Welcome to Ping and Echo, a daily newsletter that shares one amazing podcast episode guaranteed to be a great listen for kids and their families. Each newsletter includes links to articles, videos, and activities related to the podcast so you can turn every episode into an adventure.
Today’s episode is from Voices of the Movement, a series of episodes from Cape Up with Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post. We have been wanting to find an episode on the music of the civil rights movement to share since starting Ping and Echo, and this one is particularly special because Capehart interviews and records longstanding civil rights activists singing their songs together today, and reflecting on the importance of singing to movements now and then. “When you start off singing a song something changes inside of you and you're not who you were when you first started singing,” Ruby Sales tells Capehart. “So I think songs are very important. Without songs, we couldn't have had a movement, Jonathan. We could not have had a movement because the songs represented. . . . It was where we embodied our courage.”
Podcast: Cape Up with Jonathan Capehart
Episode: How Music Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
Length: 30 minutes
🧐 You Should Know
We’ll always give you a heads up if there is anything in the podcast that might surprise or worry kids. At the 6 minute, 50 second mark in the podcast longtime civil rights activist Bettie Mae Fikes tells a story about singing in prison and mentions that a jail guard once said “If you don’t shut up, we’re gonna rape you all and take tar paper and put it up around the windows.”
💡 Try This
After you listen to the episode you can learn to sing along with the links and activities below:
Find music, lyrics, videos and more history about songs of struggle and hope in the Rise Up Singing books and website
Check out this entire TeachRock set of lessons and videos on the music of the civil rights movement
🔎 Explore More
Read up on more songs behind this episode with these links:
Background: Songs and the Civil Rights Movement
The name Ping and Echo comes from sonar technology which relies on sending out “pings” and receiving back “echos” to discover the world around you. You can send us pictures of the art and activities created by your kids. Email them to pingandecho@gmail.com and we’ll post all your echos on our Instagram and our Twitter page.
Thanks for lending us your ears and your inbox.
Josh, Toby, and Ruby