SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ASSIGNMENT

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Creating An African-American Culture

Module Introduction

People express cultural meaning through their language, food, sacred and secular rites, ceremonies, rituals, art,

music, dance, personal adornment, celebrations and many other socio-cultural customs and practices. (3)

Despite slavery’s strictures, African Americans created their own unique culture and cultural identity,

particularly through language and religion, during the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

This module explores how black people created an African American culture and identity, how they used

language, literacy, religion, and music, such as spirituals, hymns, and hollers, to navigate and resist a

dehumanizing slave system and strengthen the bonds of their communities. (1)

Learning Outcomes

This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course:

• To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context

of American History.

• To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current

events with historical information.(1)

Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are:

• The student will be able to discuss the origins, evolution, and spread of racial slavery.

• The student will be able to describe the creation of a distinct African-American culture and how that

culture became part of the broader American culture. (1)

Module Objectives

Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to:

• Discuss the role of language and religion as they relate to the creation of a unique African American

culture.

• Analyze the roles of language and religion in shaping cultural identities in America today. (1)

Language

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For the first generations of Africans enslaved in the colonies, language accommodation and acculturation were a

necessity for their survival in the Western world. Depending upon when and where they came from in Africa, in

addition to their own languages, different African people had varying degrees of language competence in

English, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. As a result of trade with the Portuguese in the middle fifteenth

century, bilingualism arose among West Africans along the coast. In succeeding centuries, as West Africans

traded with the Dutch, French and English, some Africans continued to at least understand, and many to speak,

some form of one or more European languages. Even though they spoke many different African languages,

many Africans who had participated in long distance trading on the African continent spoke a “lingua franca” or

trade language that allowed them to communicate among themselves (Abrahams 1983:26). African sailors on

European vessels may have also spoken a “maritime jargon” (Berlin 1998; Birmingham 1981; McWhorter

1997, 2000a). The first generations of Africans and Europeans who came into contact with one another, like all

people of different language groups, spoke their own language and developed apidgin , language. Pidgins

included words and meaning from both languages that allowed them to communicate.

Over time, both Africans and Europeans communicated in some form of creole . People of Angola and West

Central Africa developed Angolar Creole Portuguese , a language still spoken by descendants of maroon slaves

who escaped from Portuguese plantations on São Tomé beginning in the middle sixteenth century. People who

were enslaved by the Spanish developed Spanish-based creoles, called Papiamentu Creole

Spanish .Palenquero is another Spanish creole developed by Africans in maroon settlements of what is now

Colombia, South America. Enslaved Africans in New Netherlands, later New York, developed a Dutch-based

creole, Negerhollands Creole Dutch , in Haiti and later in Louisiana people spoke a French-based creole, today

called Haitian Creole French . In the English colonies Africans spoke an English-based Atlantic Creole ,

generally called plantation creole. Lowcountry Africans spoke an English-based creole that came to be

called Gullah . Gullah is a language closely related to Krio a creole spoken in Sierra Leone. (3)

Enslaved African American Language

Gullah and other creoles emerged because enslaved Africans greatly outnumbered whites on colonial

plantations as occurred in the Lowcountry, especially on the sea islands where Gullah developed. John

McWhorter, a linguist, advances an “ Afrogenesis Theory ” of creole origins, stressing the importation of most

plantation creoles from West African trade settlements. There creole languages originated in interactions

between white traders and slaves, some of whom were eventually transported overseas (McWhorter 2000a,

2000b). The Afrogenesis Theory helps explain whyGullah and Krio are similar creoles.

Historian Lorena Walsh notes that, “ Gullah ,” attained creole status during the first decades of the 1700s, and

was learned and used by the second generation of slaves as their mother tongue. Around the same time, in the

1720 and 1730s, Anglican clergy were still reporting that Africans spoke little or no English but stood around in

groups talking among themselves in “strange languages (Walsh 1997:96–97).”

