African American Spirituals

What are African American Spirituals?

The African American Spirituals are folksongs that originated over the four hundred years of slavery. African American Spirituals are a part of the Africana music continuum in the United States. The songs followed music traditions that originated in Africa. These traditions dictated and influenced the rhythms, notes, embodiment, and instrumentation of the songs. Many other Black music types are a continuum of Africana music such as Blues, Gospel, and Jazz etc. During the Civil Rights movement, singers continued to use Spirituals as well as jazz and gospel as protest songs.

Spirituals are a cultural testament to the history and culture of African Americans and their enslavement. The songs themselves are aural history. They passed down for years by word of mouth, and hundreds of songs were made in this way. Despite not being notated at the time, many kept their integrity for hundreds of years to the Civil Rights Movement and to this day.

Some well-known Spirituals are “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, “Deep River” and “This Little Light of Mine”. Listening to these songs you can experience the deep emotional impact they have. There is also a range of emotions expressed by Spirituals, some are exclamations of joy and others confessions of deep sorrow. These emotions are intentional and inherent to the nature and origin of the Spirituals. These emotions are accentuated when put into the historical context surrounding these Spirituals.

Oppression of Black Music

African American Spirituals differ from a direct representation of African practices in part because of the forced assimilation that was imposed on Black slaves by white slave owners. The fact that these spirituals refer to the Christian religion is an example of this forced assimilation. Most African Americans would have been practicing other religions when they were brought to the States. But due to persecution of their traditional religions, many incorporated Christianity in order for their spiritual practices to be permitted. Spirituals then demonstrate a compromise of music and religion to something that paid tribute to their African heritage but did not provoke violence and punishment from their white slave owners. Spirituals evolved as a result of African American culture preservation and survival.  

Every aspect of the enslaved person’s heritage was oppressed by the slaveowners, from their language, music, and religion. Slave owners did this to subjugate their personhood. For this reason, every song was an act of rebellion and empowerment of their personhood. The words of “This Little Light of Mine” echo with this empowerment.

Spirituals as Protest

Many of the songs have symbolic meanings and coded messages of emancipation from slavery. For example, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Steal Away”, often credited to Wallace Willis, are believed to speak of freedom for slaves who make it to the North or Canada.

The reason these songs translated so well into protest songs during the Civil Rights Movement was because of their coded messages of emancipation. Songs like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” implied being freed from slavery and returning to Africa or a home of such freedom. This same emancipatory determination is found during the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, songs like “This Little Light” reaffirmed the power of standing one’s ground as seen in countless protests like sit-ins, freedom rides, and silent marches.

Spirituals’ Influence on Children

Because of their powerful messages, both coded and direct Spirituals were used to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. They were sung at protests along with other Black music and original protest songs written for the marchers.

One of these spirituals was “This Little Light of Mine”. Though understood to be an African American Spiritual “This Little Light of Mine” was popularized by a white man named Harry Dixon Loes in the 1920s. When he notated and published the song it was marketed to children’s audiences. Its long history in African American populations caused it to be very familiar to adults and children alike.

By the time “This Little Light of Mine” was being sung in demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement it was already predominately a children’s song. It is almost undeniable then that it was meant to further encourage children’s participation in the Movement.

Freeman A. Hrabowski spoke of the influence of the aural history interview conducted by Joseph Mosnier. Hrabowski was only 12 years old when he marched in Birmingham but was a designated leader for the children marching. He said of himself and the other children, “And, amazingly, it gave you the strength to keep going, just to keep going. You didn’t listen to the police. You weren’t looking at cameras. You’re just focused.”Because of the songs, fearful innocent children were given the strength to march against adults with little to no protection being given.

Blackface Minstrelsy

What is Blackface minstrelsy?

Blackface Minstrel shows were racist entertainment in America that emerged in the 19th century. It originated in the Northeastern States as comic shows in the 1830s. The shows were staged around mockery and insulting racist tropes. By the late 1840s, Black face minstrelsy was the most popular form of entertainment in the United States. The earliest performance had white people painting their faces to perform as an explicit way of mocking Black people. Later some African American bands would also perform Minstrel shows for white audiences because of how profitable the industry was from 1840 to the 1870s. Due to their racism, they were protested by the NAACP and shut down in the mid-1900s. 

Characters and Tropes

The most well-known characters in Blackface minstrelsy were Jim Crow, Mammy, and Tambo and Bones. These characters mocked Black people and compared Black people to White people. The stereotypes demonstrated in blackface minstrelsy depicted African Americans as animals with instincts and urges instead of humanity. These characters did not really have emotions, desires, and needs. The simplistic tropes of the shows played into the belief that African Americans were lesser people than White people. The stereotypes communicated that Black people were less capable of understanding what was happening around them, less capable of compassion, and love, and were childish. These tropes are wrong and damaging.

The Wannabe Trope

Jim Crow, a.k.a Zip Coon, is the most infamous character from Blackface minstrelsy. His whole persona was a mockery of Black freemen. He functioned under the trope that Black people want to be White people but can’t accomplish this. To depict this, Jim Crow’s character was an arrogant and flaunting try-hard. He could never say things that were really correct or well-pronounced. And although he was dressed ostentatious, all his garments were tattered.

This trope became a stereotype that White people could attach to Black people and children. When Black people protested for equality, White people, based on the Wannabe stereotype, justified not giving them this equality because Black people could never amount to their intelligence and class.

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This stereotype was deeply insulting to the Black community. The try-hard trope mocked freed slaves’ efforts to climb the social later or improve their livelihood. It also demeaned Black people’s intelligence. This reestablished a hierarchy as Jim’s imitation implied that he looked up to White people.

The Mischievous Trope

Tambo and Bones’ characters were very stupid and were always up to mischief. In the shows, they mindlessly did things with no regard for the consequences. This trope was damaging because it implied that Black people really had no regard for how their actions might affect others. The stereotype again implied that Black people were stupid and illiterate.

These three character tropes depicted Black adults as childlike and immature. Meanwhile, actual minstrel shows rarely had children’s characters. If they did they were even more animalistic and called “Cubs”, not children. The lack of children may have been because there would be no distinction between the actions of an adult minstrel character and a child.

Other characters, like Mammy, stereotyped Black women as either hypersexual or hyper-maternal. And the later adaptions of Blackface characters had the highly damaging stereotype of the violent rapist. The most infamous example of this trope in American entertainment is the film “Birth of a Nation.” 

The Effects of Blackface Minstrelsy

All of these stereotypes were racist and affected how African Americans were seen and treated by White people. White people brought their children to these shows. They modeled to White children that these racist stereotypes were funny and made sense. Minstrel shows were extremely popular all the way to the 1970s. Therefore, these stereotypes were engrained in the mentalities and culture of White Americans. 

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Read more about racist stereotypes and their effects on the United States culture in the next article on the path.