Odetta Holmes: Voice of Civil Rights
Odetta Holmes
Voice of Civil Rights
“No one can dub you with dignity. That’s yours to claim.” – Odetta Holmes
Odetta Holmes—known simply as Odetta—was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 31, 1930. At age six, she moved to Los Angeles, where she studied music at the Los Angeles City College. Coached by a music teacher who heard her singing after school, the classically trained singer discovered folk music in her teens. Odetta created a name for herself using her powerful voice and acoustic guitar to give life to songs usually sung by ordinary people, as well as prison songs and slave plantation spirituals. Attention from Harry Belafonte helped push her into the national spotlight in the early 1950s.
Cited as a primary influence for songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Odetta became a leader in American folk music. Injecting her songs with messages of equality and social justice, Odetta took an active role in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where she sang “O Freedom.” Her performance would forever serve as a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. going on to dub Odetta as “the queen of American folk music.” Despite this title, Odetta considered her role to be “one of the privates in a very big army.”
In 1999, Odetta was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Medal of the Arts. President Bill Clinton said her career showed “us all that songs have the power to change the heart and change the world.” Odetta was still performing as recently as October 2008 and had expressed wishes to sing at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. She died from heart disease at the age of 77 on December 2, 2008, in New York City.
