Just an addition to George Seto & Jim Dixon's excellent posts.

Last night on CBC television, The Passionate Eye, there was a 90 minute film on this song with many versions being sung.
The story is told in the above posts, except that George Weiss became rich and Solomon Linda and his family have never received a dime. A South African journalist is trying to get Weiss etc. to cough up some money for Linda's family. Peter Seeger is interviewed and says he got the song from Linda's record via a Decca rep--I think it was Lomax. He does not remember if he got any royalties, but he did not send anything to Linda.

Linda died in poverty in 2000 (I think). Excellent film and great to hear the early version, and to hear his daughter's singing the song recently.

Classic story. Everyone made buckets of money, particularly Weiss, except the poor black originator. Weiss would not be interviewed for the film, but there is a clip of him on a TV show saying "I wrote the song".

Richard Wright