In the past, enslaved Africans from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida along the coast and

100 miles inland spoke Gullah . In the present, many of the descendants of the early Gullah speakers continue

to speak a form of the language (Hancock 1992:70–72; Geraty 1997). African American heritage preservation

efforts in the sea islands include attempts to maintain Gullah as a living language.

Runaway advertisements noted enslaved people’s distinctive language characteristics and level of language

proficiency as identifiers. A search of runaway advertisements 1736–1776 in the Virginia Gazette,

Williamsburg, Virginia yielded advertisements for five men described as “Angola negroes” or born in Angola.

Two could speak very good English, two “ speak English tolerably good ” and one was described as

stammering. Two advertisements identified “Eboe negroe.” One could “speak tolerable good English.” Jemmy,

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John and Boston in this image illustrate the range of English language competency among African-born men in

eighteenth century Virginia.

As part of a more extensive study of comments on language found in runaways advertisements in eight colonies

and, later, states, historian Michael Gomez examined the quality of English spoken by 99 Africans in Virginia

from 1736 to 1836. He found that the advertisement’s descriptions said 39 Africans spoke “none, little or very

little, 36 spoke “bad,” “very bad” or “broken” English and 24 spoke “good” or very good” English (1998:177–

180).

Figure 5-1: Virginia Gazette (Rind), Williamsburg, November

30, 1769 by Virginia Gazette is in the Public Domain .An

advertisement published by a subscriber looking for one of his

runaway slaves named Bristol.

According to Gomez, those African runaways 30 years of age or

older or who had been in North America more than 3 years were

most likely to speak good English. Like the Virginia Africans,

over 70 percent of Africans running away from South Carolina,

Georgia were also described as speaking “bad, very bad, very

little, or no English.” Among Louisiana runaways, they were

about equally divided between those who could speak French and

those that could not. Gomez found the few women in the study were slightly more likely than the men to speak

French or English (1998:179).

Many enslaved people were multi-lingual. “Without a doubt,” historian Philip Morgan contends, “blacks were

the most linguistically polyglot and proficient ethnic group in the Americas (2002:139).”

The continuous arrival of new African slaves influenced the language spoken by American-born Africans in the

rural colonial Chesapeake and Lowcountry regions up until 1807. Even after this date, smugglers sold Africans

in the region, right up until the Civil War (Kashif 2001). In contrast, many free African Americans in the

southern colonies became more acculturated in speech and literate, along with all other European cultural

customs, as they consciously sought to differentiate themselves from their enslaved sisters and brothers. (3)

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Spiritual Life: Public & Secret

Along with language, black people also created a unique African American culture through religious expression

and practices. By the eighteenth century, many of the people brought from West Central African to be enslaved

in the Americas were familiar if not converted to Catholicism. Before the American Revolution most black

Catholics lived in Maryland and in the areas that were to become Florida and Louisiana. In the American

colonies controlled by Catholic powers—the Portuguese, Spanish and French—African slaves were baptized as

Christians from the earliest days of slavery. But in the British-controlled Protestant colonies, planters showed

little interest in converting their slaves. Many feared that to accept slaves as Christians was to acknowledge that

“Negroes” were entitled to rights accorded other Christians—a dangerous message as far as

they were concerned.

As early as 1654, the English made provisions for “negro” servants to receive religious instruction and

education. Some planters made provisions in their will that their “negro servants be freed, that they should be

taught to read and write, make their own clothes and be brought up in the fear of God.” By 1770, it had become

the duty of masters acquiring free “negro children as apprenticed to agree to teach them reading, writing and

arithmetic” (Russell [1913] 1969:138).

Despite owner opposition, and the inability of some Africans to speak or understand English, by 1724 Anglican

clergymen had established small groups of African converts to Protestant Christianity in a number of parishes in

Virginia and Maryland. Their greatest success was in Bruton parish, Williamsburg, eight miles north of Carter’s

Grove, where approximately 200 Africans were baptized.

