Mende, Sande, and Poro

Topic: Origins - Africa
The Gola were considered the oldest ethnic group in Liberia, although they recalled their ancestors met others when they arrived. [1] The above demographic map was made in 1947, and showed their then current location near the border with Sierra Leone.

Warren d’Azevedo discovered "certain of their traditions make reference to former matrilineality in terms such as ‘we were ruled by women and looked to our mothers’." [2] When he interviewed them in the middle-1950s, they told him that before the Portuguese arrived

"vast regions of the interior of what is now Liberia and Sierra Leone were dense uninhabited forests. They themselves were a small isolated group in the mountains of what is now northeastern Liberia. Large game such as elephant, water buffalo, and hippopotamus were profuse and their hunting parties made extensive excursions. They also view themselves as having been at one time a great hunting people, and that this was true of most of the early tribes of the forest. It is noteworthy in this regard that the content of Gola myth and other traditions is highly explicit about matters of hunting, fishing, and gathering, but vague and inconsistent about agriculture" [3] which he associated with matrilineal societies.

The meeting of Gola and Mandé speakers occurred when Songhai attacked the Mali Empire. As mentioned in the post for 24 March 2019, it seized the Taghaza mines in 1493. That probably led the Vai to move along the Atlantic coast looking for a replacement source. [4] The Mandé speakers were settled around Cape Mount near the modern Liberian-Sierra Leone border by about 1500. [5]

The Mandé-speaking Mane began moving into modern Liberia some time after. John Fage noted they

"were military bands that systematically attacked and overcame the villages of each group they came across. Some of them would stay behind to organize these conquests into small kingdoms, while others, reinforced by auxiliaries recruited from among their victims, would proceed farther west to repeat the pattern." [6]

The Mane reached the Vai at Cape Mount in 1545, [7] then move northwest parallel to the coast. Walter Rodney noted the lançados, who purchased slaves for Portuguese ships, "hovered like vultures in every river, waiting to take hold of the victims of the struggles. So numerous were the unfortunates, that the boats sometimes rejected further offers of slaves after they had gorged themselves full." [8]

Margaret Washington reported the Gola response:

"In the beginning was Sande, a women’s society which governed, and was the custodian of ritual and of the spiritual powers necessary to defense ancestral interest. The initiation and training of women was a central task involving the entire community. And into these days of ‘peace and perfect order’ came terrible wars, but women resisted the men’s mobilization for defense. Thus the men invented a forest monster—the ‘Great Spirit of Poro’ (a mask form) which frightened the women. This spirit provided men with the power to wrest control of the country, take away the sons, teach them the art of war and of politics, and to enforce loyalty exclusively among males, via the secret bush initiation." [9]

The new settlements, with their mix of Mane and local people, became the Mende. According to Wikipedia, they

"say that their original members were hunters and fishers who populated the area sparsely in small peaceful settlements; they say that their leaders came later, in a recent historical period, bringing with them the arts of war, and also building larger, more permanent villages. This history receives support from the facts that their population consists of two different racial types, and their language and culture show signs of a layering of two different forms: they have both matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance, for instance." [10]

In the late 1600s, power within Gola society still was divided between the male Poro and the female Sande in their communities, which were called fuwa. D’Azevedo said they alternated

"‘ownership of the country’ every four and three years respectively. These alternations were coincided in all the Gola fuwa so that women were said to ‘own’ the Gola for three years, and then ‘turn the people over’ to the Poro for four years. In these periods each society was to hold its ‘bush’ for initiation and training of the young. The graduation of the youth and the subsequent turning over of ‘ownership of the land’ to the other society are ritual events of great importance among the Gola and all the ‘Poro tribes’ today." [11]

The equilibrium, such as it was, ended when the English entered into slave trade. In 1702, groups living southeast of the Vai complained they "had been there, with two large vessels and had ravaged the country, destroyed all their canoes, plundered their houses, and carried off some of their people as slaves." [12]

People in smaller settlements moved into the territories of their neighbors, where they were welcomed as defense recruits. D’Azevedo recorded the "Gola were engaged in a major tribal dispersion" and "they soon became a majority in many of these expanding chiefdoms, and their dependent villages began to welcome, in turn, migrants and refugees from all interior tribes." [13]

Everywhere the Gola settled, they took their Poro and Sande societies. With time, Poro became integrated into their hosts’ leadership structures. The local societies served a function similar to the Masons or fraternal lodges like the Elks or Veterans of Foreign Wars: they recognized members from other communities by the marks made during initiations, and thus formed a unifying net over settlements reconstituted from destroyed communities both in Liberia, and among the Mende in modern Sierra Leone.

Graphics
George Schwab. "Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland." 20 in Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland. Cambridge: Peabody Museum, 1947. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Metilsteiner on 3 April 2015. The book reported fieldwork done with the groups marked by dots.

End Notes
1. "Culture." Liberia Past and Present website.

2. Warren d’Azevedo. "The Setting of Gola Society and Culture: Some Theoretical Implications of Variation in Time and Space." Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 1959. 56.

