Freedom Songs – Genealogy

 

Updated September 28, 2007

 

 

 

As you scroll through this web page, you’ll see Freedom Songs from the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, and a “genealogy” tracing their history from Black Sacred Music, Spirituals and other eras of African American musical traditions.   

 

Each Freedom Song is described individually.   So far, these songs are described: Oh Pritchett, Oh Kelly; Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me Around; This Little Light; Wade in the Water; Free At Last; We Shall Overcome. 

 

After each Freedom Song, there is a section that provides some context on different eras – Black Sacred Music/Slave Songs, Underground Railroad and the Civil War, Spirituals, Labor Union Movement, and Black Power eras.   These sections are not in the least intended to be exhaustive descriptions of those powerful times and their music, but will give you a chance to listen to some other songs from each era. 

 

The Bibliography and Credits link in each section will take you to a listing of not only books and articles, but music CDs and other audio clips, songbooks and sheet music, film, video, web sites, and teacher’s guides.   There is also an overall Bibliography; at the moment, that Bibliography only lists the books that were consulted for this project, but I am in the process of adding articles, music CDs, online teaching resources, and other web sites.  That update should be complete by the end of October, 2007.

 

I hope you find this web page fun to listen to, and that you will be inspired to sing your own songs of freedom!   All feedback welcome: mrm@sonic.net, Marianne Mueller.

 

 

 

Beware a revolution that comes singing (unattributed)

 

 

Cordell Reagon, tenor

Bernice Johnson, alto

Charles Neblett, baritone

Rutha Harris, soprano

 

1. Oh Pritchett, Oh Kelly is derived from Rockin’ Jerusalem

 

Music

 

 

Lyrics

 

Notes

·        Bertha Gober and Janie Lee Culbreath created the Freedom Song version while in jail in Albany, Georgia

·        Oh Mary, Oh Martha BECOMES Oh Pritchett, Oh Kelly for Laurie Pritchett, chief of police and Asa Kelly, the mayor of Albany Georgia. 

·        Jerusalem BECOMES freedom

·        church getting higher BECOMES bails’ gets higher

·        rockin’ Jerusalem BECOMES  prayin’ in jail

Bibliography & Credits

 

 

 

 

I don’t see anyone having struggle separate from music.  I would think that a movement without music would crumble.  Music picks up people’s spirits.  Anytime you can get something that lifts your spirits and also speaks to the reality of your life, even the reality of oppression, and at the same time is talking about how you can really overcome: that’s terribly important stuff.  - Rev. C.T. Vivian

 

 

 

 

2. Black Sacred Music/Slave Songs
(16th c. – Emancipation in 1863)

 

 

“They told a tale of woe, which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long, and deep; breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.  The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them.  The mere recurrence, even now, affects my spirit, and while I am writing these lines, my tears are falling.  To those songs I trace my first glimmering conceptions of the dehumanizing character of slavery.  I can never get rid of that conception.  Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds.” – Frederick Douglass, born in Maryland around 1820 as a slave; he escaped. 

Music

 

  • No recordings from prior to 1863 (or, prior to 1935!)
  • Wallace Quarterman, a former slave, sings Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land (1935) [30 seconds] [full song; 4:12]

 

Lyrics

 

  • List of songbooks and song titles

 

Notes

 

  • Overarching theme: Endure (pray, suffer, persevere) now; Deliverance (new life, heaven, reprieve, justice) comes later

“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.  And so by fateful change the Negro folk-song – the rhythmic cry of the slave – stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas.  It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”  --W.E.B. DuBois

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

 

 

3. Ain’ Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around possibly derived from I’ll Never Turn Back, No More

 

Music

 

  • “…segregation…” - SNCC Freedom Singers (1962): [38 seconds] [full song; 2:30]
  • “…Chief Pritchett…” - SNCC Freedom Singers (1963): [56 seconds] [full song; 2:12]
  • “…jail house…” “…injunction” – Brianna Clark (2005): [23 seconds]

 

 

Notes

 

