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Negro Spirituals: Historical Notes and Research

This guide was originally created to provide additional notes for a prelude series for Black History Month, 2020.

Additional Historical Notes and Research

Research

Resources on page are designed to jumpstart your research if this is a compelling project for you. Resources are from quality resources. Some are free for everyone, others require HCU ID and password.

Dr. Watts

Dr. Isaac Watts was an English minister who published several books: Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in 1707 and The Psalms of David in 1717. The various Protestant denominations adopted his hymns, which were included in several hymnals, at that time.

Missionaries reported on the "ecstatic delight" slaves took in singing the psalms and hymns of Dr. Watts. In his book "The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States" (1842), the White minister Charles Colock Jones recommended highly some hymns of Dr Watts ("When I Can read My Title Clear", etc.). 

However, in the early 1800s, Black ministers took seriously the admonition of Dr. Isaac Watts: "Ministers are to cultivate gifts of preaching and prayer through study and diligence; they ought also to cultivate the capacity of composing spiritual songs and exercise it along with the other parts of the worship, preaching and prayer". So, homiletic spirituals were created by preachers and taught to the congregation by them or by deacons.

During the post-Civil War period and later, some congregation conducted services without hymnbooks. A deacon (or precentor) set the pitch and reminded the words in half-singing half-chanting stentorian tones. The people called their songs "long-meter hymns (because the tempo was very low) or "Dr Watts", even if they have not been written by this gentleman.

-Source: NegroSpirituals.com (edited)

Underground Railroad

Fisk Jubilee Singers