The slaves who lived at Carter’s Grove apparently chose to attend Bruton Parish church over other Anglican

churches located nearer to their homes and attended by the Burwell Family. Although the journey to

Willamsburg was longer it was also an occasion when they could meet with friends or relatives from Bray and

Kingsmill Farm or other surrounding plantations or farms (Russell [1913] 1969:138). In the last half of the

eighteenth century 1,122 “negro-baptisms were recorded” in Bruton Parish by the Anglican church (Wilson

1923:49).

The motivation for attending church was as likely to be a rare chance to meet without fear of planter

intervention as it was spiritual. Christians came from different generation groups and were as likely to be field

hands as they were to be domestic servants in the great houses. Christians included Africans and native-born

African Virginians. For some, the motivation was a reward of larger food rations or additional clothing. For

others it was an opportunity to learn to read.

South Carolinian colonists were the first to make systematic efforts to Christianize enslaved Africans and

African Americans in the early eighteenth century. Anglicans believed literacy was essential. As Anglican

missionaries reached out to enslaved Africans in South Carolina and Georgia they tried to teach at least a few to

read. Planters were hostile to the idea of slave literacy. They resisted by passing a law in 1734 that slaves could

not leave the plantation on “Sundays, fast days, and holy days without a ticket,” that is a pass. Fears of

insurrections led by literate slaves, such as the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, resulted in passage of the

New Negro Act of 1740, which curtailed the missionaries’ freedom to teach slaves to read and write English. In

spite of the law, Alexander Garden, an Anglican missionary, established the Charleston Negro School in 1743.

The school lasted twenty years. Garden purchased and taught two African American boys to read and write and

they became teachers of others. Over the next four years Garden graduated forty “scholars.” At its peak in 1755,

the school enrolled seventy African American children. This was a miniscule number considering there were

about 50,000 Africans and African Americans in the colony. It was, however, a start (Frey 1991:20–24).

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Figure 5-2: DE Unitas Fractum Bild 04 by David

Cranz is in the Public Domain .A 1757 drawing

titled, “Exorcism-Baptism of the Negroes,” that

shows African American slaves being baptized in a

Moravian Church in North Carolina.

Other Protestant sects also reached out to African

slaves in southern colonies. The Presbyterians

established a church on Edisto Island, South

Carolina between 1710 and 1720. Thirty years later,

Moravians, mostly missionaries to American

Indians, established a North Carolina church that

received African slaves into the congregation.

During the first Great Awakening of the 1740s,

itinerant Baptist and Methodist preachers spread the Gospel into slave communities. The Baptists and

Methodists did not insist on a well-educated clergy. They believed true preachers were called and anointed by

the spirit of God, not groomed in institutions of higher learning. If a converted slave demonstrated a call to

preach, he could potentially preach to both black and white audiences. Consequently, African American slaves

tended to most often join or attend Baptist and Methodist

churches. (Raboteau 1978:133–134; Creel 1988; 78–

80). (3) The first independent African American churches that

slaves established in the 1770s were a part of the Baptist

denomination: Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina,

First Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, and First

African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia. (1)

Family Worship in a Plantation in South Carolina (page

561) by unknown is in the Public Domain .From THE

ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS , December 5, 1863, p. 561.

A recording of a prayer from a Baptist church in

Livingston, Alabama (1939)

Prayer by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no known copyright restrictions. (8)

(Transcript)

Additional link to audio.

Public and Secret Religious Experience

The first Great Awakening accelerated the spread of Christianity and a Christian culture among African

Americans. The Presbyterians launched the first sporadic revivals in the 1740s. Baptist revivals began in the

1760s followed ten years later by the Methodists. With religious conversion came education for the enslaved, at

least education to read the Bible. By 1771, itinerant African American Baptist preachers were conducting

services, sometimes secretly, in and around Williamsburg, Virginia.

Aside from the names of a small number of runaway slaves who were described as fond of preaching or singing

hymns, many of the early African American preachers remain anonymous. The few names in the historical

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record were men of uncommon accomplishments in organizing churches, church schools, and mutual aid

societies in the South and as missionaries in Jamaica and Nova Scotia. All were born into slavery in Virginia.

