We Shall Not Be Moved

Topic: Folk Music Revival
The similarities between the uses of "We Shall Not Be Moved" in the 1936 Chattanooga, Tennessee, textile workers, discussed in the post for 28 July 2019, and the 1937 Flint, Michigan, automotive workers sit-down strike, discussed in the post for 21 July 2019, are obvious. Both used it as a performance piece to dramatize unity in the face of deadly force.

The link was what today would be called consultants, organizers who moved from strike to strike as advisors. One group used by Walter Reuther against General Motors was the Brookwood Labor College. Both he and his brother Roy had been trained there, [1] and Roy was on the faculty in 1936. [2] Zilphia Horton was working at the Highlander Folk School when she went to Chattanooga. [3]

She believed "sharecroppers in Arkansas" [4] in the Southern Farm Tenants Union were the first to use "We Shall Not Be Moved." However, Helen Grosvenor Norton watched "a mixed group of white and Negro miners and their wives" sing "We Shall Not Be Moved" during a 1931 strike in the Kanawha Coal Fields of southern West Virginia. As they stood on the steps of a "dilapidated Negro schoolhouse," they were watched by "a group of state ‘po-lice’ and mine guards, their guns conspicuously displayed." [5]

Norton and Tom Tippet were in West Virginia for Brookwood. [6] He told Archie Green he always went into local stores to purchase records, which he used to work with local organizers. [7] One of them, and more likely he, probably was responsible for the song moving into the labor movement. She married one of the Brookwood instructors in 1932, and became Helen Norton Starr. [8] Tippet was director of Brookwood’s extension activities until 1933. [9]

The event described by Norton was very like the later occurrences, but that’s not necessarily what was happening. She thought the steps were a stage, but David Corbin made clear miners lived on company property, and any building in the area was controlled by the operators. They had locked the churches in an earlier conflict, and the school likewise may have been made inaccessible. [10] It also may have been unsafe to go into a building where they could be ambushed.

Corbin said that after the failed strike of 1921, the Logan County Coal Operators’ Association had invited Billy Sunday [11] to hold a month-long revival in Charleston in 1922. [12] The state capital was in Kanawha County. Sunday lumped strikers with all other sinners in his exhortations. [13]

Miners turned away from company-controlled churches, and listened to other miners who were called by God to preach. They led prayers before men entered the pits, and often offered thanks when they came up. The "mine pit often became the pulpit" [14] unobserved by company spies. Men were free to read the Bible and one miner remembered "there’s a sermon in those songs, so we sang them all the time." [15]

One unintended consequence of inviting Sunday to Charleston was the introduction of new gospel songs, because wherever Sunday went, Homer Rodeheaver was there as his song leader. Rodeheaver had opened his own publishing house in 1910, [16] and, no doubt, always carried a store of his songbooks to sell.

"I Shall Not Be Moved" was copyrighted in 1908 by Alfred Ackley, [17] a year after his brother joined the Sunday organization as a pianist. [18] Rodeheaver, began including it in songbooks sold at revivals held by William Biederwolf. [19] In 1910, Rodeheaver went to work for Sunday [20] and included it in a new songbook. [21]

Rodeheaver was still promoting "I Shall Not" when he published a 1920 songbook that sold for thirty cents. [22] He had a new book in 1922 that did not include it, [23] and he may not have sung it during the Charleston revival. But, if he continued to sell Victory Songs, which he likely did, it would have been a safe purchase for miners. "I Shall Not" appeared on page 28. From there, it could have moved into the repertoire of some in Kanawha County.

The song may have moved from southern West Virginia to the Southern Farm Tenants Union (SFTU) through labor organizers, or through the gossip network that connected union leaders. [24] The labor use also could have been an independent invention in Arkansas that Horton observed when she lived there. [25]

Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer did not provide a source for the Norton quotation, but it sounds like it was from a later interview, rather than a contemporaneous account. The group in southern West Virginia may or may not have been singing "we shall not," but by the time Norton was interviewed, that was the accepted form. The letter from an SFTU member quoted in the post for 28 July 2019 was written in 1936, and used "I."

The song entered tradition in the South, and was undergoing changes from oral transmission in the 1920s. Ackley’s version followed the verse-chorus form with the two-line first verse beginning "As a tree beside the water." The AABA chorus repeated "I Shall Not Be Moved" three times, with "anchored to the Rock of Ages" as the B line.

