Subject Areas |
Art and Culture
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Folklore |
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Music |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - African-American |
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U.S. History - Civil Rights |
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World History - Human Rights |
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Time Required |
| One to two class periods
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Skills |
| historical comprehension
historical interpretation
historical research
oral presentation skills
primary document analysis
Internet skills
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Date Posted |
| 4/12/2002 |
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Spirituals
Introduction
This
lesson plan introduces students to the role that spirituals have played in African
American history and religion. The lesson begins with a review of factors that
contributed to the development of the spiritual, which reflects the influence
of African religious traditions, Christian traditions, and the conditions of slavery.
Students explore the community-building power of this combination by listening
to a performance of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," perhaps the best-known spiritual.
They then turn to the 19th-century biography of Harriet Tubman to examine how
she used spirituals as a secret signal to fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.
Against this background, students reconsider the impact of the line from "an old
Negro spiritual" with which Martin Luther King, Jr., ended his famous "I Have
A Dream" speech and the influence of spirituals on his speaking style. Finally,
to conclude the lesson, students collect spirituals by interviewing family members,
friends, and acquaintances, in order to investigate how deeply this African American
religious tradition has woven itself into American culture, and share similar
songs that reflect their heritage.
Learning Objectives
(1) To learn about the role spirituals have played in African
American history and religion; (2) To examine Harriet Tubman's use of spirituals
in her work for the Underground Railroad; (3) To explore the continuing power
of the spiritual in the Civil Rights Movement and as a shared American heritage;
(4) To gain experience in working with oral tradition, biography, and song as
types of historical evidence.
1
Begin by providing students with background on the development of spirituals,
referring to the posting on "African-American
Spirituals" and the essay on "African-American
Religion in the Nineteenth Century" at the National
Humanities Center website. (For the posting, click "TeacherServe@" on the
website's homepage, then click on the icon for "Divining America." From there,
click "Getting Back to You" and select "African-American
Spirituals" from the menu below. For the essay, click "19th Century" on the
"Divining America" webpage, then click "African-American
Religion.") - Inform students that spirituals
arose in the early 19th century among African American slaves who had been denied
the opportunity to practice traditional African religions for more than a generation
and had adopted Christianity. For the most part, slaves were prohibited from forming
their own congregations, for fear that they would plot rebellion if allowed to
meet on their own. Nonetheless, slaves throughout the South organized what has
been called an "invisible institution" by meeting secretly, often at night, to
worship together. It was at these meetings that preachers developed the rhythmic,
engaging style distinctive of African American Christianity, and that worshippers
developed the spiritual, mixing African performance traditions with hymns from
the white churches.
- Explain to students that
scholars have long debated the extent of African influence on the spiritual, but
that most now trace the "call and response" pattern in which they are typically
performed to worship traditions in West Africa. This is a pattern of alternation
between the voice of an individual and the voice of the congregation through which
individual sorrows, hopes, and joys are shared by the community. In the performance
of spirituals, in other words, slaves were able to create a religious refuge from
their dehumanizing condition, affirming their humanity as individuals and their
support for one another through an act of communal worship.
- Point
out to students that spirituals also reflect the influence of slavery in their
emphasis on traditional Christian themes of salvation, which in this context take
on a double meaning. The worshippers sing of their journey toward spiritual freedom
through faith, but the song also expresses their hope for physical freedom through
God's grace. These two levels of meaning are especially clear in the many spirituals
that recount God's deliverance of his chosen people in the Old Testament, in whom
African American slaves saw a reflection of their own suffering.
2 Have students experiment with this community-building power
by listening to (or singing) a spiritual in class. A text of what is probably
the most widely known spiritual, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," is provided below
(in standard spelling rather than dialect). Have students notice the song's call-and-response
pattern and reflect on the experience of emerging from the group in the solo lines
(in italic) and then feeling the group affirm this individual "testimony" with
its response. Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry
me home. I looked over Jordan, and what
did I see, Coming for to carry me home? A band of angels coming
after me, Coming for to carry me home. Swing
low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home. If you get
there before I do, Coming for to carry me home, Tell all my friends
I'm coming too, Coming for to carry me home. Swing
low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
3 To
what extent is this spiritual a song about escaping the physical conditions of
slavery? To what extent is it an expression of religious hope and faith? Have
students speculate on the role sharing spirituals in this way might have played
for African Americans living in slavery.