  • Chief Pritchett certainly inspired song!  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., remarked that Pritchett asked for the Albany demonstrators to sing this song, and seemed to enjoy hearing it, while the other jailers just stared and listened.  (Autobiography, p. 164)
  • Irony of SNCC workers singing this song as they turned around from the second attempted march from Selma to Montgomery
  • Infinitely adaptable and used by every protest movement since the 1960s
  • Frequently attributed to slave-era spiritual
  • R. Nathaniel Dett at Hampton Institute (first African American Musical Director, 1913 - 1932) arranged I’ll Never Turn Back, No More (but this is an unlikely connection)

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

Bob Ledbetter in 1935

 

 

John A. Lomax, interviewing former slave Bob Ledbetter in 1935: I heard a story about a judge asking a colored boy on the witness stand, he said, "Jim, can you read writing?" He said, "No sir, Judge. I can't even read reading." [all laugh] But you can read reading and writing both. – From the Library of Congress transcript of the interviews, Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Story

 

 

 

 

 

4. Underground Railroad and the Civil War

 

Music

 

·        Steal Away [12 seconds] [full song; 1:32]

·        Oh, Freedom [30 seconds] [full song; 3:30]

·        Follow the Drinking Gourd [14 seconds] [full song; 2:53]

·        Ain’t I A Woman [48 seconds] [full song; 2:14]

 

Lyrics

 

·        Steal Away

·        Oh, Freedom

Oh freedom
Oh freedom
Oh freedom over me!
And before I’d be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

No more moaning [“darkness”, in other versions]
No more moaning
No more moaning over me!
And before…

There’ll be singing…
There’ll be shouting…
There’ll be praying…

·        Follow the Drinking Gourd

 

Follow the drinkin’ gourd,

Follow the drinkin’ gourd,

For the Old Man is a comin’

For to carry you to freedom,

If you follow the drinkin’ gourd.

 

Versus

 

When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,

Follow the drinking gourd.

For the Old Man is waiting for to carry you to freedom

If you follow the drinkin’ gourd

The river bank will make a very good road.

Left foot, peg foot, traveling on,

Follow the drinkin’ gourd.

 

 

Notes

 

·        Signal songs of escape

·        The first tour of the Fisk Jubilee Singers is said to have followed the path of the Underground Railway

·        Dena Epstein, “Sinful Songs and Spirituals”, reports of a journalist who filed from the camp of a Black regiment near Petersburg, Virginia, just before the battle of the “Crater” on July 30, 1864: “Any striking event or piece of news … was followed by long silence.  They sat about in groups, “studying”, as they called it … When the spirit moved, one of their singers would uplift a mighty voice, like a bard of old, in a wild sort of chant.  If he did not strike a sympathetic chord in his hearers, if they did not find in his utterance the exponent of their idea, he would sing it again and again, altering sometimes the words or more often the music.  If his changes met general acceptance, one voice after another would chime in; a rough harmony of three parts would add itself; other groups would join his, and the song became the song of the command.  … The night we learned that we were to lead the charge the news filled them too full for ordinary utterance. … They formed circles in their company streets and were sitting on the ground intently and solemnly “studying.”  At last a heavy voice began to sing, “We-e look li-ke me-en a-a marchin’ on, we looks li-ike men-er-war.”  Over and over again he sang it, making slight changes.  The rest watched him intently; no sign of approval or disapproval escaped their lips, or appeared on their faces.  All at once, when his refrain had struck the right response in their ears, his group took it up, and shortly half a thousand voices were upraised.”  (From If you don’t go, don’t hinder me, p. 80)

·        From the PBS web site for the series American Roots Music: “STEAL AWAY is another religious song that has acquired many valences. In a narrow sense, it is important because it was traditionally the first spiritual sung in public by the young Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1871. The group had been singing formal European choir music when, at a church convention in Ohio, their director urged them to sing one of the old slave songs they had heard their fathers and mothers sing. The result was an introduction of black folk music to the American public. But far before then, "Steal Away" was being used for quite another purpose: as a code song urging slaves to run away to the North on the Underground Railroad.

     Steal away, steal away home,
     I ain't got long to stay here.

Nat Turner, leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia, used the song to summon his followers to secret meetings, and some feel he might have actually written the song in about 1825.”                     

