Newly discovered research now strongly suggests that the original source of "We Shall Overcome" was a gospel hymn entitled "If My Jesus Wills" composed sometime between 1932 and 1942 and copyrighted in 1954 by African-American Baptist choir director Louise Shropshire. Shropshire's was a close friend, civil rights ally and spiritual confidant of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

Lyrics to Louise Shropshire's "If My Jesus Wills" (copyright 1954):

I'll Overcome, I'll Overcome, I'll Overcome Someday
If My Jesus Wills, I Do Believe, I'll Overcome Someday

As they waited for the candidate to arrive and the main event to begin, a three-piece band stood onstage and played a spare rendition of “We Shall Overcome.”

The gospel hymn that became an iconic anthem of the Civil Rights Movement is weighty with history and struggle. To invoke “We Shall Overcome” on behalf of a presidential candidate would be dicey in any venue. To do it in the quickly gentrifying black mecca of Oakland, in front of a crowd that was much whiter than those that typically gather for rallies in the city, is dicier still. To do it in a place officially named Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, after a Japanese-American civil rights leader, and informally known to many locals as Oscar Grant Plaza, after a black man killed by police while handcuffed on a Oakland subway platform — let’s just say it would have made me uncomfortable for a black man to use this song in this context. And though the band was fronted by a black woman, Bernie Sanders, as you may have heard, is a white guy from Vermont.