteen released “,” a hard-hitting protest against the immigration enforcement surge in the city, including . The song is all over social media, and the official video has already been streamed more than 5 million times. It’s hard to remember a time when a major artist has released a song in the midst of a specific political crisis.

Yet some of the most powerful music coming out of Minneapolis is of a much older vintage. Hundreds of clergy from around the country in late January to take part in faith-based protests. while blocking a road near the airport. And they have been singing easily recognizable religious songs used during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, ,” “, and ”.“

I have been for more than 25 years, and I wrote about songs I called "secular spirituals” in my 2004 book, “.” Sometimes called “freedom songs,” they were galvanizing more than 60 years ago, and are still in use today.

But why these older songs, and why do they usually come out of the church? There have been many protest movements since the mid-20th century, and they have all . The freedom songs, though, have a unique staying power in American culture – partly because of their historical associations and partly because of the songs themselves.

Stronger together

Some of protest music’s power has to do with singing itself. Making music in a group creates and collective purpose. Singing is a physical activity; it comes out of our core and with fellow singers.

Young activists working in the Deep South during the most violent years of the Civil Rights Movement spoke of the courage that came from singing freedom songs like “We Shall Overcome” in moments of physical danger. In addition to helping quell fear, the songs were unnerving to authorities trying to maintain segregation. “If you have to sing, ?” one activist recalled an armed deputy saying.

And when locked up for days in a foul jail, there wasn’t much else to do but sing. When a Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner released young demonstrators he’d arrested, they recalled him complaining that .”

Test of time

Sometimes I ask students if they can think of more recent protest songs that occupy the same place as the freedom songs of the 1960s. There are some well-known candidates: Bob Marley’s “,” Green Day’s “” and Public Enemy’s “,” to name a few. The Black Lives Matter movement alone helped , including Beyonce’s “,” Kendrick Lamar’s “ and Childish Gambino’s ”.“

But the older religious songs have advantages for on-the-ground protests. They have been around for a long time, meaning that more people have had more chances to learn them. Protesters typically don’t struggle to learn or remember the tune. As iconic church songs that have crossed over into secular spirituals, they were written to be memorable and singable, crowd-tested for at least a couple of generations. They are easily adaptable, so protesters can craft new verses for their cause – as when civil rights activists ” to the lyrics of “We shall overcome.”

And freedom songs link the current protesters to one of the best-known – and by some measures, most successful – protest movements of the past century. They create bonds of solidarity not just among those singing them in Minneapolis, but with protesters and activists of generations past.

These religious songs are , an important value in a citizen movement protesting . And for many activists, including , religious values are central to their willingness to stand up for citizens targeted by ICE.

Deep roots

The best-known secular spirituals actually predate the Civil Rights Movement. “” first appeared in written form in 1900 as “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” by the Methodist minister Charles Tindley, though the words and tunes are different. It was sung by striking Black tobacco workers in South Carolina in 1945 and , for labor organizers and social justice activists.

It then came to the attention of iconic folk singer Pete Seeger, who changed some words and gave it wide exposure. “We Shall Overcome” has been sung everywhere from and anti-apartheid rallies in South Africa .

“Amazing Grace” has an even longer history, dating back to a hymn written by John Newton: an 18th-century ship captain in the slave trade who later became an Anglican clergyman and . Pioneering American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and .

Firmly rooted in Protestant Christian theology, the song crossed over into a more secular audience through by folk singer Judy Collins, which on the Billboard charts. During of 1964, an initiative to register Black voters, Collins singing “Amazing Grace,” a song she remembered from her Methodist childhood.

Opera star Jessye Norman sang it at Nelson Mandela’s , and bagpipers played it at near Ground Zero to commemorate victims of 9/11.

‘This little light’

Another gospel song used in – “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine” – has similarly murky historical origins and also passed through the Highlander Folk School .

It expresses the impulse to be seen and heard, standing up for human rights and contributing to a movement much larger than each individual. But it could also mean letting a light shine on the truth – for example, demonstrators’ phones documenting what happened in , .

Like the Civil Rights Movement, the protests in Minneapolis involve protecting people of color from violence – as well as, more broadly, protecting immigrants’ and refugees’ legal right to . A big difference is that in the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government sometimes subjected to violence by states and localities. Now, many Minnesotans are trying to protect people in their communities from agents of the federal government.