SIT IN, STAND UP AND SING OUT!

BLACK GOSPEL MUSIC AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

by

MICHAEL CASTELLINI

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the College of Arts and Sciences

Georgia State University

2013
 Copyright by
Michael Leo Castellini
2013
 SIT IN, STAND UP AND SING OUT!:

BLACK GOSPEL MUSIC AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

by

MICHAEL CASTELLINI

Committee Chair: Dr. John McMillian

Committee: Dr. Jacqueline Rouse

Electronic Version Approved

Office of Graduate Studies

College of Arts and Sciences

Georgia State University

August 2013
 31

that gospel music conservatives, accommodationists, and apolitical millenarians existed in large numbers.

Obviously, not all gospel artists were closet radicals or secret subversives. However, up to the eve of the

Montgomery bus boycott, certainly all members of the black gospel community irrespective of class,

education, or political orientation held a common stake in transforming the racist and discriminatory

state of American society, North and South. If both pragmatic business considerations and potential

violence predictably suppressed political activism, would not the legacy of infrapolitical resistance have

persisted, unbroken, the golden age of postwar gospel?

Reverend Walker fittingly defined gospel as collective predicament

60
That is to say: gospel, the modernized sacred music of black Americans, was

After civil rights legislation had been passed and the movement had waned, the problems of many black

communities remained or worsened; yet that sacred songs continued to matter to the African American

masses revealed much about the entrenched structural inequality of American social, political, and

gosp ed
61

That black church music mattered to the African American population years after the movement,

as well as years before it, is really the whole answer to The hidden

masked expressive capacities and the transcendent community spirit invoked by the gospel

experience were exactly what made this music the ideal cultural tool for mobilizing black people.

Gospel Music as Cultural Tool of Resistance

Theories regarding the effects of culture on social action have evolved over time. For many years

the reigning model assumed that culture shapes action by supplying the common values and ultimate ends

toward which action can be directed. Sociologist Ann Swidler called the mentally

60
Walker, 128.
61
Heilbut, The Gospel Sound, xxiii.
 32

action depending on individualistic interests or consensual cultural values,

Swidler re posits

-views, which people may use in varying

configurations to solve different kinds of problems. Swidler

defining ends of action, but in providing cultural components that are used to construct strategies of

action persistent ways of ordering action through time.62

James C. Scott explains that when the tenor of the times and the temperature of the people permit

(e.g., the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s, glasnost of the late 1980s), the

hidden transcript opens up and cultural resistance rises to the surface in a more overtly public manner. In

a similar sense, Swidler argues that culture becomes more highly charged or fraught with meaning in

63
she suggest d be

Under structural constraints and concrete historical circumstances, the success or failure of any

social movement will hinge upon what strategies and cultural tools are employed. Even during more

not cultural values that determine action in the long run. Indeed, Swidler concludes,

64
providing the characteristic repertoire from which they build lines of

Confirming generations of scholars, Lincoln and Mamiya determined in their definitive overview

that the black church was both central institutional sector and unchallenged cultural womb of the African

American community.65 Not only did it historically serve critical economic, educational, and spiritual

functions for a people generally shut out of white society, but the Afro-Christian church generated the

cultural tool kit of prayers, oratory, testimonies, and music that galvanized the masses from slavery

through freedom.

62
American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Apr.,
1986), 273-9, 284.
63
64
Ibid., 284.
65
Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, 7-8.
 33

Although some critics like E. Franklin Frazier depicted the black church as too escapist, quietist,

or accommodating in the face of white oppression, Aldon Morris and others have documented a tradition

of civic and political activism. In his seminal study of the civil rights movement, Morris found that the

black church was its institutional center, supplying the places to congregate, the ministers to provide

charismatic leadership, and most importantly, the mass base to mobilize.66

contribution to the classical Southern period, but like

other movement studies, his analysis emphasizes the organizational networks and resources possessed by

the African American church, or the individual personalities of its charismatic leaders. In fact, though

church hymns were transformed into songs of freedom and sermons doubled as political addresses,

relatively little attention has been given to exploring the role of black church culture in the civil rights

movement.

We do have some interesting empirical studies that point the way. Sociologist Mary Pattillo-

McCoy

strategies of action, and finds that certain practices within the black church prayer, Christian imagery,

call-and-response interactions are important parts of the cultural tool kit facilitating activism. Their

power lies not only with complex issues of belief and faith, Pattillo- in the cultural

familiarity of these tools among African Americans as media for interacting, conducting a meeting,

holding a rally, or getting ou

67
and followers, workers and suppo

Pattillo-McCoy suggests that the key to understanding the aptness of these tools for fostering

mass social action She explains how

black Christian spirituality is based on themes of manifestly collective deliverance and freedom, and how

preachers and congregations use the call-and-

66
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 4-12.
67
Mary Pattillo- American Sociological
Review, Vol. 63, No. 6 (Dec., 1998), 770-
Sociological Forum, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), 204.
 34

a transcendent experience resulting in dynamic communion

and community rejuvenation. Hence it is not only the organizational abilities or mass-based political

weight of the African American church, but its taken-for-granted cultural tools that are so important for

putting civic efforts into action.68

Pattillo-McCoy remarks

activism of black churches and church members persists at the local level and provides an opportunity to

organization- -level focus of

her cultural analysis demonstrates (she studies only a small black area in Chicago), the

directions on how to interact, what rituals are appropriate, and what symbols may be invoked to inspire

hosted by the public elementary school, the full program featured a group-sing, eleven choirs, and

emotional solo performances by the school counselor and principal.69

Because local residents are steeped in the black church, and since local politics must operate

within a specific, heavily church-influenced cultural landscape, partisan political actors and organizers

made repeated use of church styles. To illustrate, Pattillo-McCoy details one of the major public events of

an aldermanic campaign

both used the cultural tools of the black church preaching and singing as well as politicking to raise

