"Without the songs of the movement, personally I believe that there wouldn't have been a movement," says Rutha Mae Harris, one of the original Freedom Singers.
Fifty years ago, the Freedom Singers performed along with artists like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Mahalia Jackson at the March on Washington.
The group came together in Albany, Georgia in 1962. Their mission was to raise money and awareness for the civil rights movement. It's a journey that took them more than 50,000 miles, across over 40 states in less than a year.
Harris tells NPR's Michel Martin that the Freedom Singers were in California when they got a call to board a plane that Harry Belafonte had chartered.
"That's how we got to the March on Washington. We were on the plane with all these movie stars. And the five of us had our own room on the plane," she says. "We thought we were in high heaven."