Watch The Freedom Singers perform "We Are Soldiers in the Army" on August 10, 1996, in Washington, D.C. Music was essential to the African-American struggle for civil rights and equality. This song demonstrates how the Black American traditional song repertoire and older styles of singing were used to inspire and organize the Civil Rights Movement. The singers here remind us that the days of open discrimination and bigotry are not far behind us, and that "it's people's hearts we're trying to change now." The a cappella quartet features legendary civil rights activists and singers Rutha Harris, Charles Neblett, Bettie Mae Fikes, and Cordell Reagon.

The Freedom Singers are featured on Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966,

This double-CD reissue documents a central aspect of the cultural environment of the Civil Rights Movement, acknowledging songs as the language that focused people's energy. These 43 tracks are a series of musical images, of a people in conversation about their determination to be free. Many of the songs were recorded live in mass meetings held in churches, where people from different life experiences, predominantly black, with a few white supporters, came together in a common struggle. These freedom songs draw from spirituals, gospel, rhythm and blues, football chants, blues and calypso forms. The enclosed booklet written by Bernice Johnson Reagon provides rare historic photographs along with the powerful story of African American musical culture and its role in the Civil Rights Movement. "The music of the spirit with the history of the flesh." — New York Daily News