As she concludes of the gospel-themed political event ents

70

as a set of institutions, a

source of self-empowerment, and a sign of indigenous culture mobilizes African Americans into the

ble resources (group solidarity

and symbolic expression) with larger institutional resources (funds, meeting places, and networks) is

68
Pattillo- 767-70.
69
Ibid., 767-8, 771-3.
70
Ibid., 776-81.
 35

crucial to political mobilization. Like Swidler, Harris recognizes that culture provides the worldviews and

sources of meaning used to construct collective strategies of action. He finds that the sacred cultural

ack mobilization in a variety of

71

Noting that previous studies of Afro-Christian political life had underestimated the diversity of

- ning that the complex

multidimensionality of black religion has served to legitimate and challenge the dominating political

order. He argues that the church has affected political activism in two seemingly contradictory ways. On

one hand, it has been a source of civic culture providing opportunities to practice organizing and civic

skills that develop positive attitudes toward the civic order. On the other hand, it has provided blacks with

that have been mobilized to resist

their marginalization.72

Following the ideas of Morris and others, Harris claims that black Christianity supplied the civil

rights movement with the alternative worldviews rooted in divine justice and human equality that

challenged the logic of white supremacy and fostered mass action. He concludes that black church culture

73
important, it also provides sacredly ordained leg

It was not until sociologist Sandra L. Barnes that another scholar tested the relationship between

black church culture and activism using quantitative techniques. To assess the key claims of the cultural

tool kit theory, Barnes analyzed a sample of 1,863 black congregations from a number of perspectives. In

2000 Gallup conducted telephone surveys of clergy and senior lay leaders, who were asked to provide

demographic data on their congregations. Using Pattillo- church culture repertoire model as a

template, Barnes tested whether its components directly affect community action among African

71
Fredrick C. Harris, Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 7-10, 28-40, 142.
72
Harris, Something Within, 7, 37-40, 135.
73
Ibid., 40-1.
 36

American congregations. Her findings indeed support the importance of black church culture as stimuli

unity action. 74

Barnes further ted models

and is directly correlated with co

linkages between gospel music as a cultural symbol and community action regardless of church and

pa ignificantly, she cites the need to study the relationship between semiotic coding,

education, black church involvement, and African American activism. To her credit, Barnes realizes that

and multiple
75

The dialectical model

olysemic nature of

black church culture produced a multiplicity of meanings and interpretations. Sermons, prayers, or songs

bearing messages of endurance through hardship could apply to escapist forethoughts of a rewarding

afterlife or to realist battles against earthly oppression. Most ministers and laypersons were not active in

organized protest activities, but those who were involved found black church culture a key resource

influencing their activism.

an oppressed group who appear docile

a process that is crucial to understanding a protest

like schools and churches, which interpret social reality and establish moral guidelines. These institutions

titudes, which if refocused could fairly rapidly

74
Social Forces, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Dec., 2005),
975-8.
75
978-86.
 37

ons,

The effects of refocusing the cultural content of the mass-based black church would have to be great,

Morris assumes, because it significantly shaped the attitudes of so many blacks.76

This is precisely what happened when Martin Luther King and other activist ministers began

refocusing the cultural content of a significant number of black churches. In the mass meetings that

resembled church revivals, King transformed the Christian messages of otherworldly meekness and

new message of social justice in this world. Morris contends that a refocusing of black church culture
77
While the mobilization of material

resources has usually been given more explanatory weight, the mass movement was largely successful by

cultural tool kit towards the goals of civil rights activism.

function of church culture in Southern organizing efforts during the civil rights movement. Young

explained that King and other preachers developed a language and mobilizing strategy based on the

religious inclinations and understandings of local people. Nobody could have ever argued segregation

and integration and gotten people convinced to do anything about that . But when

Martin would talk about leaving the slavery of Egypt and wandering in the wilderness of separate but

equal and moving into a promised land, somehow that made sense to folk. And they may not have

understood it; it wa

their faith; it was the thing they had been nurtured on. Young claimed
78
language, t

76
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 96.
77
Ibid., 97.
78
Charles V. Hamilton, The Black Preacher in America (New York: William & Morrow, 1972), 132.
 38

Reverend Young detailed how the sacred rituals and symbols of black church culture were

employed for political mobilization. He explained how going into Mississippi and telling people they

needed to get themse But if you started

preaching to them about dry bones rising again, everybody had sung about dry bones. Everybody knew
79
that language. A biblical symbol common to folk spirituals and gospel songs, the

ration of how church culture content was refocused to connect

with grassroots gospel communities throughout the South.

I think it was that cultural milieu, when people were really united with the

real meaning of that cultural heritage, and when they saw in their faith also a liberation struggle that they

ready framework around which you could organize people. churches offered not just

a crucial institutional base but a common gospel culture, even in the smallest country town, was what
80
gave civil rights activists kind of [a] key to the first organizing phases.