All were Baptists. George Liele, born in 1737 was the first African American ordained as a Baptist minister. He

preached to whites and slaves on the indigo and rice plantations along the Savannah River in Georgia. He was

freed during the Revolutionary War in the will of his owner. Liele was forced to flee with the British to Jamaica

in order to escape re-enslavement by his owner’s heirs. Before he left, he baptized several converts, including

Reverend Andrew Bryan, who would continue his work in Georgia and as missionaries extend it abroad.

“Our brother Andrew was one of the black hearers of George Liele, … prior to the departure of George

Liele for Jamaica, he came up the Tybee River … and baptized our brother Andrew, with a wench of the

name of Hagar, both belonging to Jonathon Bryan, Esq.; these were the last performances of our Brother

George Liele in this quarter, About eight or nine months after his departure, Andrew began to exhort his

black hearers, with a few whites… (Letters showing the Rise of Early Negro Churches 1916:77–78)

Liele also baptized David George, a Virginia runaway. These men, and others, formed the nucleus of slaves

who were organized by a white preacher as the Silver Bluff Baptist Church between 1773 and 1775. George

began to preach during the Revolutionary War, but later fled with the British to Nova Scotia where he

established the second Baptist church in the province (Frey 1991:37–39).

In 1782, Andrew Bryan organized a church in Savannah that was certified in the Baptist Annual Register in

1788 as follows:

“This is to certify, that upon examination into the experiences and characters of a number of Ethiopians,

and adjacent to Savannah it appears God has brought them out of darkness into the light of the gospel…

This is to certify, that the Ethiopian church of Jesus Christ, have called their beloved Andrew to the work

of the ministry….” (Letters showing the Rise of Early Negro Churches 1916:78).

As the eighteenth century ended, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah erected its first building. By

1800, Bryan’s congregation had grown to about 700, leading to a reorganization that created the First Baptist

Church of Savannah. Fifty of Bryan’s adult members could read, having been taught the Bible and the Baptist

Confession of Faith. First African Baptist established the first black led Sunday school for African Americans,

and Henry Francis, who had been ordained by Bryan, operated a school for Georgia’s black children. (3)

Cultural Resistance: “Gimmee” That Old Time Religion!

Not all Africans and African Americans embraced Christianity, however. Some resisted by retaining their native

African spiritual practices or their Islamic faith. Historians point out that a number of Africans who arrived in

America were Muslims and that they never relinquished their faith in Islam.

There is relatively little historical documentation on eighteenth century enslaved Muslims in North America

making discussion of them less conclusive than that about enslaved Africans who were Christians or who

practiced indigenous traditional African religions. Some scholars believe that perhaps as many as 10% of

Africans enslaved in North America between 1711 and 1715 were Muslims and that the majority probably were

literate (Deeb 2002).

Islam was firmly established as a religion in Ancient Mali as early as the fourteenth century. As in other parts of

the world, Islamic conversion occurred through trade and migration far more often than by force. In West

Africa, prior to the eighteenth century, much of this conversion occurred through interaction of West Africans

with Berber traders who controlled the trans-Saharan trade routes. From the early seventeenth century through

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the late eighteenth century, the influence of Islam spread among the people in many parts of the Senegambia

region, the interior of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and as far south as the Bight of Benin.

According to historian Michael Gomez, the widespread influence of Islam in West Africa makes it highly likely

that the numbers of Muslim Africans enslaved was probably in the thousands (1998:86). The recurrence of

Muslim names among American-born Africans running away from enslavement in eighteenth century South

Carolina offers some evidence of Muslim people’s presence and their efforts to continue their faith

(Gomez 1998:60).

