Let Freedom Ring! Music & Voices of the March for Civil Rights: Then & Now. A film by Veronica Vigil

In the Great Hall where Abraham Lincoln spoke and the NAACP was born, Let Freedom Ring! Music and Voices of the March for Civil Rights, Then and Now, honored the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington with an evening of song, dance, and oratory that both celebrated the achievements of a truly historic occasion while addressing the way today’s society confronts discrimination, inequality, and oppression.

Let Freedom Ring was the capstone event of The Village Trip 2023, conceived and created by award-winning poet, playwright, and storyteller Daniel Carlton and directed by David Deblinger. Fred Johnson was the evening’s melodic host, and the goal was to entertain, elevate, and inspire. Working with HB Studio, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, and the Cooper Union, The Village Trip assembled a stellar group of musicians, speakers, and performers who together expressed the joy and heartache of bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice. 

This extraordinary and diverse group celebrated all our humanity through story, song, poetry, movement, and excerpts from Daniel Carlton’s 'March On', a play with a cappella songs and music that captures the stories of a multicultural group of people who participated in the March on Washington. The play follows the characters from their arrival on the Great Mall to the climactic moment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Intertwined with these stories: freedom songs past and present, poetry and spoken word connecting past struggles with today’s fights for justice.

Peter Yarrow was the evening’s special guest. He organised the music for the March on Washington and, as part of Peter, Paul, and Mary, sang from the Lincoln Memorial, along with Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and many others. Singing songs he had sung on that great day, Peter closed the event with his daughter Bethany Yarrow.

The next day Peter wrote praising the “creativity, determination and leadership” of The Village Trip, adding: “Making this kind of an effort is the lifeblood of all of our attempts to dig ourselves out of the very depressing and worrisome hole that we are in now. I firmly believe that what you are doing is precisely what will help us to bring our strength, our determination, and our souls together. We cannot fight hatred with returned animosity and anger; we can only bring light and love that can push away the darkness and illuminate the goodness in all of us. That is the work of the arts and that is what you are doing, so, hooray! kudos! wonderful!”

This short film by award-winning Spanish filmmaker Veronica Vigil captures the essence of the evening, taking as its central theme the remarkable poem “This is The Year” by Stephanie Pacheco, New York City Youth Poet Laureate.

View and download the Let Freedom Ring! Program pdf:
https://www.thevillagetrip.com/festiv...

Let Freedom Ring! event details page: https://www.thevillagetrip.com/event/...

David Amram
Hasan Bakr
Molly Collier
Laurént Grant Williams
Nabaté Isles
Fred Johnson
Alvin Keith
Antoinette Montague
Stephanie Pacheco
Lori Sinclair Minor
Joseph Wisniewski
Bethany Yarrow
Peter Yarrow

Dancers from #EMERGE125 choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher

Daniel Carlton
David Deblinger
Veronica Vigil