Evidence backing this insider account has been presented by sociologist Johnny E. Williams,

whose extensive analysis of Arkansas from 1954-

and

historical accounts of the civil rights movement; archival material, especially church and civil rights

documents; and newspaper and other published works. He also drew data from personal interviews he

conducted with individuals involved in the Arkansas movement of the fifties and sixties, focusing

questions on the motivation to become and remain involved.81

used churches as meeting places to reinvigorate their struggle, plan actions, fundraise, and recruit

79
Hamilton, The Black Preacher in America, 133.
80
Ibid.
81
206-9.
 39

African American churches not only provided valuable physical space and material resources, but black

church cultural resources

independent of structural conditions.82

Specifically, Williams found that some African American church ministers, leaders, and key

members interpreted and appropriated church culture content in activist ways.

terpretation of black church culture to

participate in activist networks and organize local movements, were instrumental factors in building

the social en

encouraged movement mobilization. His data shows that church culture content played a crucial role in
83

It appears incontrovertible that black church culture was critical to the civil rights movement.

Sociologists have provided evidence that church culture components, particularly prayer and gospel

music, have been key factors in engendering community action. Though the new form early encountered

disapproval from conservative elements within the black church, gospel was thoroughly entrenched in

African American churches and communities well before the Brown decision or Montgomery boycott.

Black gospel scholar Irene Jackson-Brown has noted how

84
By the onset of the movement in the fifties, gospel was at the very peak of its

popularity and cultural influence. Hence it is difficult to imagine how gospel music could not have been

employed to foster civil rights activism among the Southern masses steeped in black church culture.

82
Ibid., 212.
83
Ibid., 214-9.
84
Irene Jackson- Black Music Research
Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), 36.
 40

CHAPTER TWO: BLACK GOSPEL IN THE MOVEMENT

It was clear from the outset of the classical Southern phase of the postwar freedom struggle that black

gospel music was an indispensable cultural tool for attracting and encouraging the African American

masses. This chapter traces the significant presence of gospel throughout the major stages of movement

history .

Gospel Culture and the American Protest Song Tradition

Sacred music was widely acknowledged as an invaluable cultural tool for facilitating protest long

before the civil rights era of the mid-twentieth century. The Abolitionists, Grangers, the Populists, and

rural segments of the American Socialist Party had all held quasi-religious camp meetings filled with

songs and oratory. Labor leaders used similar techniques to draw people into the struggle for social and

economic justice. Of the 1929 Marion textile strike in North Carolina, former coal miner and United Mine

-written Negro
85
spirituals across the darkness to inspire faith

The Socialist-led, racially-integrated Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) was a prime

meetings were typified by their religious fervor, si

folklorist R. Serge Denisoff. Cofounder H. L. Mitchell recalled that there was a lot of good singing,

especially among the Negro members who were quite good singers. They would sing the old Negro

spirituals. Many of them are songs of protest that grew out of conditions that existed before slavery was
86
abolished. Some of the spirituals seemed to fit in with the union program. One of the black spirituals he

mentioned was selected as the official union song: a standard labor song of

defiance that found renewed life in the civil rights movement.

85
Western Folklore, Vol. 29, No. 3
(Jul., 1970), 177.
86
182.
 41

The musical voices of the STFU were A. B. Brookins and John L. Handcox. Resembling a camp

meeting evangelist, Brookins was known for his ability to get others to sing. Handcox, a black preacher

and sharecropper born and raised on an Arkansas plantation,

songbag by writing and singing ballads based on religious material. The gospel h

the basis for his most popular song, n. Originally referring to a 1936 strike,

the song was later revised by all-star folk group of the Old Left, the Almanac Singers.87

As cofounder, principal organizer, and director of Highlander Folk School (HFS), Myles Horton

created in the 1930s what became one of the most important institutions of the civil rights movement.

Along with its emphasis on developing indigenous leadership, the HFS understood the vital importance of

emotionally-charged culture in organizing and uplifting people. Highlander was committed to a vision of

explains movement scholar

88

. As music department director,

Zilphia traveled to oppressed communities and local sites of struggle, singing and recording songs along

the way. She observed the power of music in protest activities on her visits to picket lines in the thirties

and forties. In 1947, black women of the local Food, Tobacco, and Agricultural Workers Union in

Charleston, South Carolina, brought to HFS an We Will Overcome, which

had been the leading song of their successful strike the previous year. Zilphia included the song in future

Highlander workshops, helped spread it throughout the South, and introduced it to other left-wing

folksingers like Pete Seeger. By the mid-fifties, it was being sung at union gatherings from coast to

coast.89

After Zilphia died in 1956, her musical mission at Highlander was carried on by Guy Carawan. It

was largely through educational and promotional efforts that the freedom song phenomenon

87
Ibid., 182-3.
88
Charles M. Payne, he Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, [1995] 2007), 71.
89
R. Serge Denisoff, Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books,
[1971] 1973), 31; Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 148.
 42

took the shape that it did

important resource for democratic moveme

transcript of infrapolitical culture, Ling suggests that folk music, especially in its collective modes,

ed with the official

90

In late 1959 Carawan went to Charleston, South Carolina, to help local activist and fellow HFS

staff member Septima Clark supervise adult education classes. W

in February 1960

that singing had become a regular feature of the five Citizenship Schools, where he began sessions with

udents to sing their own

had enabled them to

ongs and

Afro-Christianity stressed messages of defiance, liberation,

and divine justice. Ling maintains,

repertoire of songs was a powerful and therapeutic cultural artifa s a practical organizational tool,

the singing program effectively increased attendance at the Citizenship Schools.91

important role in developing and disseminating the freedom song repertoire was

relatively brief, limited mostly to the 1960-61 period.

when the black student sit-in movement erupted in February 1960, and the school held a sit-in workshop

for student leaders in April. As part of a talent show and dance, Carawan taught

Overcome Two weeks later, over two hundred students assembled

for a three-day conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Carawan led the singing, and

he audience joined hands and sang along.

