In May 1962 a friend, my brother, and several others joined one of my ministers, Lou Mitchell, on a trip I shall never forget: to Miles College, where we heard Joan Baez sing a concert. I had never before sat in a fully integrated audience, and I had never before heard Baez live. As a folkie myself and as a young person who saw injustice in the segregation system in my home city and throughout the state, I was positively electrically alive in that airless chapel late one Sunday afternoon.
When Baez invited all of us to stand, join hands -- right over left -- with the person next to us, and sing "We Shall Overcome," I remember feeling elevated in spirit and voice. Our singing was recorded that afternoon (as was her entire concert) and included on the album Joan Baez in Concert, Vol 1. If you listen hard, my brother is coughing and coughing at the beginning of the music. I remember shushing him with something like, "Billy, hush!"On our way back home, we ran into a demonstration, which, as it turns out, was one of the most historic in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham ("Miracle Sunday"). What I most remember feeling, however, was utter joy as I held the glass from which my idol drank that afternoon.
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