Julians Freedom Singers

One way JULIAN accomplishes its mission is through artistic activism. During the civil rights movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) created a singing group called the SNCC Freedom Singers. The SNCC Freedom Singers recruited thousands of people to the movement by performing freedom songs at mass meetings and events across the nation. They brought the spirit to mass meetings, and the impact they had is one that we need now. For that reason, JULIAN has formed a singing group called JULIAN’s Freedom Singers—a group of local singers, modeled on SNCC’s Freedom Singers, who perform at JULIAN events, concerts, and will create albums in order to help recruit individuals to this movement and change hearts and minds. This group’s work lives in JULIAN’s fourth program area, Finding Freedom, which attacks the pillar of caste known as Dehumanization and Stigma. Like the original SNCC Freedom Singers, JULIAN’s Freedom Singers sing freedom songs that they write themselves along with well-known classics.

Song unifies people and draws them in, but song has been largely absent from modern-day civil rights. JULIAN seeks to change that.

The SNCC Freedom Singers understood that music does more than entertain — it moves the soul, unites communities,

and gives courage to those demanding change. Witnessing how a simple song could transform fear into strength  and hope into action, JULIAN set out to create its own modern expression of that legacy. Our version of the Freedom Singers celebrates the same powerful truth: that music can awaken conscience, deepen connection, and carry a movement forward.