3. D’Azevedo, Setting. 54-55.

4. Yves Person. "The Coastal Peoples: from Casamance to the Ivory Coast Lagoons." 301-323 in D. T. Niane. Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century. Paris: UNESCO, 1984. 318.

5. Ayodeji Olukoju. Culture and Customs of Liberia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006. 9.

6. John D. Fage. "Western Africa." In Encyclopædia Britannica. Last updated 29 March 2016.

7. Fage.

8. Walter Rodney. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. 120. His source was A. de Almada. "Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné." Momenta Missionaria Africana, Africa Ocidental, 1569-1700. Series 2, 3:363, 364.

9. Margaret Washington Creel. "A Peculiar People." New York: New York University Press, 1988. 51. Her sources were Warren d’Azevedo, "Gola, Poro and Sande: Primal Tasks in Social Custodianship," Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich I:15-16:1980, and d’Azevedo, Setting.

10. Wikipedia. "History of Sierra Leone." Its source was Kenneth Little. The Mende of Sierra Leone. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. He, in turn, cited F. W. H Migeod "on the Mende racial mixture." Migeod. A View of Sierra Leone. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Company, 1926.

11. D’Azevedo, Setting. 56.

12. Willem Bosman. Nauwkeurige Beschryving van de Guinese Goud-, Tand- en Slave-Kusk. Translated as A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea. London: James Knapton, 1705. 475. Quoted by Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 379.

13. D’Azevedo, Setting. 58.

The Gold Trade

Topic: Origins - Africa
The Sande and Poro societies were uniquely positioned to provide a framework for community in plantation slave quarters because they had been modified by social disruptions caused by Europe’s direct contact with sub-Saharan Africa.

For centuries the relationship between the two economies had been gold. When the African continent was forming, the Mann Shield grew by absorbing volcanos that had erupted on its perimeter. Gold formed in greenstone belts on the terranes and then was laid on the surface between 2.100 and 2.200 billion years ago. [1]

The Futa Jallon, the deep rose on the Man Shield, laid to the west. The sandstone block rose "sharply from the coastal plain in a series of abrupt faults." The plateaus were broken by deep valleys and the remnants of "ancient volcanism." [2] The rivers that flowed from the futa exposed the gold beneath. The Bambuk field was near the headwaters of the Sénégal river, the Boire along the upper Niger, and the Lobi along the Black Volta.

Timothy Garrard thought the transport of gold north from the Bambuk field had begun by 296 when Carthage opened a mint [3] in what today is Libya. By then, camels capable of crossing the Sahara had been introduced. He believed one reason the Umayyad Muslims moved west from Egypt toward the Byzantine provinces was to control that mint, which they did in 695. [4] They wanted only one currency in their territories. [5]

The Abbasids toppled the Umayyad caliphate in 750, [6] and, in 800, appointed an Arab leader of the Aghlabid as hereditary emir of north Africa. [7] The Kutama Berbers revolted in 909, and established an independent Fatimid caliphate. They moved their capital to Cairo in 969. [8]

Jean Devisse believed the Fatimids were responsible for the development of the trans-Saharan gold trade because they minted coins independently [9] of those issued by the Abbasids in Baghdad, [10] while the Umayyads, who had retreated to Spain, were issuing their own currency there. [11] The rival mints created a demand large enough for men to cross the desert.

Sijilmassa became the northern center of trade that brought gold across the Sahara from the Mandé-speaking [12] Ghana Empire [13] centered in Koumbi Saleh. Salt was taken south by camel from Taghaza in the Taoudeni Basin. [14] Caravans were run by Berber nomads living in the Sahara, the Tuaregs. [15]

Lamtuna Berbers rebelled against the chaos that came with the struggles between the Umayyads and Fatimids for control of what is now Morocco in western North Africa. [16] They also were suffering from the transfer of the salt monopoly from Awlil in their territory to Taghaza. [17]

The Almoravids merged the need for religious reform with the one for social order. They moved their capital to the boundary between the Berbers and Negroes at the Sénégal river around 1030 where Bambuk gold, Awlil salt, and Sahel grain were traded. [18] They converted the sedimentary population in the Takrur Empire, [19] then imposed Sharia law in 1035. [20]

From Takrur, the Almoravids moved east to take Awdâghust, an important caravan stop of the Ghana Empire in 1055, [21] where again they imposed Sharia Law in 1076. [22] The neighboring Sosso invaded Ghana and took over the caravan trade by 1100. [23] By then, Jan Bart Gewald said those West African goldfields were the principle currency supply for Europe and the Arab caliphate. [24]

Another Mandé-speaking group, the Mandinka, defeated the Sosso in 1235 to establish what became the Islamic Mali Empire. [25] One of the clans that supported its leader was the iron smithing Kamara. [26] Sundiata located his capital on a Niger tributary in Kamara territory upriver [27] from the newly opened Boure gold fields. [28]