 

·        One theory has it that “Oh, Freedom” was written during the Civil War by emancipated black soldiers in the Union Army as they fought to end slavery.

·        Follow the Drinking Gourd - Follow the big dipper in the sky to freedom. The North Star beamed forth from the heavens parallel to the handle of the big dipper - the gourd. To find freedom, the slave followed the gourd North.  The “Old Man” could refer to God, but this is open to interpretation.  The river bank would be a good escape route.  One of a myriad examples of coded lyrics.

·        The web site Coded Slave Songs analyzes “Follow the Drinking Gourd” in particular.

·        The lyrics of “Ain’t I A Woman” are directly from a speech delivered by the famous Underground Railroad conductor and feminist, Sojourner Truth.  See If you don’t go, don’t hinder me for concise and stirring story of Isabella , born a slave and become the anti-slavery activist Sojourner Truth (1797 – 1883).  

 

                                   

 

Sojourner Truth (Acrylic on Canvas), and photograph

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

 

“It was not until I found myself in a situation where I could choose between an immediate safety and an action that would endanger me that I understood that often, if you want to be changed or healed or to be different, you cannot always steer around trouble.  Sometimes you have to go through trouble … I walked through troubled waters – God-troubled waters – and I have never been the same since.”  Bernice Johnson Reagon, If you don’t go don’t hinder me, p.130 

 

 

 

 

5. This Little Light                                                                                                              

 

Music

 

 

Notes

 

  • Traced back to Fisk Jubilee Singers, and before, as a spiritual
  • “I” song – individual personal commitment to freedom struggle
  • Infinitely variable and adaptable

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

6. Spirituals – Chorales and Touring Groups

 

·        Fisk Jubilee Singers (1871 – present).  See the brief history on a web site at Tennessee State University.

·        Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) (1861 – present)

·        Georgia Sea Island Singers (18th c. (?) – present)  Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers became for Bernice Johnson Reagon, of the SNCC Freedom Singers, a living link to the culture of slavery.  Bessie Jones was born in Smithville, Georgia, on February 8, 1902.  Bernice met Bessie Jones at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival where the SNCC Freedom Singers were performing along with Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, and a group of Black men who had done time in the Texas state penitentiary doing prison work songs.  The Georgia Sea Island singers were presented by folklorist Alan Lomax.   
                  

John Avery Lomax (worked with Alan Lomax)

·        Highlander Folk School (now Highlander Research and Education Center) (1932 – present). 

·        SNCC Freedom Singers (1960 – 1966).  Six SNCC leaders speak.

 

 

At a (SNCC? SCLC?) mass meeting … and SNCC buttons

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

 

"There is no path to peace. Peace is the path."

- Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

 

7. Wade in the Water – This Section Incomplete, scheduled to be completed by the end of October, 2007

 

Music

 

  • Sheet music and 3 stanzas from Ev’ry Time I Feel The Spirt: Negro Spirituals 1600-1870 [page 1] [page 2]
  • SNCC Freedom Singers led by Fannie Lou Hamer (1963): [43 seconds] [full song; 2:30]
  • Kim and Reggie Harris on Steal Away (1984): [32 seconds] [full song; 3:35]
  • Oddly enough, a YouTube video by someone who goes by the user id Aarika83.   Almost completely dark, but it’s spirited, and the folks are clapping, and the singing is good.  Recorded on May 4, 2007 – so this shows that this spiritual still moves people enough that they put it on YouTube.  

 

 

  

Fannie Lou Hamer – 3 photos!

 

 

 

Lyrics

 

Wade in the water, wade in the water children

Wade in the water, God’s gonna trouble the water.

 

See those children dressed in white

The leader looks like that Israelite.

 

See those children dressed in red

They look like the children that Moses led.

 

See those children dressed in blue

They look like my people marching through.

 

Some say Peter and some say Paul

Ain’ but the one God made us all.

 

Some come cripple and some come lame

But I come stepping in Jesus name.

