I would think that a movement without music would crumble.
Music picks up people's spirits.
Bishop Desmond Tutu used the song as he tried to help people in the United States envision what his country went through in its painful struggle toward equality and justice. This powerful song of freedom, whose origins extend to the black church in the southern United States, was used by the labor movement in the 1940s and rose to international prominence as the theme song of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Today, it has become an international symbol of protest movements throughout the world. A musician at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, a movement gathering place in the 1960s, Guy introduced the music of protest to young civil rights activists who were preparing to launch demonstrations throughout the South. Believing that group singing could be a strong unifying force in times of struggle, Guy taught the young resisters many of the southern gospel and religious songs, changing a word here and there to adapt it to their cause.