They went away inspired, and carried the song to meetings and demonstrations across the South.

90
-American Traditions of the South
History Workshop Journal, No. 44 (Autumn, 1997), 202.
91
-4.
 43

By visiting movement communities and leading the singing at mass meetings and civil rights

conferences,

content of the African American church. By 1961, he had been instrumental in making the freedom song

repertoire large, well-established, and widely known. But even as his instructional role diminished,

Carawan continued publicizing on behalf of the civil rights movement. Most notable of these efforts was

an important

including Nashville (1960), Albany, Georgia (1962), Birmingham (1963), and Greenwood, Mississippi

(1965).92

As these recordings demonstrate, black church music held a powerful presence at every stage in

the movement. They also reveal the diversity of freedom songs, freedom singers, and performance styles,

from revamped folk spirituals to contemporary urban gospel. As Jon Michael Spencer notes,

each community movement had its own freedom songs, the verses varied according to the events

He explains that the

litanies of the original and adapted protest songs were not only sung congregationally in the liturgy of

Spencer compares these professional freedom singers to similar performers in the twentieth-century labor

and nineteenth-century abolitionist movements. Among these gospel-grounded performers were the

Montgomery Trio, the Nashville Quartet, the SNCC Freedom Singers,

Birmingham and Selma, Alabama.93

Freedom Songs and the Gospelization of Local Movements

The classical Southern movement of the fifties and sixties exhibited the same blend of older

communal and newer gospel styles characterizing the range of black church music and the flexible gospel

form itself. The pattern was quickly set in what Reverend

92
Ibid., 207.
93
Spencer, Protest and Praise, 86, 88-9.
 90

Staples sisters and his own bluesy guitar picking, Pops comes off like a country preacher as he sermonizes

this ponderous It became a

favorite of King , regularly sung by his special request at movement functions.210

Despite crossover success on the Stax label, Pops insisted that the Staple Singers never really left

the gospel field. They were a significant part of the classic soul phenomenon, but the Staples were only

one example of the fundamental relation between soul and gospel. Sam Cooke, who did leave gospel

stardom for secular fame, was perhaps the most important figure in the development of the soul form bred

directly from the black church tradition. Probably without exception, and like most blacks of the time,

soul singers got their formative musical experience in the gospel church. And the most socially conscious,

civil rights-oriented artists of the soul genre performed gospel before their secular careers took flight.

Curtis Mayfield of the Impressions (1965), and re

a Winner (1968) was a member of the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers in the fifties. Likewise, James

African American anthem in 1968. By then, the gospel-drenched civil rights movement had made such

declarations much safer for black people to say so loudly and proudly in America.

Black Gospel Records and the Postwar Freedom Struggle

Throughout the classical Southern phase of the postwar freedom struggle, black gospel was the

common denominator among the often overlapping types of movement music: contemporary soul, old

spirituals and traditional hymns, and the new freedom songs were all expressed within a basically

gospelized framework. The uplifting, participatory nature of gospel made it the ideal cultural tool for

movement purposes, and many of the most popular freedom songs were adapted gospel tunes. But in the

long tradition of African American sacred music, gospel itself very rarely addressed sociopolitical matters

in an explicit, unambiguous manner.

210
The Staple Singers, Freedom Highway, Columbia/Legacy compact disc CK 47334. Originally released on Epic in
1965 as a live in-church session, this 1991 reissue includes only two of the original LP tracks supplemented by
sixteen Epic recordings from the latter sixties.
 91

While the black religious experience was its main focus, gospel music was a multivalent song

form bearing different meanings for different people at different times in different contexts. Almost

exclusively, the protest content of gospel lyrics was obscured within the hidden transcript of biblical

symbolism, giving the surface impression of an escapist worldview detached from the problematic

concerns of the here and now. Yet if even so outspoken and committed a figure as Dorothy Love Coates

only obliquely referred to controversial subjects in her own music, and overwhelmingly emphasized God,

sin and salvation, the militancy or activist efforts of individual gospel artists can hardly be deduced from a

straightforward interpretation of their recorded songs alone.

