[Ads-l] Antedating of "We Shall Overcome"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Decades ago, I published 29 substantial articles or short notes in American Speech.  Most of these dealt with very small points of specific word-history.  If I had continued to submit similar short notes to AS in more recent times when I have stepped up my pace of antedatings, the quantity of my submissions could literally have been in the thousands and AS would have told me to go away and not bother them any more.  I am not sure how much interest they have nowadays in factually based, non-theoretical lexicological discoveries.

Bill Mullins's probably coincidental, but nonetheless marvelous discovery about "we shall overcome" would really be more relevant to a journal of musicology or a journal of Black Studies than to American Speech.

I stopped contributing to AS because I became much more interested in compiling books and helping the OED than in publishing articles or notes.  Now my efforts are very focused on helping the Oxford Dictionary of African American English and continuing to help the OED.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2025 9:42 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Antedating of "We Shall Overcome"

>   Maybe Bill Mullins might consider writing up an item for publication concerning his work
>   on We Shall Overcome.  American Speech would be a logical journal to submit it to.
>
>   Gerald Cohen

While it is gratifying to see such attention paid to this, is it really worth more than submitting to the OED and elsewhere as an antedating?  Given that Tindley's usage didn't stick, it seems like this is more of a coincidence than it is relevant to the origin of "We Shall Overcome" as the rallying cry it was from the 1950s on.

And practically speaking, I'm not a member of the ADS, have never seen a copy of American Speech, and have no idea what their submission guidelines are or what format a write-up should be in.



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