Civil Rights Music
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It was in his chronicling and critiquing of African American syncretism that Du Bois distinguished himself not simply as a sociologist of religion, but also an historian of religion and political theologian. Without a doubt, argued Du Bois, there were white and black Christians, but they were bound together not by religion as much as by theology. Which is to say, I am hinting here at what womanist theologian Jacquelyn Grant eloquently argued in White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus (1989), and that is that blacks and whites may be employing similar religious language and drawing from the same sacred text (i.e., The Holy Bible), but their lived-experiences and lived-endurances, their histories, cultural contexts, political persuasions, and social situations inspire them to draw comparably different conclusions as to the nature and power of God. As the first great historian and sociologist of the African American church, Du Bois’s work deftly demonstrates that racial colonization and enslavement changed black folk’s theology, but it did not in every instance, and certainly it did not completely, destroy what Raboteau termed above, their “distinctively African religious consciousness,” which is to say, their religious thought and practices. This is an insight Du Bois culled from his lived-experiences, sociological observations, and copious data collection at Fisk University, in Philadelphia’s black community (under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania), and at Atlanta University, among other sites, where black Christians practiced, literally, lived a wide variety of Africanized versions of Christianity and where, in their daily lives, conscious and unconscious African retentions reigned.[10]
As an historian of religion with strong sociological leanings, Du Bois chronicled: 1) the radical thought and rebellious lives of early African American religious leaders; 2) intra-African American class divisions and how secular distinctions such as these played themselves out in the realm of religion; 3) the dual sacred and secular nature of African American religion and the black church; 4) the conflicts within several white Christian denominations over the issue of whether enslaved Africans could or should be baptized; and, 5) why the white Baptists and Methodists were more successful in sowing the seeds of Christianity in the hearts and minds of the enslaved.[11] Along with these issues, among others, Du Bois strongly stressed that African American religion, particularly as embodied in, and flowing out of the black church, was not only “the first distinctively Negro American social institution” but, and most importantly, “the sole surviving social institution of the African fatherland.” Religion, he wrote in The Negro Church, was the lone social sphere in which enslaved Africans had any modicum of agency, and even in this realm they were severely regulated. Du Bois (1903a), writing with a sense of unmitigated awe and critical discovery, declared:
At first sight it would seem that slavery completely destroyed every vestige of spontaneous social movement among Negroes; the home had deteriorated; political authority and economic initiative was in the hands of the masters, property, as a social institution, did not exist on the plantation, and, indeed, it is usually assumed by historians and sociologists that every vestige of internal development disappeared, leaving the slaves no means of expression for their common life, thought, and striving. This is not strictly true; the vast power of the priest in the African state has already been noted; his realm alone—the province of religion and medicine—remained largely unaffected by the plantation system in many important particulars. The Negro priest, therefore, early became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as the interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and as the one who expressed, rudely, but picturesquely, the longing and disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings arose and spread with marvelous rapidity the Negro Church, the first distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first by any means a Christian Church, but a mere adaptation of those heathen rites which we roughly designate by the term Obe Worship, or “Voodoism.” Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a veneer of Christianity, and gradually, after two centuries, the Church became Christian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of the old customs still clinging to the services. It is this historic fact that the Negro Church of today bases itself upon the sole surviving social institution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its extraordinary growth and vitality. . . . This institution, therefore, naturally assumed many functions which the other harshly suppressed social organs had to surrender; the Church become the center of amusements, of what little spontaneous economic activity remained, of education, and of all social intercourse. (5)
African American religion was forged in the fires of abolitionist struggle, and the quest for freedom was not quenched by the bellowing, but weak-willed words of the Emancipation Proclamation. Therefore, Du Bois studied the impact of African American religion, basically the black church, on post-enslavement African American social development and cultural survival. African American religious thought and practices, Du Bois had a hunch, changed during the decades after enslavement because, although they had de jure freedom, blacks were still in a white supremacist, hyper-racially-ruled social world and did not have de facto freedom. Hence, American apartheid lingered on, leaving its stench and stain on everyone and everything it came into contact with, even religion and, as will be witnessed below, just as religion was racialized, so too was religious music. Whether we turn to the spirituals, gospel, or freedom songs, post-enslavement African American religious music encapsulates and articulates how it feels and what it means to be granted de jure freedom but, after nearly 350 years of enslavement, have to continue to struggle for de facto freedom. Consequently, it is not a coincidence that black popular music in general, and the black sacred song tradition in particular, can be characterized by the distinct call-and-response, cry, scream, and shout sound that seems to be at its ever-evolving sonic center.