4 Turn next to examine the role spirituals played for fugitive
slaves, who sometimes used them as a secret code. This chapter in the history
of the spiritual is best illustrated by several episodes in the life of Harriet
Tubman as recounted in Harriet,
the Moses of Her People, a 19th-century biography based on interviews with
this most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, which is available through
EDSITEment at the Documenting
the American South website. (At the website's homepage, click on "North American
Slave Narratives," then click "Collection of Electronic Texts." Scroll down and
click on "Bradford, Sarah H., Harriet, the Moses of Her People," then click "HTML
file" for the text.) - Have students
read the account of Harriet's own escape from slavery (pages 26-28 in the electronic
text), where she uses a spiritual to let her fellow slaves know about her secret
plans:
When dat ar ole chariot
comes, I'm gwine to lebe you, I'm boun' for de promised land, Frien's,
I'm gwine to lebe you. I'm sorry, frien's,
to lebe you, Farewell ! oh, farewell! But I'll meet you in de mornin',
Farewell! oh, farewell! I'll meet you
in de mornin', When you reach de promised land; On de oder side of Jordan,
For I'm boun' for de promised land. What
kind of leave-taking is this song about when it is performed as part of religious
worship? What is the figurative or coded meaning Harriet communicates to her friends
through the song? What is the relationship between these two levels of meaning?
How is Harriet's escape like a passing away from the viewpoint of those she will
leave behind? How does the song serve to create a bond that will connect her to
her friends even after she is gone? Through questions like these, help students
recognize that Harriet draws on the community-building power of the spiritual
to add religious and social significance to her departure. Her song reaffirms
her place in the slave community, even as she declares her intention to leave
it, and at the same time expresses the double faith in salvation that will sustain
her on her way. - In a later episode (pages
37-38), when Harriet is guiding other slaves to freedom, she uses a spiritual
to reassure them that they have eluded a pack of slave hunters:
Up and down the road she passes to see if the coast
is clear, and then to make them certain that it is their leader who is coming,
she breaks out into the plaintive strains of the song, forbidden to her people
at the South, but which she and her followers delight to sing together:
Oh go down, Moses, Way down into Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go. Oh
Pharaoh said he would go cross, Let my people go, And don't get lost in
de wilderness, Let my people go. Oh
go down, Moses, Way down into Egypt's land, Tell old Pharaoh, Let
my people go. You may hinder me here,
but you can't up dere, Let my people go, He sits in de Hebben and answers
prayer, Let my people go! Oh go
down, Moses, Way down into Egypt's land, Tell old Pharaoh, Let my
people go. Have students explain
the literal and figurative levels of meaning in this song. How does this spiritual
fits the circumstances of a narrow escape from slave hunters? To what extent is
it a signal and celebration of their escape? To what extent a prayer of thanks
for their escape? Again, help students recognize that the spiritual infuses a
religious significance into the situation and serves to reaffirm the group's strength
as a community.
5
The use of spirituals not only in worship but also in the
struggle for freedom is a tradition that continued in the Civil Rights Movement
of the 1950s and 1960s. As a last step in this survey of the spiritual in African
American history, have students look at the conclusion of Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s, "I
Have A Dream" speech, which is available through EDSITEment at the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project website. (At the Most Popular request's Page, click on "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom") So
let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring
from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies
of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let
freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that -- let
freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain
of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi --
from every mountainside! When we let
freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every
state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be
able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at
last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Have
students explain how Martin Luther King, Jr. uses the call-and-response cadences
of the spiritual to build his speech. Have them comment also on the figurative
meaning behind his literal listing of mountaintops in the United States. Have
them note finally how he uses the community-building power of the spiritual to
rally support for the Civil Rights Movement. Who are members of the community
that will respond to his call? What binds them into a community? Shared experiences?
Shared beliefs? Explore, too, the part religion plays in this closing gesture
of the speech. Is there a religious significance to the communal song Martin Luther
King, Jr. envisions? Does he impart a religious dimension to the 1963 March on
Washington that was the occasion for his speech? What is the faith he proclaims
here to members of diverse religious denominations as a faith they all share?
6 Conclude this lesson by having students collect spirituals
and other shared songs of their heritage by interviewing family members, friends,
and acquaintances in their own community. Some people they talk to may know many
songs; some may know only a few scattered verses. If possible, have students record
the songs they collect on audiocassette and transcribe the words to create a class
booklet, noting for each text where, when, and from whom they collected it, as
well as any reminiscences or facts about the song that their source provides.
What ethnic groups and religious denominations are represented in your collection?
How diverse are the circumstances in which people learned these songs? How pervasive
has the spiritual become in American society, and what do spirituals mean to Americans
today?
Extending the Lesson During the decade following the Civil War, spirituals entered
the musical mainstream through the concert tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and
gave rise to the choral genre known today as gospel, through the work of composers
P. P. Bliss and Ira D. Sankey. You can trace this stage in the development of
the spiritual through musical scores that are part of the "Music for the Nation"
collection at the American
Memory Project website. (At the website's homepage, click "Browse," then click
"Music for the Nation: 1870-1885" and select the special presentation "A Decade
of Music in America: 1870-1879." Click on "Ethnic
Groups and Popular Songs" for information about the Fisk Jubilee Singers and
a link to music from their repertoire. Click on "Religious
and Devotional Music" for information about P. P. Bliss and Ira D. Sankey,
with links to some of their compositions.) Students may also wish to explore the
roots of the spiritual in African religions through the African
Studies WWW website. (At the website's homepage, click on "Africa Web Links,"
then select "Religious Studies" and select "African
Traditional Religion."
Standards Alignment
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