I had the honor of hearing Dr. Martin Luther King preach at my home church in Atlantic City,New Jersey in the 1960s. This may have been immediately prior to or during the Democratic Convention and the protest efforts of Fanny Lou Hammer and the Freedom Democratic Party. Or it may have been before the 1963 March on Washington.

My church, Union Baptist Temple, was a center of the both efforts in Atlantic City, and I distinctly remember an African American choir from the South singing the gospel version of "We Shall Overcome" there. Their rendition of "We'll Overcome" was much faster than the civil rights vesion, but had similar words. No one held hands to sing that song. Instead the song was sung with handclap {and piano/organ} accompaniment. This precluded the holding hands with those next to you in the criss crossed fashion that is symbolic of the civil rights version of "We Shall Overcome". I mean no disparagement of the unifying symbolism of such hand holding and moving side to side while singing that Civil Rights song. It works, at least on an ephemeral level to show people that we are linked together...

But the spirit that I felt from the Gospel singing of "We'll Overcome" was so much more.

As I wrote in another thread, that Southern church choir reminded us so-called "Middle class" African Americans from the North of the difficult life threatening conditions that they constantly face and that our ancestors faced in the South. They exhorted us to put our souls in our singing and not worry about form and fashion.

That singing was a real spiritual experience for me.

I also had the honor of attending the 1963 March On Washington. However, there were so many thousands of people there and I was so very far away from the stage, that I was not aware that Joan Baez or anyone else sang "We Shall Overcome" at event.

The atmosphere at the March On Washington was carnival-like in the best sense of that word. There was a feeling of disregard for those things that normally separate people from each other such as race, age, and economic class. You could feel the energy of so many people united in a positive cause. It felt good.That also was a spiritual experience for me, and I dare say for most of the others there as well.
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The Encarta.com website says that "'We Shall Overcome' is one of many songs written during the sit-ins, prayer vigils, and poster walks during the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s" and that it is "loosely based on gospels and spirituals. However, see http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/overcomehistory.html, for this historical overview:

"The song [We Shall Overcome] was born in slavery.

It began as a field song, a work refrain that helped men and
women in bondage endure from sunup to sundown. They would
sing: "I'll be all right."

Like many songs that began in slavery, it had no one author
and no standard version. It spread and changed with the
seasons and generations and as slaves were sold from one
place to another in the American South.

In time there was a war, and the slaves won their freedom,
but only in a legal sense. The song survived in a new time
of lynching and Jim Crow. In 1901, as laws decreeing
separation between the races were being erected, a Methodist
minister named Charles Albert Tindley published a kindred
version: "I'll Overcome Someday."

It was a song of hope, a hymn for a better tomorrow. It
spread through black churches in the South and in the North,
and then through the Southern labor movement.

And in the year that the second World War ended, a faction
of black women were on strike, picketing the owners of a
tobacco plant in Charleston, S.C., at a time when mill
owners controlled almost everything and everyone, white and
black, and at a time when standing up for your rights could
mean a one-way trip in the back of a police car.

The strike dragged on and the women grew disheartened, and
as the rain came down, many dropped off the picket line.

One of the holdouts began to sing the song, vowing to
overcome the odds. Soon they all were singing. In the spirit
of union, they sang "we" instead of "I." And they invented a
new verse:

We will win our rights.

And when the strike was over, they had won their rights, or
at least a contract, and in that time and place that meant
something.

Two of the women visited a union and civil rights training
school far from home, in the Tennessee countryside. It was
at the Highlander Center that they taught the song and its
new verse to a new generation.

Along the way, the "will" became "shall," an old word, one
that had the sound of the Bible in it, and people sang

We shall overcome

We shall overcome

We shall overcome someday.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe

We shall overcome someday."
end of quote

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Those interested can go to that site for more information on the event that is said to have sparked the creation of the "We are not afraid" verse etc.

Sorry, I STILL can't figure out how to make those blue clickies, but I've not given up.