Introduction A protest refers to an expression of objection; this may be portrayed through words or actions. A protest song has significant and cognitive content; a good protest song is so specific that it cannot be mistaken for anything else. A good protest song is capable of capturing the spirit of an activist movement. Thesis Though a song alone may not change the law or topple a government, it can create a significant role in affecting tangible change. Leaders and people in power realize the strength and impact of protest songs, though they may not openly admit it, they are aware that powerful protest songs can take root in people’s consciousness. In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement continually challenged the government to fulfill the promise of equality and justice. In his book, T.V Reeds states that the most central behavior in the civil rights movement was music. For a long time, music had been used before in America to mobilize people in most social movements. Some of the movements include the anti-slavery and labor movements in the nineteenth and twentieth century respectively. The civil movements heightened level of singing; civil movements left a legacy of freedom songs that are nowadays sung all over the world. Protest songs were used everywhere by the movement; in jail, meetings, marches, and even on the picket lines. The songs were entrenched in the church and later in pop music mostly sang by African Americans. These songs formed a medium of communication among the movement members. Through the songs, they expressed the pain in the souls of its members resulting from centuries of resistance to oppression and slavery (Reed, p. 26). T. V. Reed helps the reader understand protest and its cultural idiom. He accomplishes this by exploring the use of rock music, film, and video in the struggles against oppression, famine, and apartheid. Reed utilizes the idea of culture by looking at music, poetry, film, painting, murals, and fiction in civil movements; this is done by taking into consideration how the cultural texts caused by resistance and civil movements have restructured the American culture. Throughout his book, Reed portrays how activism and protest continues to remake the world today (Reed, 26). Ella Baker, in her book, argued that there was a huge difference between organizing and mobilizing people. She taught that music had the capacity to both organize and mobilize. A protest song can bring change and help improve the status of citizens in a country. This is evidence in Estonia where songs that were previously banned by the Soviet regime were recited by over one third of the country’s populace. These songs contributed greatly in ushering in the independence without shedding of blood. African-Americans did not have rights to vote and only a small part of the white populace held the biggest share of wealth, governmental power, and resources in America. Social movements and protest songs helped the shift of international thinking and eradicate inequality and social injustice (Reagon, p. 21). Social movements have over the decades developed significantly, from the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s t