However, in many if not most cases of the hidden transcript, transformative historical periods

have afforded greater opportunity for more public expressions of cultural protest to

emerge. The postwar era was certainly this kind of period, and black gospel was certainly no exception in

its increased production of overtly political recordings. But even during the peak movement years, such

might help explain this dearth of explicit protest records, were it not for the fact that black secular artists

showed little more evidence of speaking out than their sacred counterparts. Only after the watershed

achievements of the mid-1960s did African American musicians of any kind routinely address issues of

racial injustice and civil rights protest in their work. As historian Guido van Rijn suggests

at least occasionally, probably risked commercial ruin at a time of fierce black pride and heightened racial
211

Until the end of the sixties, before the movement made it relatively safe for the Staples Singers to

d-decade, the perceived risk in recording political material was

deemed too high by record companies. And as Rijn reasonably suggests, there was no guarantee of a

public airing for those songs that were recorded

commercial appeal, and the certain knowledge that even if they avoided a formal ban, they would not get

211
 92

It was on account of those risks that records with an overt civil rights agenda, particularly by blues artists,

Europe, or for tiny labels with niche usually black audiences, or for labels with a

left-wing philosophy an Rijn found that a disproportionate number of these

records were made for black-owned labels, given their underrepresentation in the industry; presumably,

212

Black religious recordings had been addressing the social conditions of African Americans since

the 1920s. With consistent them -bound trains of death, popular preachers

such as Reverend J. M. Gates of Atlanta whooped moral messages about negotiating the dangers of the

urban environment.

Walton recognizes that

sermons centering

-in-the- Despite the overgeneralizations of too

many critics, Walton argues that Old Testament slavery and deliverance of the Israelites, as well as the

New Testament compassion and suffering of Jesus, continued to resonate for the black community,

particularly regarding divine intervention in human affairs. This theological tradition points to why one

might surmise that there was little need for preachers to broach racial and economic injustice directly on

wicked while comforting the poor and oppressed . For black Christians familiar with

the evils of racial oppression, terrorized by the practice of lynching in the South, and trapped in the

quicksand of a sinking pre-Depression economy, a message of divine reversal had resonant meaning on
213
both cultural and personal levels.

With reason, record companies

recordings lacked the broader consumer appeal of sermons with familiar biblical narratives and simple,

212
Ibid., 139-40.
213
Religion
and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2010), 210-2.
 93

largely open-ended conclusions.214 Hence, on religious records, sociopolitical messages would

almost always operate within the infrapolitical realm of the hidden transcript. This would remain so with

black gospel recordings until the latter 1960s, as social commentary greatly increased toward the end of

that tumultuous decade. Up to this extraordinarily

African American protest was heavily dependent on allusion and metaphor.

Rijn found that only about one percent of all blues and gospel records released before WWII

contained any overt political comment. In any case, Rijn says,

political themes rarely gave formal expression to any particular ideology, and few advocated, or

which was responsible for a decrease in total race record production, did occasion

songs about the hard times that must have provided some much-needed temporary relief for struggling

black listeners. Fire and brimstone sermon records continued to be prevalent throughout the 1930s,

addressing everything from breadlines to federal work projects and relief programs.215

President Roosevelt was generally perceived as a friend of the African American community, and

a few black artists like Mahalia Jackson had supported him as early as 1932. Reflecting the early shift

from the Republican to Democratic camp, some black records were complimentary of the P

policies during the thirties and patriotically supportive during the war in the forties. The foremost tribute

to Roosevelt was paid by a Florida singer, songwriter, disc jockey, and promoter named Otis Jackson

(1911-1962).

between 1946 and 1972, first by Jackson as member of a male vocal group called the Evangelist Singers.

It was covered by two other gospel groups in 1947, and then rerecorded in 1949 by Jackson with the

National Clouds of Joy, which became the best known version.216

214
Walton 219-20.
215
-American Blues and
Gospel Songs on FDR (Jackson: University Press Of Mississippi, 1997), 207.
216
Rijn, , 197. Recorded for the independent Gotham label, the 1949 version is available on a 1988
compilation called Get Right With God: Hot Gospel, Gospel Heritage compact disc HTCD 01.
 94

f the highborn FDR as an ally of common people is repeated in the call-

and-response chorus: , he was a

Over the low hum of the group , Jackson delivers an eloquent,

two-sided gospel rap summarizing FDR s importance to blacks. The record recounts the P

mournful death, compares him to the liberator

g shows how Roosevelt advanced Negroes in

Significantly, though victory was achieved

in the war overseas, Jackson presciently alludes to the sobering fact that back home
217
just b

Indeed, this was evident as African American servicemen like Medgar Evers and Amzie Moore

d took it to Johnny Mercer at Capitol

warned:

the way things are in this country, i

recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet, the most influential and commercially successful black gospel

group of its time, and released by Columbia in 1947. The Gates, who broke a number of barriers and had

achieved national notoriety by the late 1930s, also risked jeopardizing their mainstream popularity by

mak but they recorded it

anyway. The lyrics, sung again in a rhythmic rap style, depict a welcoming St. Peter leading folks through

the Pearly Gates to witness snow white angels, colored angels, Sons of David and Chinese

together in eternal paradise.218

217
Ibid., 199-200.
218
-disc Time-Life collection
from 2009, Let Freedom Sing: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement, Time-Life/Universal Music 80051
D/A732990/B0012352-02. The quote is from the accompanying notes to Let Freedom Sing, 6-7.
 95

A small handful of political gospel records were released during the late forties and early fifties,

covering such topics as the Korean War and the awful destructive power of the new atomic bomb. A

notably overt example of early civil rights gospel came wi

This song

celebrates recent

followin

released on Atlantic Records, the New York label of brothers Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun, one of the few

commercial record companies to take a stand on racial issues at that time. Rijn cites this as another

219

In 1952, Atlanta gospel group the Echoes of Zion recorded an adapted version of the traditional