 

Notes

 

  • Traced back to Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman (If you don’t go, don’t hinder me, p. 128)

 

  • Derived from the New Testament parable of Jesus coming to the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, John 5:2-9.  “For an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and troubled the water; whoever stepped in first after the troubling of the water was healed …”  A man who was lame had been waiting 38 years, but had no one to carry him into the water.  When Jesus saw him, he said “Rise, take up your pallet and walk.”  And at once the man was healed. 
  • Wikipedia claims that “Wade in the Water” serves as instructions for escaping slaves, who could better escape detection by wading in the water and not leaving footprints for the bloodhounds to sense.   Bernice Johnson Reagon’s explanation, which meshes with every web site on Negro Spirituals, seems to be the accurate one.

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

 

 

Max Roach, jazz drummer

 

8. Black Power - This Section Incomplete, scheduled to be completed by the end of October, 2007

 

 

Discography

 

Notes

 

·        Seemingly radical shift in music

·        Towards a new identity, one that is not closely identified with historical struggle of slavery, but rather rejects that self-image/victimization in favor of Black Consciousness (The author of this project is guilty of severely misrepresenting the movement out of ignorance)

·        What does this shift say to Bernice Johnson Reagon’s notion (and others’ notions) that the roots of the freedom struggle are spiritually necessary, and that music in its beauty and transcendence can heal – is the goal of Black Power music to heal, or to raise consciousness, or both, or neither …?

 

 

 

 

 

9. Free At Last - This Section Incomplete, scheduled to be completed by the end of October, 2007

 

 

Music

 

  • Version from Underground Railroad collection

 

 

Notes

 

  • African American preacher, born a slave and preaching in the 1850s, referred to “Free At Last” in his writing.   William H. Robinson, b. 1948, From Log Cabin to the Pulpit, or, Fifteen Years of Slavery.  See http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/robinson/menu.html for the online version of this book.

 

  • Traced back to Underground Railroad

 

  • Documented in (at least) four of the songbooks studied for this project (note that not all titles are listed for each songbook)

 

  • Famously referenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the “I Have A Dream” speech, as well as many other speeches:

 

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"  -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

 

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

 

10. We Shall Overcome - This Section Incomplete, scheduled to be completed by the end of October, 2007.  In addition, a more thorough investigation of the history and development of “We Shall Overcome”, including its impact and worldwide spread since the 1960s, is in progress.

 

Music:

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, Disc I, Track 21 (Fannie Lou Hamer, songleader)

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, Disc II, Track 22 (SNCC Freedom Singers)

Sing for Freedom, Disc I, Track 24

Sing for Freedom, Disc II, Track 26 - also songleader example - Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Rutha Harris, Charles Neblett with Dorothy Cotton, Pete Seeger and the audience

MLK Jr. recounts: In midst of riot in Birmingham - A.D. King's home bombed. Room 30 of Gaston Motel (MLK's room) bombed. Led to riots, which led to beatings. Phone call placed to King. "There in the background as he talked, I heard a swelling burst of beautiful song." With their feet planted in the rubble of debris, threatened by criminal violence and hatred, followers of the movement were singing "We Shall Overcome". (pg. 215, Autobio)

From Black Sacred music (I'll Be All Right/Church Praising, Testifying, Being Happy Together - varying endings: I'll be all right; I'll overcome; I'll fly away - carved out life in belief that if they remained righteous, good times would come) to Gospel (I Will Overcome) to 1940s agricultural workers union song - successful strike in 45-6- the start of organizing and music an important part of that meeting - integrated union but whites didn't sing - they just opened the meetings but the black meetings were religious with prayer and song - in 60, brought to sit-ins - Guy Carawan led singing of WSO at first meeting of SNCC in April 61 - and finally WSO of civil rights movement a new song. And then it had to be copyrighted (by Guy Carawan) but funds for Highlander. [PhD Dissertation, Bernice Johnson Reagon]

Pres. Johnson famously quoted "We Shall Overcome" at culmination of televised emotional speech proposing civil rights legislation in 1965 - March 15, 1965 - in midst of Selma-Montgomery march.

 

Music

 

Bibliography and Credits

 

 

 

11. Not yet covered but should be covered: Prison Songs; Labor Union Movement, 1955-1965 Civil Rights Movement songs other than those sung by the SNCC Freedom Singers