Historian Sylviane A. Diouf estimates at least 100,000 Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims,

including political and religious leaders, traders, students, Islamic scholars, and judges. In some cases, these

enslaved African Muslims were more educated than their American masters. According to Diouf, the captivity

of several of the notable Muslim slaves who left narratives of their experiences grew out of complex religious,

political, and social conflicts in West Africa after the disintegration of the Wolof Empire. Diouf argues, the

religious principles and practices of African Muslims, including their literacy, made them resistant to

enslavement and promoted their social differentiation from other enslaved Africans. As slaves, they were

prohibited from reading and writing and had no ink or paper. Instead they used wood tablets and organic plant

juices or stones to write with. Some wrote, in Arabic, verses of the Koran they knew by heart, so as not to forget

how to write. According to Diouf, Arabic was used by slaves to plot revolts in Guyana, Rio de Janeiro and

Santo Domingo because the language was not understood by slave owners. Manuscripts in Arabic of maps and

blueprints for revolts also have been found in North America, Jamaica and Trinidad (Diouf 1998).

Diouf contends many enslaved Muslims went to great efforts to preserve the pillars of Islamic ritual because it

allowed them “to impose a discipline on themselves rather than to submit to another people’s discipline”

(1998:162). Diouf identifies references in the historical literature of slavery to the persistence of Islamic cultural

practices among enslaved Muslims such as the wearing of turbans, beards, and protective rings; the use of

prayer mats, beads, and talismans ( gris-gris ); and the persistence of Islamic dietary customs. For

Diouf, saraka cakes cooked on Sapelo Island in Georgia were probably associated with sadakha or meritorious

alms offered in the name of Allah. She speculates that the circular ring shout performed in Sea Island praise or

prayer houses might have been a recreation of the Muslim custom of circumambulation of the Kaaba during the

pilgrimage in Mecca. Arabic literacy, according to Diouf, generated powers of resistance because it served as a

resource for spiritual inspiration and communal organization, “A tradition of defiance and rebellion

(1998:145).”

Priests of African traditional religions also often continued to hold their beliefs. Even though over time the

majority of Africans and African Americans became Christians, African Christianity and church rituals often

incorporated African beliefs and rituals. Some scholars suggest that Africans readily acculturated to

Christianity, especially those from West Central Africa, because of prior exposure to Christianity. Old ways

died hard and some never died out. Historian John Thornton points out that none of the Christian movements in

the Kongo brought about a radical break with Kongo religious or ideological past. Instead African Christianity

simply emphasized already active tendencies in the worldview of the Kongo people (Thornton 1983:62–63).

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Figure 5-4: Kongo Crucifix by Cliff1066 is licensed under CC

BY 2.0 .Image of a seventeenth century crucifix made by

Portuguese missionaries that combines the Kongo custom of

using scepters and staffs as emblems of power with the

representation of Christ as an African.

One of the central beliefs of the Kongo, for example, emphasizes

that human beings move through existence in counterclockwise

circularity like the movement of the sun, coming into life or

waking up in the east, grow to maturity reaching the height of

their powers in the north, die and pass out of life in the west into

life after death in the south then come back in the east being born

again (Fu-Kiah 1969; Thompson 1984; McGaffey 1986). Many

West African groups believe in life after death and some believes

that people are reborn in their descendants. These ideas, although

in a different context, blended well with Christian beliefs in life

after death and with the Christian belief being born again. 3

Performing Culture in Music & Dance

Not only did African Americans often blend traditional West

African spirituality with Christian beliefs, they also wove

together West African rhythms, shouts, and melodies with

European American tunes to create spiritual songs drawn from images and stories found in Bible. African

Americans also put their own unique cultural and musical stamp on a style of hymn singing called lined-out

hymnody. Lined-out hymn singing has roots in sixteenth and seventeenth century England and Scotland.

Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian missionaries taught lining out to slaves and poor whites in the South where

literacy was low and hymnbooks were few. Taken together, African American spirituals and hymns represent a

profound cultural expression and contribution that laid the foundation for future forms of American music

including the blues, soul, jazz, and even rock n’ roll and hip-hop.