God Will Fight Your Battles. Released on the local Gerald label, with

the record outlines the African American contribution to

United States military history from the Boston Massacre to the contemporary Korean War. By the fourth

verse, while in the early Cold War, there is

pointed mention of in Georgia and the bombing of our homes in Florida. The next

verse serves America a prophetic notice: Their blood has flowed in foreign lands / They

Anticipating of the moral universe is long but it bends

toward justice

As Rijn notes, black gospel record

ed

qualitatively impressive musical response to the struggle for African-American freedom, and one which is
220

219
Guido van Rijn, The Truman and Eisenhower Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs, 1945-1960
(London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 64-6.
220
Rijn, The Truman and Eisenhower Blues, 67-8.
 96

Yet another Otis Jackson composition was inspired by the death of revered educator and

pioneering civil rights advocate Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1955, accompanied by elite quartet the Dixie

The record was made for the

Besides being a popular gospel figure around

home. Because this friend and political

Madame Bethune.221

The murder of black teenager Emmett Till in the summer of 1955 was a landmark event in the

postwar freedom struggle. Late that year, Detroit gospel singer and preacher Brother Will Hairston (1919-

1988) presented accurate details of the incident on his two-part record later

[sic The song graphically recount

As Hairston explained in a I take to heart whatever happens to people,

well- oly Bible and

222

Hairston was originally from Mississippi, settling in Detroit after serving in WWII. A prominent

member of Love Tabernacle Church, he from having

once wrecked some congregation with a particularly forceful performance. Like most gospel singers,

Hairston could not pay the bills from music alone, and he supported a large family working at the

Chrysler plant until 1970. The vast majority of black gospel was recorded for independent labels, many of

which had very limited distribution, so it was not uncommon for artists to sell their own discs at churches

and programs. Hairston subscribed to this do-it-yourself ethic by hooking up a sound system to his station

221
Ibid., 132-3.
222
Ibid., 135-7, 144-5.
 97

wagon, playing his records throughout the neighborhood, and selling them to the crowds that would

gather and listen.223

Of the twenty-seven gospel songs he recorded between 1955 and 1972, Hairston cut several

records documenting significant civil rights moments. In 1956 he covered the Montgomery boycott with

his best known song, It was released on JVB Records, the black-owned Detroit label

that around the same time. With its washboard percussion,

piano accompaniment, and vocal delivery, the record sounds very similar to the Delta-bred blues music

being performed along Hastings Street, the thriving commercial thoroughfare in s

black community. (JVB was located on Hastings, as we

urban renewal claimed the area in the early 1960s.) Lyrically, although catalyst Rosa Parks is replaced by

e to

the contentious anti-boycott injunction. And according to Rijn, the record was the first blues or gospel

song to mention Martin Luther King. Hairston also notes the help and support of African American

congressmen Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem and Charles C. Diggs.224

which

Rijn believes was [Dwight D.]

Along with Eisenhower and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, he references Autherine

Lucy, the first African American admitted to the University of Alabama.225

President Kennedy in another one of his detailed

accounts. t protest-themed

recordings came in 1968, when many more black artists were treading the same paths he had helped forge
226
in the previous decade:

223
Ibid., 135.
224
Ibid., 140- -Life collection of civil rights music, Let Freedom Sing.
225
Ibid., 143.
226
Guido van Rijn, -American Blues and Gospel Songs on JFK (Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 2007), 129-33.
 98

With the rapid expansion of the movement in the early 1960s, and with its growing presence in

the American public consciousness, civil rights gospel records began appearing with greater frequency.

At a time when activists were refashioning black church songs into movement music, often gospel singers

would show solidarity simply by recording those same freedom songs borrowed from their mutual sacred

tradition. The defiant had been adapted by the labor movement since

at least the 1930s, but was not among the more favored traditional songs in the black gospel repertoire of

the post-WWII era. The Harmonizing Four, one of the top postwar quartets, recorded a version in early

1959, a year before it was reestablished by the sit-ins as an anthem of resistance. (Like another protest

standard True, during

quartet sound, the Harmonizing Four was somewhat exceptional in its concentration on older traditional

material. However, the relatively well-known protest connotations associated with the song made it a

conspicuous, if not provocative choice for a major group to record at the time. Its appearance on another

black-owned label Vee Jay Records of Chicago may have been a significant factor in its commercial

release.227

Aside from cutting the type of documentary songs produced by Hairston, perhaps the clearest

way for gospel artists to show movement support was by recording the civil rights anthem

hrough its reshaping by C. A. Tindley,

eceived the highest form of

official recognition from President Lyndon B. Johnson. A

Selma, Alabama, Johnson dramatically quoted its title in his address to Congress on March 15, 1965,

leading to the passing of the Voting Rights Act. recording of the

famous freedom song was only the most prominent example of its many gospel versions.228

227
Let Freedom Sing.
City concert headlined by Paul Robeson in
honor of left- -
Folk Music and
Modern Sound, eds. William Ferris and Mary L. Hart (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982), 109.
228
is available on Let Freedom Sing.
 99

Though most record companies avoided even mild controversy, the postwar proliferation of

independent labels expanded the opportunities for black artists to record their music, whatever the

message. A lot of these labels were tiny regional imprints, frequently single-man operations with little or

no distribution, and some would record virtually any kind of local talent. Gospel singers often paid to

make recordings, then sold pressings on their own to shops or program attendees. Like so many groups in

the broadly disseminated, deeply grassroots gospel community, the vast majority of such labels have

disappeared into historical obscurity along with the actual records they produced. Copies not destroyed

still await discovery by dedicated collectors such as writer and reissue compilation producer Mike

d-
229

Going forward into the secular digital age, it seems unlikely that corporations will spend much

time or resources in looking for these lost gospel records and having them respectfully repackaged as

insightful historical documents of the African American experience. This important if daunting effort will

largely remain the preserve of hardcore collectors, independent reissue labels (often European), and long-

term projects like the one headed by Robert Darden at Baylor University. Founded in 2005, the Black

Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP)

by obscure gospel artists on equally obscure record labels.

