Keyaira and Yukhari
Negro Spirituals during Slavery
How did Negro spirituals reflect African Americans feelings about the treatment they received during slavery?
Negro spirituals were used by enslaved Africans to illustrate the struggles that they faced during slavery. Spirituals were mostly monophonic, but in modern times are in harmonized choral arrangements. The spirituals reflected the slaves’ need to express their new faith of Christianity. Also, the songs were used to communicate with one another without the knowledge of their masters. For example, Harriet Tubman and slaves would sing “The Gospel Train” or “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” to use as codes often related to escaping to freedom. Notable singers of these songs are Marian Anderson, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and many others who were not identified.
Meaning of Wade in the Water
Harriet Tubman used this song to tell fugitive slaves to get off the trail of freedom and into the water to make sure the dogs slave catchers used wouldn't sniff out their trail. Slaves walking through the water wouldn't leave a scent on the trail that dogs could follow.
Meaning of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Meaning of Go Down Moses and Deep River
Water was a chief aspect of slave experience. Africans began their captivity—the “middle passage”—by traveling across the ocean to a new land in slave ships. Water is an important image in the Negro spiritual. The Ohio River represented the line between slavery and freedom on the Underground Railroad. “Deep river, my home is over Jordan” is a song that finds hope on the other side of the river. “Go Down, Moses” is a spiritual of deliverance in which Pharaoh’s armies were drowned in the sea.
Meaning of Roll Jordan Roll
The river Jordan in traditional Negro spirituals became a symbolic borderland not only between this world and the next but also between life's adversities and the achievement of freedom and justice on Earth.
Music during the Civil Rights Movement was slightly different than the Negro Spirituals used by slaves. African Americans during the Civil RIghts Movement utilized music to motivate them through long marches, while slaves used music to motivate them as they worked in the fields. However, both African Americans and slaves used music to convey and illustrate their harassment and brutality they experienced. For example, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” was a poignant Blues song employed during the Civil RIghts Movement to depict the horrors of lynching. Even though their music were slightly different, slaves and African Americans during their fight for equal protection under the law impacted society, and through their use of music, influenced many to persevere through their hardships of inequality.
Slaves Working in the Cotton Fields
Slaves Were Looked at as Property
One Slogan During the Civil Rights Movement
Historical Thinking (Point of View):
Many of the slaves were deprived of their cultural background and families; however they used music as a gateway to escape from the realities of their hardships. As they adopted Christianity, Negro Spirituals became the slaves’ mouthpiece to express their psychological struggles of desperation and loss of hope. They infused their religious beliefs to create a deeply personal way to cope with the oppression of their enslavement.