Edward Boatner included "I Shall Not Be Moved" in the collection of spirituals he amassed for the National Baptist Convention in 1927. [26] His version used an AAB form. The A lines used a statement-refrain format with the statement changing with each iteration and "I shall not be moved" repeated. The B line, which appeared in every verse, used "like a tree planted by the water" as the statement.

It’s not known if Ackley, who joined his brother with Sunday before entering seminary to become a Presbyterian minister in 1914, [27] created the song or reworked something he heard in a revival meeting. [28] Boatner could have been closer to the original, or his version could have resulted from the digestion of the complicated Ackley form. He may have created this variant, which he copyrighted in 1925.

Joe and Emma Taggart recorded a version that was between the two the year before the African-American Baptist version was available. [29] "I Shall Not Be Removed" followed Boatner’s AAB form, but repeated the "I shall not be moved" after every variant as a burden.

Two versions collected by Julian Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in the fall of that year, 1926, followed the Taggarts’ pattern. Minnie Lee sang "I shall not be blue," [30] while Bryan D. Banks used "I Shall Not be Moved." [31] None of the three shared any verses with each other or with Boatner, but all used Boatner’s "planted by the water" phrase.


Joe Taggart was a blind African-American musician from Abbeville, South Carolina, who worked in Atlanta before moving to Chicago in 1921. [32] Banks was from a white family that had been in Pamlico County for generations, [33] and may have been a Free Will Baptist. Lee also was a white Free Will Baptist. [35]

Once "I Shall Not" moved into active tradition among both whites and African Americans in the South, it became an especially useful song for unions that included members from both groups. By 1939, Boatner’s version was the most common. It was adapted by Zilphia as a "Union Hymn" in a collection she edited for Textile Workers Union of America in Atlanta. [36]

End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Brookwood Labor College."

2. James TenEyck. The Life and Times of Walter Reuther. New York: Page Publishing, 2016. Roy was a student in 1933, the year Tucker Smith became the director. Under the previous director, A. J. Muste, it had grown closer to Marxism, and Smith was charged with returning the Quaker-founded school to its original purpose. [37]

3. Horton was discussed in the post for 28 July 2019.

4. Chelsea Hodge. "‘A Song Workers Everywhere Sing:’ Zilphia Horton and the Creation of Labor’s Musical Canon." Master’s thesis. University of Arkansas. May 2014. 49.

5. Helen Norton Starr. Quoted by Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer. Songs of Work and Freedom. New York: Dover Publications, 1983. 39. Reprint of edition published in 1960 by Roosevelt University’s Labor Education Division in Chicago.

6. Archie Green. Only a Miner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. 254–256.
7. Tom Tippet. Letter to Archie Green. 6 February 1958. Quoted by Green. 254.

8. Richard Lewis. Biography of Marc Starr in Dictionary of Labour Biography. London: The Macmillan Press, 1993. 9:279.

9. Wikipedia, Brookwood.

10. David Alan Corbin. "We Shall Not Be Moved." 146–175 in Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1981. The chapter was not about the song, but about religious life in the coal fields of southern West Virginia. The comment on churches shuttered during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike was on page 151.

11. Corbin. 151.
12. Jerry Waters. "Billy Sunday." My WV Home website.
13. Corbin. 151.

14. Corbin. 158. One miner-preacher mentioned by Corbin was Walter Seacrist, who served as vice president of the West Virginia Mine Workers Union. Green said Tippet taught Seacrist a song about Mother Jones, which he localized. [38]

15. Corbin. 149.
16. Wikipedia. "Homer Rodeheaver."

17. Alfred A. Ackley. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Copyrighted by A. H. and B. D. Ackley, Hilburn, New York, 1908. [39]

18. Wikipedia. "B. D. Ackley."

19. Alfred A. Ackley. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Songs for the King’s Business. Edited by Franklin Edson Belden. Chicago: B. E. Belden, 1909. 67. Robert Waltz and David G. Engle listed a collection [40] published by Rodeheaver and William Edward Bierderwolf in 1906. However, it was not in the copy I own. [41] The book went through several editions, and was in the 1910 revision [42] I obtained. It was undated, but was probably from 1910. The word "revised" appeared on the cover," but not on the title page.