The possible exception is on the Gordy label, a subsidiary of Motown, hardly an unknown brand

in the 1960s. Owner Berry Gordy was one of many rushing to capitalize on the spectacular success of

August 28, 1963. Excerpted from an album titled The Great March on Washington, Gordy released a

choral rendition , featuring Liz Lands and the Voices of Salvation, as the A-side

of a 45 record; the B- .230

229
Notes to This May be My Last Time Singing, 3.
230
-minute address, The Great March on Washington
album (Gordy 908) features a speech by march leader A. Philip Randolph, as well as speeches by Walter Reuther,
Roy Wilkins, and Whitney M. Young, the heads of the United Automobile Workers, the NAACP, and the National
Urban League, respectively. The 45 from The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, issued as G-7023, was
accessed at http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel/id/6943/rec/7.
 100

The other versions found in the BGMRP are more even obscure. In the

prefacing on political blues and gospel records, Rijn explains that

the bookkeeping systems of these small companies were often poorly maintained.

sometimes provide useful details, many of the personnel who participated in the recording process are

r information about
231

Philadelphia gospel choir the Savettes, on the Choice label of Newark, New Je
232
The freedom song itself appears as the B-

A similar choir version was recorded by the Hudson Chorale

the B- I Have A Dream, written by group leader G. Hudson. This

undated record (estimated at 1964 by the BGMRP) was released on Amanda Records (distributed by

Atlantic in New York). Even less is known about the other two versions.

by the Templettes Gospel Singers (with Juanita Weston and organist James McGrue) shares the A-side

with - which makes no overt movement

references as well as Probably from the same early-to-mid-sixties period (again no

listed date), it was released on the obscure label Ebony Productions Records. Perhaps the rarest version of

abeled as a

the suggestively named Freedom Records, the 45 again lists neither date nor location.

The B- Marching On T basic Up To

233

231
Rijn, , xxvi.
232
The Black Gospel Music Restoration
Project, http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel/id/13048/rec/5.
233
All three versions accessed at The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project
-401,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel/id/11627/rec/2 hall Overcome
Precious Lord Ebony Productions Records, EB 1080,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel/id/11179/rec/1;
/ o Freedom, Freedom Records, ADM-301,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel/id/11777/rec/3.
 101

Rijn has documented a couple more civil rights gospel records from 1963 worth noting. For an

unnumbered issue on the Freedom Songs label, the Boston-

On Dr. Martin Luther King, a song Rijn describes as simply a list of all the places where Dr. King

should march for equal rights. -

Gospel label

from Newark. Rijn notes how the group draws the traditional analogy between African Americans and the

ech from that same year.234

By far the most interesting movement-themed record acquired by the BGMRP is an undated 45,

issued on the appropriately named Movement label of Charleston, South Carolina, by a male quartet

called the Friendly Four. Personnel credits are given to composer and producer by John H. Pembroke, but

the group members (except the guitarist and drummer) are not specified. Opposite the gospel-soul ballad

- ivil rights

gospel song recorded during the movement. The Friendly Four performed solidly within the hard quartet

style of the golden age fifties, although references to snapping police dogs probably date the recording to

no earlier than 1963.

Pembroke, presumably the group leader

out there everywhere. And when you sing, remember

the wonderful ones who

through. Now sing, sing! Every one of you Over a hard-driving, hand-clapping rhythm, the lead singer

calls out local sites of movement struggle Atlanta, Mississippi, the Carolina home

region, and so forth while his partner . The middle verses get more

explicit, with ntegration, equal rights and demonstrations then spreading across

the land. In the same gruff church tones that became standard with secular soul shouters of the succeeding

era, the lead enthusiastically reports on the contemporary protest fervor ou may see them marching on

234
Rijn, , 106, 145.
 102

your avenue, trying to make a better place for me and you The song ends with another raucous vamp

covering more locations of rising black unrest, from New York and Chicago in the North to Birmingham

and Tallahassee in the South.235

After the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, a slew of gospel records were made

in memory of the slain president.236 Like FDR in the previous generation, JFK was generally viewed as a

sympathetic ally of African Americans regardless of his actual political commitment to civil rights

during most of his career.

in April 1968 also represented a watershed for blues and gospel songs about civil rights

issues.

