Page "Amazing Grace" Paragraph 15

Mahalia Jackson's 1947 version received significant radio airplay, and as her popularity grew throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she often sang it at public events such as concerts at Carnegie Hall.

Author James Basker states that the song has been employed by African Americans as the " paradigmatic Negro spiritual " because it expresses the joy felt at being delivered from slavery and worldly miseries.

Anthony Heilbut, author of The Gospel Sound, states that the " dangers, toils, and snares " of Newton's words are a " universal testimony " of the African American experience.

In the 1960s with the African American Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, the song took on a political tone.

Mahalia Jackson employed " Amazing Grace " for Civil Rights marchers, writing that she used it " to give magical protection — a charm to ward off danger, an incantation to the angels of heaven to descend ...

I was not sure the magic worked outside the church walls ... in the open air of Mississippi.

But I wasn't taking any chances.

" Folk singer Judy Collins, who knew the song before she could remember learning it, witnessed Fannie Lou Hamer leading marchers in Mississippi in 1964, singing " Amazing Grace ".

Collins also considered it a talisman of sorts, and saw its equal emotional impact on the marchers, witnesses, and law enforcement who opposed the civil rights demonstrators.

According to fellow folk singer Joan Baez, it was one of the most requested songs from her audiences, but she never realized its origin as a hymn ; by the time she was singing it in the 1960s she said it had " developed a life of its own ".

It even made an appearance at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 during Arlo Guthrie's performance.