In The Philadelphia Negro (1899), Du Bois analyzed a wide-range of African American religious practices that illustrated the dramatic (sacred and secular) changes in black church life in the first three and a half decades after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Beginning with the history of the black church, Du Bois then turned his attention to its organizational structures and social functions, and was undoubtedly the first to systematically study and document its political positions, educational initiatives, amusement/entertainment activities, missionary efforts, charitable organizations, insurance societies, and homes for the aged and the infirmed. He scrupulously examined congregational economic life, what Robert Wortham (2009) has recently referred to as “religious economy”: from debts and membership contributions, to the value of church properties and pastors’ salaries. Further, Du Bois critically observed how black class divisions within the churches and various denominations played themselves out, causing continuous stratification and discontinuous congregational affiliation. He painstakingly detailed an intricate interrelation of church and/or religion-related social and political programs, and the lingering leitmotif of African retentions, which I have come to think is one of the hallmarks of his work, is ubiquitous. In words that read more like a sorrow-filled sinner testifying in a black church at Sunday morning service, Du Bois (1899) wrote:
We often forget that the rise of a church organization among Negroes was a curious phenomenon. The church really represented all that was left of African tribal life, and was the sole expression of the organized efforts of the slaves. It was natural that any movement among freedmen should center about their religious life, the sole remaining element of their former tribal system. . . . The Negro is, to be sure, a religious creature—most primitive folk are—but his rapid and even extraordinary founding of churches is not due to this fact alone, but is rather a measure of his development, an indication of the increasing intricacy of his social life and the consequent multiplication of the organ which is the function of his group life—the church. . . . The Negro church is the peculiar and characteristic product of the transplanted African,
and deserves especial study. As a social group the Negro church may be said to have antedated the Negro family on American soil; as such it has preserved, on the one hand, many functions of tribal organization, and on the other hand, many of the family functions. Its tribal functions are shown in its religious activity, its social authority and general guiding and coordinating work; its family functions are shown by the fact that the church is a center of social life and intercourse; acts as newspaper and intelligence bureau, is the center of amusements—indeed, is the world in which the Negro moves and acts. So far-reaching are these functions of the church that its organization is almost political. (197, 201)
His inexcusable politically incorrect language aside (“The Negro is, to be sure, a religious creature—most primitive folk are”)—which demonstrates that one of the major architects of African American studies was not immune to internalized anti-black racism and the diabolical dialectic of white superiority and black inferiority!—Du Bois accentuated both the social and political functions of the black church. In his estimate, it is “the most remarkable product of American Negro civilization” because “[i]t is a democratic church; a church where the governing power is largely in the hands of the mass of membership” (Du Bois 1985, 84). The democratic nature of the black church is a recurring theme in Du Bois’s writings on religion, especially when he compared it with the white church, because in spite of what he was wont to term its “primitivisms” and “nativisms,” yet and still, he stated: “The Negro church is at least democratic. It welcomes everybody. It draws no color-line” (Du Bois 2000, 141). He asserted that the African American church is further distinguished because it serves as a multipurpose site for moral instruction, political education, social development, and racial/cultural awareness. Obviously, the African American church also serves as a space where black folk can participate in artistic creation—not merely musical, but a broadly conceived conception of artistic creation elastic enough to encompass a wide-range of African American artistry. Needless to say, if, as Du Bois asserted, “the church is a center of social life and intercourse,” and if so wide-ranging and “far-reaching” is its cultural influence and functions that its “organization is almost political,” then gospel music, being a key component of black church culture by the time of the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, is also “almost political,” if not in many instances, especially considering gospel music’s freedom songs subgenre, outright and unambiguously political.[12]
African American women’s special role in creating and sustaining the black church was not lost on Du Bois, and they received unprecedented praise from his pen. Radical religious convictions were not simply the cornerstone of individual black women’s struggles against various forms of oppression, but it was also at the heart of their collective efforts to organize African Americans in the interest of social uplift. In Darkwater, Du Bois put forward the often noted names of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, fervently recalling, not merely their profound religiosity, but also how their religious beliefs inspired and, perhaps even, invoked their legendary “feminist-abolitionism” (Du Bois 1920, 175–177). The organizations that ultimately came to be collectively called the “Black Women’s Club Movement” all emerged from the religious cultural context of the African American church and, it should be emphasized, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)—i.e., the national association of black women’s clubs—was “the first truly black national organization that functioned with strength and unity” (Hine and Thompson 1998, 180).[13]