African American spiritual songs took a variety of forms including shouts, anthems, and jubilees. “Styles

ranged from the exciting tempo and rhythmic stamp of the shout to the slow, drawn-out ‘sorrow songs’ which

usually come to mind when the spirituals are mentioned,” observes historian Albert J. Raboteau. “While the

lyrics and themes of the spirituals were drawn from Biblical verses and Christian hymns, and although the

music and melodies were strongly influenced by the sacred and secular songs of white Americans, the style in

which the slaves sang the spirituals was African.” (Raboteau, 74). The influence of West Africa could be heard

in the spirituals’ call-and-response form, syncopated rhythms, and the use of “blue” notes, which are tones in

the major and pentatonic scale that are “bent” into minor tones. African Americans also demonstrated their

West African heritage in their body movements, including hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and dance.

(Darden, 2004) (1)

The Ring Shout

The heritage of West Africa found perhaps its fullest expression in the spiritual form called the ring shout,

which seemed to thrive on the sea islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The ring shout combines

singing or shouting stories from the Bible with a religious form of dance that resembles shuffling. In a religious

setting, the shouters shuffle and stomp in a counterclockwise motion while clapping their hands to the shout’s

rhythm. Some African American slaves believed the ring shout was a central part of worship, often a

prerequisite to receiving the spirit or having a conversion experience. The ring shout, argues Raboteau, was thus

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a “two-way bridge connecting the core of West African religions—possession by the gods—to the core of

evangelical Protestantism—experience of conversion.” (Raboteau, 73)

During the Civil War, William Francis Allen, a northern educator, heard the religious singing of newly freed

slaves while in the Low Country of South Carolina. He later helped edit and publish the first collection of

African American religious songs in American history, Slave Songs of the United States . In an 1867 article

in The Nation , Allen described the ring shout in the following manner:

“…the true ‘shout’ takes place on Sundays or on ‘praise’ nights through the week, and either in the

praise-house or in some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held… The benches are

pushed back to the wall when the meeting is over, and old and young men and women… boys… young

girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the [spiritual] is struck, begin first

walking and by-and-by shuffling round, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the

floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire shouter,

and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle

they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes they song itself is also sung by the dancers…. Song

and dance alike are extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the

monotonous thud, thud, thud of feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise-house… It is not

unlikely that this remarkable religious ceremony is a relic of some African dance…” (Allen quoted

in Rabotaeu, 71)

During the 1930s, the folklorists Alan and John Lomax, found evidence of the ring shout still practiced in

Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, and the Bahamas, and versions of it in Haiti. (Rabotaeu, 1978, 70) The ring shout is

still performed today by the descendants of slaves, particularly in McIntosh County, Georgia. Versions of the

ring shout can also be seen today in some African American Primitive Baptist churches in Georgia and Florida.

Congregants often sing spirituals during the offering portion of the service and some will move toward the front

of church and “rock” counter-clockwise around the communion table while singing old spirituals like

“Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” (1)

Lined-Out Hymns

As Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian missionaries spread the gospel during the eighteenth and nineteenth

century, including into African American slave communities, they brought with them hymns composed by

English hymn writers such as Issac Watts, William Cowper, and Charles Wesley. In many poor white and slave

communities, church attendees could not read or afford hymnbooks. As a result, missionaries taught church

congregations the practice of lining out hymns. Lining out involved a preacher or deacon standing before a

congregation and reading the first lines of a hymn from a hymnbook or speaking them from memory. The

congregation, which most likely did not have hymnbooks or were usually unable to read them if they did, would

hear the lines intoned by the presenter and then respond by singing them, often very slowly, to a familiar tune

that fit the hymn’s meter. The practice of lining out originated in England following the Protestant Reformation

and spread to Scotland and then North America where the Puritans lined out the Psalms from their Bay Psalm

Book. Lining out quickly took hold among white and black Baptists in particular during the eighteenth century

and nineteenth century.

