just a feeling.

I’ve been thinking the exact thought since yesterday. Here’s the rationale, not only from one who remembers the song back in the day, but is a trained musician.

Singing has great advantages over more common protest techniques, when using a versed, long, low, slow song like this (as opposed to the “cute”, cheap, grating, responsive chants):

it carries better
it lasts longer
it demonstrates unity–visual and auditory
it demonstrates impassioned restraint
it references earlier struggles, persuasive for those on the fence, dissuasive for those opposed

WSO is a great choice. Any song should be pre-1970, not merely for reference to CR protests, but because anything after then is going to have shallow texts, high vocal range* and will simply not be as well known.

* Any song written to be performed by a miked singer must NEVER be sung in a group, because you lose half your crowd (ever hear of altos and basses?) and they were not intended for harmony. In one of the great paradoxes, borne out in contemporary church services every Sunday, songs sung “in unison” produce the least sense of actual unity, while songs sung in parts manifest a marvellously rich unity of diverse yet interpendent individuals in community.