Gene Boutilier:  This song has lots of different lives, because it has been sung not only in the union, but in the civil rights movement, and before that, as an old church song.  It was wonderful, as the farm worker strike spread to the cities, to have African-American congregations adding the Spanish verses, Nosotros Venceremos, in solidarity with the Union .

And right after Dr. King’s death, in the Poor People’s campaign, we traveled by mule train and other ways to Washington DC from all over the country.  I was on that mule train. The multilingual version of this song was a major point of unity. 

Adding the verse in Spanish gave We Shall Overcome an added dimension.  It linked the farm workers to the wider struggle for integration, civil rights, and justice.

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Gene Boutilier