“I first started learning about the world, and there was a place called the South. It was a distant, romantic place, like the Far West or the islands of the Caribbean.”

Pete Seeger has long been my hero. As an undergraduate at Davidson College in the early sixties, I listened to his records and learned to sing folksongs from his published works. When we organized civil rights meetings and marches at Davidson, his music and his unwavering commitment to human rights were always an inspiration. “We Shall Overcome” was our anthem, and we sang it often at civil rights gatherings in the early sixties.