So powerful and pervasive was the influence of the Black Women’s Club Movement on him, when Du Bois turned to social organization and radical political activism, he used the Black Women’s Club Movement as a model, going so far as to name the social organization he helped to found (along with two of the major leaders of the Black Women’s Club Movement, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[14] In The Gift of Black Folk, Du Bois candidly conceded:
We have noted then the Negro woman in America as a worker tending to emancipate all women workers; as a mother nursing the white race and uniting the black and white races; as a conspirator urging forward emancipation in various sorts of ways; and we have finally only to remember that today the women of America who are doing humble but on the whole the most effective work in the social uplift of the lowly, not so much by money as by personal contact, are the colored women. Little is said or known about it but in thousands of churches and social clubs, in missionary societies and fraternal organizations, in unions like the National Association of Colored Women, these workers are founding and sustaining orphanages and old folk homes; distributing personal charity and relief; visiting prisoners; helping hospitals; teaching children; and ministering to all sorts of needs. Their work, as it comes now and then in special cases to the attention of individuals of the white world, forms a splendid bond of encouragement and sympathy, and helps more than most realize in minimizing racial difficulties and encouraging human sympathy. (Du Bois 1970, 149)
Without a doubt, Du Bois (1920) declared in Darkwater, “[i]t was . . . strong women that laid the foundations of the great Negro church of today, with its five million members and ninety millions of dollars in property” (174). He acknowledged the role of “early church mothers,” such as Mary Still, in the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (174). Moreover, he suggested that “such [was the] spiritual ancestry” that spurred Harriet Tubman’s legendary efforts to liberate the enslaved, sympathize with John Brown’s revolutionary abolitionism, and enlist in the Union Army (174).
In an audacious turn of phrase, Du Bois further accentuated black women’s special “spiritual ancestry” by placing the religious and resistance activities of black women on par with those of black men. He went so far as to recall Sojourner Truth’s classic query to Frederick Douglass—“Frederick, is God dead?”—when the black male-feminist abolitionist, in a moment of desperation, declared that African Americans would have to fight for their freedom by force of arms. Du Bois also acknowledged the work of Kate Ferguson, a nineteen year-old African American widow, who “took the children of the streets of New York, white and black, into her empty arms, taught them, found them homes” and, most pertinent to the present discussion, she “established the first modern Sunday School in Manhattan” (177–178).
In his writings on religion Du Bois also spoke highly of African American clergy, and often exhibited a great deal of sympathy for their peculiar simultaneous positions as “spiritual guides” and social leaders of their people. For instance, above he asserted: “The Negro priest, therefore, early became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as the interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and as the one who expressed, rudely, but picturesquely, the longing and disappointment and resentment of a stolen people.” In his chapter on Alexander Crummell and in “Of the Faith of the Fathers,” both in The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois heartily advanced: “The Preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’ an idealist—all these he is, and ever, too, the center of a group of men” (Du Bois 1903b, 190; see also Du Bois, 1899, 205–207, 1982, 328–329, 2000, 21–22). African American ministers were often misunderstood, he argued, and very few were qualified to criticize them, as there were no serious studies (antedating Du Bois’s) of their dual religious and socio-political roles. In perhaps his earliest essay on religion, “The Problem of Amusement” (originally published in 1897), Du Bois (1978) contended:
The minister who directs this peculiar and anomalous institution must not be criticized without full knowledge of his difficult role. He is in reality the mayor, the chief magistrate of a community, ruling to be sure, but ruling according to the dictates of a not over-intelligent town council, according to time honored custom and law; and above all, hampered by the necessities of his budget; he may be a spiritual
guide, he must be a social organizer, a leader of actual men; he may desire to enrich and reform the spiritual life of his flock, but above all he must have church members; he may desire to revolutionize church methods, to elevate the ideals of the people, to tell the hard, honest truth to a people who need a little more truth and a little less flattery—but how can he do this when the people of this social organism demand that he shall take from the purely spiritual activities of his flock, time to minister to their amusements, diversion, and physical comfort; when he sees the picnic masquerading as a camp-meeting, the revival becoming the social event of the season, the day of worship turned into a day of general reception and dining out, the rival church organizations plunging into debt to furnish their houses of worship with an elegance that far outruns the financial ability of a poverty-stricken people; when the church door becomes the trysting place for all the lovers and Lotharios of the community; when a ceaseless round of entertainments, socials, and necktie parties chase the week through—what minister can be more that most ministers are coming to be, the business managers of a picnic ground? (229)