20. Wikipedia, Rodeheaver.

21. Alfred A. Ackley. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Great Revival Hymns for the Church, Sunday School and Evangelistic Services. Edited by Homer Alvan Rodeheaver and Bentley DeForrest Ackley. Chicago: Rodeheaver, 1910. 58.

22. Alfred A. Ackley. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Victory Songs. Edited by Homer A. Rodeheaver. Chicago: The Rodeheaver Company, 1920. 28.

23. Homer A. Rodeheaver. Rodeheaver’s Gospel Songs. Chicago: The Rodeheaver Company, 1922.

24. The SFTU shared one trait with the Frank Kenney’s West Virginia Mine Workers Union that might have made the one group contact leaders of the other. Unlike Harlan County, Kentucky, and Gastonia, North Carolina, West Virginia had a mixed labor force. When railroads and New York entrepreneurs began exploiting coal in the state, the population was so sparse, agents were sent to recruit immigrants from the mines in Pennsylvania and African Americans from Virginia, North and South Carolina. [43] In 1908, just before John D. Rockefeller facilitated the creation of Consolidated Coal, [44] 73.5% of Kanawha County’s miners were native-born whites, but were only 55% in Raleigh County and 47.1% in Fayette County. [45] The percentages no doubt changed when World War I shut down immigration from Europe.

The likelihood men from one union joined the other are slight. Corbin noted that, while miners moved from job to job, most stayed in the area because they preferred mining to the drudgery of industrial jobs. As one African American told him, "in the mines, the supervisors, they don’t bother you none." [46]

25. Horton’s life in Arkansas was discussed in the post for 28 July 2019.

26. "I Shall Not Be Moved." 9 in Spirituals Triumphant Old and New. Edited by Edward Boatner. Nashville: Sunday School Publishing Board, National Baptist Convention, 1927. Copyrighted by Boatner, who arranged it.

27. "Alfred Henry Ackley." Hymn Time website.

28. This revision of a tradition that then was recreated in tradition was described with "At the Cross" in the post for 22 November 2018. David Spener’s study of "We Shall Not Be Moved" did not provide any early history. [47]

29. Joe and Emma Taggart. "I Shall Not Be Removed." Vocalion 1062. 1926. Uploaded to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises. 5 November 2014.

30. Minnie Lee. "I Shall Not Be Blue." The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952. 3:639.

31. B. D. Banks. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Brown 3:639–640.
32. Wikipedia. "Blind Joe Taggart."

33. Notes on Julian Boyd’s students may be found in the posts for 6 February 2019, 24 November 2019, and 1 December 2019.

34. Mittie Banks was married to Bryan Banks, and was survived by one son in 1967, B. D. Banks, Junior. She was buried by the Rock of Zion Free Will Baptist Church. [47]

35. Information on Minnie Lee appeared in the post for 8 December 2019.

36. Anonymous. "We Shall Not Be Moved." Labor Songs. Edited by Zilphia Horton. Atlanta: Textile Workers Union of America, 1939. 32. Tune was identified as "I Shall Not Be Moved."

37. Wikipedia, Brookwood.
38. Green. 255.

39. Library of Congress. Copyright Office. Musical Compositions. Part 3, Numbers 36-39. September 1908. 817.

40. "I Shall Not Be Moved." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website. Version 4.5.

41. William Edward Biederwolf. Hymns for His Praise No 2. Assisted by Homer Rodeheaver. Chicago: McCrea-Taylor, 1906.

42. Alfred A. Ackley. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Songs for his Praise No. 2 Revised. Edited by William Edward Biederwolf, assisted by Homer Rodeheaver. Chicago: The Glad Tidings Publishing Company. 188.

43. W. Jett Lauck. Immigrants in Industries. Part 1. Bituminous Coal Mining. United States. 61st Congress Joint Immigration Commission report. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911. 6:23.

44. Ronald L. Lewis. "Coal Industry." The West Virginia Encyclopedia website. Last updated 8 January 2019.

45. Lauck. 7:156
46. Corbin. 41.

47. David Spener. We Shall Not Be Moved/No Nos Moverán. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016.

48. Victor T. Jones, Jr. "Sunday’s Obituary: Mittie Banks." Genealogy Jones and the Lost Crusade website.