21 21 Throughout the African-American experience, spirituality has been a source for human renewal, survival, and resistance. The meaning of faith in the black mind in slavery was a rock upon which the oppressed could find human dignity and hope for the future. The slaves logically interpreted the stories of the Old Testament in the context of their own collective suffering. They came to believe that their faith in God and themselves would create a path leading eventually toward freedom. Many historians have observed that the same spirituals contained hidden meanings or messages that could serve as a coded language, communicating information among slaves without the knowledge of overseers and masters. The themes of suffering and struggle, faith and transcendence, are all pivotal in the development of the African-American spirituals.
“Go Down, Moses”
Go down, Moses,
’Way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh,
To let my people go.
Go down, Moses,
’Way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh,
To let my people go.
When Israel was in Egypt land,
Let my people go,
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go,
Thus spoke the Lord, bold Moses said,
Let my people go,
If not I’ll smite your first-born dead,
Let my people go.
Go down, Moses,
’Way down in Egypt land,
Tell ole Pharaoh,
To let my people go.
“Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel”
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel,
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
An’ why not every man.
He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den,
Jonah from the belly of the whale,
An’ the Hebrew chillun from the fiery furnace,
An’ why not every man.
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel,
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
An’ why not every man.
The moon run down in a purple stream,
The sun forbear to shine,
An’ every star disappear,
King Jesus shall-a be mine.
The win’ blows eas’ an’ the win’ blows wes’,
It blows like the judg-a-ment day,
An’ ev’ry po’ soul that never did pray’ll
Be glad to pray that day.
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel,
Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel,
An’ why not every man.
Source: Traditional spirituals.
William Francis Allen, Slave Songs of the United States (New York: Dover, 1995).
Richard Newman, Go Down Moses: A Celebration of the African-Spiritual (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1998).
Erskine Peters, ed., Lyrics of the Afro-American Spiritual (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993).
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Ed Bell and Thomas Lennon, Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives: HBO Documentary Films, 2003. DVD Video.
Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Belknap, 2004).
———, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: New Press, 2007).
Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Library of Congress, “Voices from the Days of Slavery,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/.
Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
PBS, “The Africans in America Web Site,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html.
———, “Slavery and the Making of America” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/index.html.
“Race and Slavery Petition Project,” library.uncg.edu/slavery_petitions/index.asp.
“Recovered Histories: Reawakening the Narratives of Enslavement, Resistance and the Fight for Freedom,” www.recoveredhistories.org/index.php.
“Suolair—Africa South of the Sahara,” www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history/hislavery.html.
Deborah G. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).