Ac death itself was the subject of at least thirty-four such

237
Brother Will Hairston recorded one in 1968. The BGMRP has

received no less than three records on the mournful subject. Two are undated 45s:

(estimated from

1968 by BGMRP); and All-Star Gospel Singers, on

Em-Jay Records of Augusta, Georgia. The third is a 45 from 1983, a s murder,

by Elizabeth D. Williams, on Crown Limited Records of Birmingham,

city of Dorothy Love Coates, Fred Shuttlesworth, and the ACMHR Choir. Birmingham had been a crucial

battleground during the classical Southern movement, and gospel music was a key to the victory.238

235

Project, http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel30/id/12429/rec/4.
236
Rijn has devoted an entire monograph to political blues and gospel records from the Kennedy years. Of the 131
songs selected for detailed analysis, 30 percent were recorded by gospel artists; 38 percent of civil rights songs and
48 percent of Kennedy assassination songs were by gospel artists. Rijn, , 172.
237
138.
238
All three King tributes accessed at The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project:
King) John Griffin and the Gospel All Stars, Zone Records, Z-1000,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel30/id/12662/rec/1;
Luther King Made It Home he All-Star Gospel Singers, Em-Jay Records, EJS 107,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel30/id/11936/rec/22;
King, Sleep On Elizabeth D. Williams, Crown Limited Records, NR15190,
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/fa-gospel30/id/11731/rec/20.
 103

CONCLUSION

nameless rank-and-file participants, it is hard to

identify more than a small handful of gospel singers who notably contributed to the civil rights struggle.

Considering the grassroots, non-commercial obscurity of most performers, this should not be surprising.

But if almost all black churches featured gospel music, and activist churches were the major centers of

movement activity, it is not difficult to imagine the proliferation of activist singers, groups, or choruses.

Whether raising funds at gospel music programs, performing at rallies and mass meetings, marching in

the streets, or just stuffing envelopes, gospel artists were undoubtedly active throughout local movements.

Indeed, Carlton Reese, Cleo Kennedy, and the Birmingham Movement Choir amply proved this under the

aegis of Reverend Shuttlesworth.

The inherent power of African American church culture gave civil rights leaders and grassroots

people who are willing to make great sacrifices in a single-minded notes Aldon D.

Morris

through a rich culture consisting of songs, testimonies, oratory, and prayers that spoke directly to the

shows

with a collective enthusiasm generated through a rich culture consisting of songs, testimonies, oratory,
239
and prayers that s

Black church culture was an important part of the civil rights movement, and gospel music had a

significant presence throughout the period. However, the fact that gospel was a crucial element of

movement history is not a widely broached concept in either popular or scholarly literature. Much of the

explanati es by

the postwar era, and it was a powerful cultural force within black popular consciousness through radio,

recordings, and live performances. The tremendous legacy of gospel music, including its pivotal role in

all movement phases, has simply been taken for granted without serious thought or argument.

239
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 4.
 104

revisionist civil rights historiography: that is, the search for movement consciousness in black gospel

music must move beyond the big names and major labels and look into the disseminated population of

grassroots gospel communities. Dr. King could swoop in and out of local movements to reap most of the

glory or blame, and outside activists could always leave the violent scenes of grassroots struggle, but local

folks were rooted to their homes and ultimately responsible for their own successes and failures. Whereas

distant label bosses and marketing strategists had limited familiarity with local conditions, and even less

exposure to the personal physical dangers experienced daily by the African American masses, most

gospel performers were far removed from the lucrative limelight and acutely vulnerable to the immediate

social environment.

Songs reflect the personalities of their composers, and especially the performers who bring them

in the Afro-Christian community were present among the gospel community. Thus the innumerable

gospel artists from across the country, at every level of notoriety and professional status, possessed the

same wide range of political commitment as the rest of the black community.

variety was consequently mirrored in the church-based music of the

civil rights movement, as professional interpreters, local songleaders, and movement congregations

performed the freedom song repertoire in the myriad stylistic variations of the popular gospel idiom. Even

in rural churches where spirituals were preserved in more archaic form and where much of the most

crucial grassroots activism took place essentially all church music was an expression of the local gospel

community.

Not only was gospel valuable for organizational purposes, it was invaluable for psychological

purposes. At the concrete level, gospel music has proven to be a reliable cultural tool for engendering

community social action. At the abstract level, the major lyrical themes of gospel songs emphasize faith

and perseverance through messages resonated deeply with the church-steeped

masses during that remarkable struggle for freedom.

 105

But the rarity of overt political themes or explicit protest language in gospel lyrics has led many

critics have minimized its influence on the civil rights movement. Yet far from a troubling conundrum,

the paradox of an ostensibly apolitical music being a critical factor in the politicization and mobilization

of an oppressed people actually holds the key to understanding the gospel/movement connection at the

heart of this thesis.

As inheritor of the black sacred song tradition, gospel music has always operated primarily in the

realm of infrapolitics by strategically masking its oppositional expressions in biblical allegory and

religious symbolism to deflect the repressive reaction of hostile whites. In other words, to base an analysis

of this relationship solely upon open and obvious protest rhetoric is really to miss the entire point. By

definition, the hidden transcript just does not work that way. What might appear to be clear evidence of an

escapist mentality to outsiders may in fact resonate as a deeply meaningful message of coded resistance

within the black gospel community itself.

But according to infrapolitical theory,

opportunities for the hidden transcript to open up, allowing subaltern groups to produce more overt forms

of cultural protest. In conformity with the model, black gospel music did indeed manifest an increased

amount of material that more directly addressed the dramatically changing times. That only a miniscule

fraction of gospel recordings made during the postwar golden age did so is hardly a

otherworldly rejection of secular struggles. Especially at the height of the civil rights movement, such a

striking absence of overt protest in black gospel discourse merely underscores the infrapolitical essence of

the form.