Oh, Freedom - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Oh, Freedom is a post Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

freedom song, notably associated with Odetta

Odetta

Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...

, who recorded it as part of the Spiritual Trilogy, on her "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues

Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues

Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues is the debut solo album by American folk singer Odetta, first released in 1956.Like much of Odetta's early work, Ballads and Blues combines traditional songs with blues covers...

", and Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

, who first performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington, and has since performed the song live numerous times throughout the years, both during her concerts and at other events.

Some versions of the fourth verse contain the line "No more tommin'," where the word tommin is a derogatory term denoting some black men's extreme submissiveness towards a white person or white people. The word seems to have been derived from Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...

's fictitious character Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

. These words are not part in the traditional verses, but a later addition, itself part of folk tradition in the USA, in which extra verses are added to traditional songs to highlight different personal feelings, agendas, or lyrical invention.