One slave master, and Presbyterian missionary, from Liberty County, Georgia, Charles Colcock Jones,

emphasized the importance of teaching hymns and psalms to slaves as way to dissuade them from singing the

“extravagant and nonsensical chants” and shouts “of their own composing.” Ironically, however, black slaves

used these European hymn and psalm texts to learn literacy. And by creating their own melodies, tunes, and

speech patterns when lining out the hymns, African Americans effectively “blackened” what was originally a

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European form of singing. African American slaves in turn created a unique African American musical sound

and culture that became the bedrock of later secular genres such as the blues. (Dargan, 2006)

William Francis Allen, who described the ring shout tradition among African American slaves during the Civil

War, also provided one of the most detailed and evocative descriptions of lined-out hymn singing among slaves

during the same time period:

“I went to the Praise House in the Quarters…. They were just beginning a hymn, which the preacher

deaconed [lined] out, two lines at a time. The tune was evidently Old Hundred, which was maintained

throughout by one voice or another, but curiously varied at every note so as to form an intricate

intertwining of harmonious sounds. It was something very different from anything I ever heard, and no

description I have read conveys any notion of it. There were no parts properly speaking, only now and

then a hint of a base or tenor, and the modulation seemed to be just the inspiration of the moment—no

effort at regularity, only that one or two voices kept up the air—but the ears are so good, and the time is

so perfectly kept… that there was very seldom a discordant note. It might be compared to the notes of

an organ or orchestra, where all harmony is poured out in accompaniment of the air.” (Allen quoted

in Dargan, 112–13)

Lined-out hymns in the black church also became known as long meter hymns, metered hymns, or “Dr. Watts”

because of the large number of hymns penned by Issac Watts. Until the late twentieth century, lined-out hymns

were almost always sung a capella—that is with voices only and without musical accompaniment.

George Pullen Jackson, a folklorist and professor, visited black Primitive Baptist churches in Alabama and

Jacksonville, Florida in the 1940s and heard congregants still singing lined-out hymns, which he sometimes

called “surge songs,” with great power and beauty:

“The ‘long meter’ hymns (absolute opposites of the spirituals in every sense) are sung in thousands of

unspoiled [black] congregations usually, but not exclusively, at the opening of the service. A deacon or

the elder ‘lines out’ a couplet of the text in a sing-song voice and at a fair speaking pace ending on

definite tone. This ‘tones’ the tune. The deacon then starts singing, and by the time he has sung through

the elaborately ornamented first syllable the whole congregation has joined in on the second syllable

with a volume of florid sound which ebbs and flows slowly, powerfully and at times majestically in

successive surges until the lined-out words have been sung…. No instrument is ever used.” (Jackson,

248)

The lined-out hymn singing tradition still thrives in some black churches, particularly in Missionary and

Primitive Baptist congregations. Black Primitive Baptists maintain the strongest tradition, however. They sing

numerous hymns from their hymnbook, The Primitive Hymns, which contains only texts and no musical

notations, during all parts of their church services. The Primitive Baptists also draw from the deepest well of

hymn tunes, which have been passed down orally over many generations. Primitive Baptist associations in

states such as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia also have their own unique hymn tunes

and rhythms while sharing the same hymn texts and manner of lining out. (1)

Below are two examples of lined-out hymns:

Go Preach My Gospel by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no know copyright restrictions. (9)

Additional link to audio.

Lyrics:

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“Go preach my gospel,” saith the Lord, “Bid the whole earth my grace receive, Explain to them my

sacred word, Bid them believe, obey, and live.” “I’ll make my great commission known, And ye shall

prove my gospel true.

Jesus, My God, I Know His Name by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no know copyright restrictions. (10)

Additional link to audio.

