I don't know if this is the proper protest song thread to refresh to post this or not, as there seems to be plenty of them!

But I am interested in both how the songs/singers have changed over time, as well as how we perceive the different strands of them.

While this thread speaks to African American protest songs, I am thinking of other protest songs of the same era as the civil rights movement, and how different they were.

First, many of the protest songs of the anti-war movement weren't folk songs, but rock songs. Going to You Tube and searching 'protest songs' brought up this gal, who has created a list of "top ten" protest songs, and done a clip on each. Thought some here might be interested in it here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=protest+songs&search_type=

I would add, the protest songs of the United Farmworkers and the Chicano movement were diffferent too, and they seemed to migrate and morph into protest songs on the Central American wars of the 1980s, to what is now the immigration movement, School of the Americas protests, etc.

And then, there seems to be a whole other genre of protest songs that have evolved surrounding political conventions over the years too, which will be seeing (if the media allows us to, that is) soon enough.

Very interesting thread!