It feels like you can’t watch the news or scroll through social media these days without hearing the word “woke”. It gets thrown around constantly, often as a lazy insult for anything someone happens to disagree with. A movie, a company, a politician, you name it. The word has been used so much in so many different ways that for most people, it’s lost any real meaning it once had.
But the word did have a very powerful, specific meaning at one point. It was more than just the dictionary definition of waking up from sleep. It was a term born from injustice, a warning to the wise, and a concept that has its roots in Shreveport, Louisiana. That’s right, the entire modern political debate around this one little word can be traced back to a local music legend.
The Shreveport Legend Behind the Term Woke
Long before the internet arguments and cable news debates, there was Huddie Ledbetter. Most people know him by his iconic stage name, Lead Belly. He was a trailblazing musician from the Shreveport area, whose influence on American music is almost impossible to overstate.
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