Lyrics:

Jesus, my God I know his name His name is on my soul He will not put my soul to shamebr Oh let my

holy Lord)

Black Secular Music

African Americans also created their own body of secular

songs during the trials of slavery. These included work songs

and hollers as well as drum rhythms and songs composed on

stringed instruments like banjos. Work songs helped to ease

the drudgery of plantation labor while hollers resembled

laments that provided emotional release or allowed slaves to

communicate covert messages that might spread from

plantation to plantation. These songs showed the individual

and collective creativity of black people and their desire to

create and maintain a sense of community and resist the

dehumanizing and destructive forces of slavery. (1)

Figure 5-5: Slave dance to banjo by Anonymous is in the Public Domain .The Old Plantation (anonymous

folk painting late 1700s). Depicts African-American slaves dancing to banjo and percussion

One example of how black people used music to create a sense of community is from Charleston, South

Carolina where African Americans would travel to rural areas to participate in countryside dances where they

danced all night. Slaves continued to hold countryside dances at night throughout the eighteenth century, even

after the Stono Rebellion in 1730 when slave dances were outlawed along with use or ownership of drums,

horns and other loud instruments (Morgan 1998:580–582).

Enslaved African Americans communicated with one another in hollers or calls derived from their musical

tradition of call and response. Callsare as musical ways “to communicate messages of all kinds-to bring people

in from the fields, to summon them to work, to attract the attention of a girl in the distance, to signal hunting

dogs, or simply to make one’s presence known Courlander 1963:81).” Calls convey simple messages, or merely

make one’s whereabouts known to friends working elsewhere in the fields. Many slave calls were modeled on

African drumming. Slaves also copied the drum rhythms by ‘patting juba.’ This procedure involved “foot

tapping, hand clapping, and thigh slapping, all in precise rhythm (Southern 1971:168).” Patting juba was

incorporated into an early twentieth century dance called the Charleston. This “Africanism,” reappeared in the

late twentieth century in the dance choreography of the Broadway musical “Bring on the Noise,

Bring on the Funk.”

African Americans also made and played banjos made out of gourds. The banjo is a musical instrument that

originated in Senegal and the Gambia region of West Africa. By the end of the eighteenth century banjos had

become the most common musical accompaniment used by Africans for their dances. The first mention of it in

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North America is found in a 1749 account of a Christmas celebration of Africans from plantations along the

Cooper River playing the banjo, dancing and making merry (Ravitz 1960:384; Coolen 1984:117–132). This

famous watercolor painting The Old Plantation which portrays a slave dance in eighteenth century South

Carolina illustrates one slave playing a banjo and another beating a drum. The musical instruments and styles of

dress reveal the intertwining of influences from African and Europe.

Enslaved Africans learned to play European instruments as well. “A black Virginia born Negro fellow named

Sambo,” who ran away in 1766, was a carpenter who made fiddles and played them. Gabriel, a weaver by

trade…is fond of reading and plays well the violin,” so said his owner in a 1776 newspaper advertisement

seeking his capture and return. A number of these advertisements for runaway musicians also note that they

could read and some could write well enough to have possibly forged a pass. Other runaways were drawn to a

different kind of cultural performance in the Christian church. Jemmy, a dark mulatto man was fond of singing

hymns, Jupiter alias Gibb was a “great New Light preacher.” Charles, a sawyer and shoemaker by trade also

“reads tolerable well, and is a great preacher, from which I…[his owner]…imagine he will endeavour [sic] to

pass for a freeman (Virginia Runaways, 2004; Jupiter, October 1, 1767; Charles, October 27, 1765; Jemmy,

September 8, 1775).” (3)

Conclusion

The creation of a unique African American culture through language and religion not only allowed black people

to resist the brutality of slavery and create a cohesive sense of community, it also helped spark an abolitionist

movement in America. In the second half of the eighteenth century, following the spread of evangelical

Christianity during and after the Great Awakening, runaway slaves, such as Jemmy, Gibb, and Charles,

embodied important characteristics of a new African American culture, including religion and music, and, it

seems, drew from them the inspiration and courage to flee bondage for freedom.

In the nineteenth century, black abolitionists, including David Walker, Frederick Doulgass, Nat Turner, and

Sojourner Truth, used their literacy, language and religion to make forceful pleas for the humanity of black

people and the immediate end of slavery. They became the vanguard of the most radical abolitionist movement

in American history. (1)