Arthur C. Jones
© 2004 by The Spirituals Project
No portion of this material may be reproduced by any means without written permission from The Spirituals Project.

The singing of spirituals in North America in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries was inextricably connected to the ongoing struggle for freedom forged by women and men in the enslaved African community. The association between singing and freedom began early. When newly captured Africans were loaded like cattle into the holds of slave ships during the Middle Passage¹ (the voyage from the west coast of Africa to the Americas), singing was one of the few protest tools they had at their disposal. In his book There is a River, historian Vincent Harding describes the fact that during the Middle Passage some Africans, resisting the very idea of being held captive against their will, decided to jump overboard into shark infested waters. As they dove to their deaths, Harding reports, these African women and men often sang “songs of triumph,” affirming the fact that – in addition to the feelings of despair that must have been prevalent among the captives – their suicides, punctuated by singing, served ultimately as acts of defiant protest and triumph.

There is no question that, above all else, the spirituals created and first sung by enslaved Africans after they arrived in North America figured prominently in the long struggle for freedom and dignity, a struggle that would continue through nearly 250 years of slavery, into the post-Civil War Reconstruction period², through the twentieth century Jim Crow era³, into the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and continuing to the present day. All along this long road to freedom, the singing of spirituals and songs inspired by spirituals would be a constant companion, ally and tool.