African America begins to emancipate itself
In the 1730s and 1740s, a first violent and very emotional wave of conversion swept over the New World; triggered not least by the passionate sermons of repentance by the English missionary Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758), the greatest and at the same time most controversial theologian in American history. Many African Americans who did not yet feel Christian were caught up in the Great Awakening. Remember, this was also the time when Isaac Watts' book Hymns and Spiritual Songs was first printed in America. Watts' religious poems were an important part of this revival movement. The new hymns gradually replaced the old psalms in Protestant services.
From the beginning the colonial masters argued about the question whether the conversion of enslaved Africans should be promoted, forced or forbidden - with the most different, partly noble and partly egoistic arguments. In the North people tended to be more in favour of conversion; already in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was founded there, a missionary organisation of the English Church. Religious education was offered here and there, in New York's Trinity Church, for example, or in schools independent of established churches, to teach Christianity and psalm singing.
In the southern states there was much less conversion. The large plantations there were quite isolated, each plantation owner could act more or less on his own authority. Some refrained from proselytizing because they believed that religious instruction would turn the enslaved into "proud, self-confident, and therefore bad servants. In Virginia and other southern states, fear of rebellion led to legislation that Christian baptism did not allow African Americans to become free. Others interpreted certain passages from the Bible in a way that would justify slavery as such, misusing Christianity to make the enslaved more docile. Still other owners treated their servants benevolently, were sincerely concerned for their salvation. It would definitely be too simplistic to label Southerners as simple-minded racists. Differences existed at all times and everywhere; even today, if I may note, there are good and bad superiors in the veiled slavery of shark capitalism .
The missionary SPG was also active in the South. As time went on, more and more African Americans attended weekly services with their white masters. However, they sat in segregated galleries, on the floor, or had to listen to the sermon from outside through the open window. How promising the Christian spirit must be, when one opens oneself to it even in the midst of the worst mortification. At the latest when they sang, the whites realized that the slaves were superior to them in a certain way. Reverend Samuel Davies, a Reformed priest from Virginia, remarked in 1751: "The negroes, more than any other people I know, have an ear for music and a kind of ecstatic joy in singing," to follow it up immediately in a missionary way, "and there are no books from which they learn so quickly and with such delight as those of Dr. Watts."
In short, the world was not yet in order in the New World - blacks were often segregated and discriminated against in church services. Towards the end of the 18th century, the long overdue process of emancipation began; African Americans began to establish their own church congregations. The very first step was taken by Reverend Andrew Bryan, a freed slave, who founded the Bryan Street African Baptist Church with 67 members in a barn in Savannah (Georgia) on 20 January 1788. Others followed his example; a few more Baptist churches were formed in the South, and numerous Methodist churches for blacks were founded in the North in the 1790s.
This sounds like more progress than it was at first, because especially in the South most black communities were governed by white priests and councils. After the alleged planned slave revolt of Denmark Vesey (1767 - 1822) and the actual attempted revolt of Nathaniel 'Nat' Turner (1800 - 1831), the fun was over anyway, most African American churches were dissolved again, banned for several decades. Black Christian preachers were ultimately the villains in both revolts - Denmark Vesey led the African Methodist Episcopal Church he founded in 1816, and the legendary Nat Turner (still a symbolic figure of the Black Power movement in the USA) was a popular reverend, was called "the prophet" among slaves, and felt chosen by God to free his people from slavery. This could not continue; when black Christians fought for freedom, they were not welcome. Only after the Civil War (1865) did blacks in the South again form independent church congregations.
In the northern part, as I said, things were a bit more progressive. As early as 1784, Old St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia had granted a preacher's license to a black man for the first time in history; the former slave Richard Allen, who 10 years later founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Sometime between 1800 and 1801, something strange also happened in the North, in the upper part of Kentucky, at a memorable place called Cane Ridge, a meeting was called by a few clergymen which subsequently led to a second great wave of revival and went down in history as the Kentucky Revival or Second Great Awakening. We find it hard to imagine such a thing today; it must have been something like a Woodstock festival - but without music, just sermons and spiritual ecstasy. The camp lasted for weeks, day and night, thousands came on foot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons. Up to 25'000 people were present at times, there were booths everywhere where preachers of different churches told about Jesus Christ. The people were seized by a holy power, fell in rows like beaten warriors, begged for mercy, wept and shouted with happiness so that it could be heard for miles. No humbug, there are numerous contemporary witnesses who confirm it - it must have been a kind of Pentecostal experience, as described in the Bible, the "sending out or outpouring of the Holy Spirit".
At this mysterious big event, once again the Holy Spirit also took hold of blacks, which spurred Christianization within the African American community. In 1801, the aforementioned Richard Allen published a hymnal for the AME Church, A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns; an important event, it was the first hymnal published expressly for an African American congregation. 54 hymn lyrics, with no tunes, many came from, how could it be otherwise, Isaac Watts. The book became very popular with blacks, a reference so to speak; it also contained choruses that both supported and contrasted the message of the verse - perfectly tailored to the African call and response concept. Some choruses appeared in several songs; "wandering choruses" were unique at the time; later they came up frequently in spirituals. My Lord, What a Morning is a wonderful example of an adaptation of a hymn from Richard Allen's songbook of the time; there are many moving versions to be heard on Youtube (by Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, The Golden Gate Quartet, The Moses Hogan Singers, Jessye Norman, Lúnasa & Eric Bibb and many more).
The Second Great Awakening was not over right away with the Cane Ridge big event; basically, it was a revival phase that only began with it and continued for at least 50 years. Smaller such highly emotional camp meetings took place everywhere from now on, especially in the backcountry. African American slaves were tolerated at such open-air services, but often in separate areas where blacks preached. This discrimination provoked conflict, so in 1818 the AME Church set up the first camp meeting organized by and for blacks. Other African American Methodists and Baptists followed suit, and Richard Allen, by then the first black bishop, brought out a new edition of his hymnal that same year with even more hymns. These religious camp meetings were definitely fertile ground for the further development of spirituals - and thus, even if we are hardly aware of it today, have had an effect right up to our current music. Quite sustainable, the Holy Spirit.
A certain John F. Watson (1779 - 1860), Wesleyan Methodist, publisher and writer, expressed himself with the typical arrogance of the white intellectuals of the time rather disdainfully about the archaic singing of the blacks. But at least he mentioned that the African Americans at these camp meetings impressed the white participants, that the passionate, improvisational performance practice of the blacks "visibly influenced the religious mores of some whites". A sure sign that African America was beginning to emancipate itself. Which, as we know, was repeated more than 200 years later when we European palefaces discovered the blues.
Watson, by the way, was the first contemporary witness to report in his writings about the so called ring shout, the traditional ceremony from Africa; a ring-shaped group sings, and everyone shuffles their legs rhythmically. Singing basically means shouting or screaming, hence the term "shout". Such ring dances often had a trance-like character, they could easily last four or five hours, not only at camp meetings, but at all kinds of gatherings. Now, as always, we don't know exactly what these shouts sounded like in the 18th and 19th centuries, but we can imagine it very well - thanks to Alan Lomax; he ran the tape for the Library of Congress in 1934, in Jennings, Louisiana, when Joe Washington Brown and Austin Coleman celebrated the spiritual song Good Lord (Run Old Jeremiah) together with an unknown group. To be heard on Youtube, released on various historical samplers, e.g. Negro Religious Field Recordings - Vol. 1. Fascinating, this...