The Sosso were iron workers who rejected Islam. [29] The Moslem leaders of Mali were more discriminating than the Almoravids. They did not proselytize gold workers because "prospecting and production of the metal traditionally depended on a number of beliefs and magical practices that were alien to Islam." [30] Similarly, Diango Cissé said the Kamara were known for their magic. They acted "as intermediaries between humans and protector spirits." [31]

Iron production required heat. The Kamara, no doubt, moved the Empire’s frontier with the nearby forest south as it converted trees into fuel. [32] To the north, Timbuktu became Mali’s most important city when it was annexed in 1324. [33] It had been founded by Moslem scholars fleeing the Almoravid conquest of Oualata in 1100. [34]

One consequence of the Almoravid rout of the Umayyads in Iberia was renewed efforts at reconquest. Portugal became independent in 1249. In 1415, João I landed on the Moroccan coast at Ceuta with his sons, Duarte, Pedro, and Henrique. [35] From there, Henrique directed navigators to locate the African goldfields. One of his agents spent a year near the Gulf of Arguin learning the intricacies of internal African trade. [36]

By then Mali was in decline. The Tuareg had retaken control of the caravan routes in 1433, [37] and the Songhai Empire to the north and east conquered Timbukto in 1468. [38] Taghaza fell to Songhai in 1493. [39]

The dynamics of African trade changed again in 1545 when Spain began mining at Potosí in modern-day Bolivia. [40] Silver flooded markets, especially in Italy, and gold was hoarded, especially by the Ottoman Turks who had taken over Egypt in 1517. [41]

Soon after the disruption of currency markets, Mandé-speakers began moving southwest. The first group, the Vai, went south and east toward salt supplies. The next group, the Mane, were assumed to have been a Kamara group that developed alliances as it moved. Their motives can only be deduced from the direction of their movements, south and east then northwest along the coast toward the Portuguese slave-trade centers. [42]

The first group the Mane met on the today’s coast of Liberia were the Cubales. Yves Person believed they were Gola, [43] and that the Mane introduced Poro male initiation rituals [44] to the group. The Gola already had the female Sande society.

Graphics
1. Aymatth2. "West Africa Showing the West African Craton." Wikimedia Commons. 26 December 2010.

2. Aa77zz. "Trade Routes of the Western Sahara c. 1000-1500." Wikimedia Commons. 5 August 2011.

3. T. L. Miles. "Map of Medieval Saharan Trade Routes circa 1400 CE, Centered on Niger." Wikimedia Commons. 18 January 2008.

End Notes
1. Thomas Schlüter. Geological Atlas of Africa. Berlin: Springer-Verlad, 2008. 16, 50, 192.

2. Thomas E. O’Toole. "Guinea." Encyclopædia Britannica. Last updated, 30 December 2015.

3. Timothy F. Garrard. "Myth and Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade." The Journal of African History 23:443–461:1982. 447.

4. Garrard. 449.

5. J. Devisse. "Trade and Trade Routes in West Africa." 367–435 in M. El Fasi. Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. Paris: UNESCO, 1988. 391.

6. Wikipedia. "Abbasid Caliphate."
7. Wikipedia. "Aghlabids."
8. Wikipedia. "Kutama."
9. Devisse. 392.
10. Wikipedia. "Abbasid Caliphate."
11. Devisse. 399–400.

12. Mandé is a linguistic classification, much like Romance and Germanic are categories for languages spoken by diverse ethnic groups.

13. Wikipedia. "Sijilmassa."
14. Wikipedia. "Taghaza."
15. Wikipedia. "Tuareg People."
16. I. Hrbek and J. Devisse. "The Almoravids." 336–366 in El Fasi. 337.
17. Hrbek. 340–1.
18. Wikipedia. "Takrur."

19. C J. D. Fage. "Upper and Lower Guinea." In The Cambridge History of Africa. Edited by Roland Oliver. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 3:484.

20. Wikipedia, Takrur.
21. Wikipedia. "Almoravid dynasty."
22. Fage. 484.
23. Wikipedia. "Sosso Empire."

24. Jan Bart Gewald. "Gold the True Motor of West African History: An Overview of the Importance of Gold in West Africa and Its Relations with the Wider World." In Worlds of Debt: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gold Mining in West Africa. Edited by Cristiana Panella. Amsterdam: Rozenberg, 2010.

25. Wikipedia, Sosso.

26. D. T. Niane. "Mali and the Second Mandingo Expansion." 117–171 in Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century. Edited by D. T. Niane. Paris: UNESCO, 1984. On allegiance to Sundiata, 131–132.

Bakary Camara. Evolution des Systemes Fonciers au Mali. Dakar: Consel pour de développement de la recherche en sciences sociales en Afrique, 2015. On clan as black smiths, 54. Kamara also was spelled Cámara.

27. Niane. 136. Niani was located on the Sankarani.

28. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. "The Trans-Saharan Gold Trade (7th–14th Century)." Museum website. October 2000.

29. N. Levtzion. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen, 1973. Cited by Niane. 125.

30. Metropolitan Museum.

31. Diango Cissé. Structures des Malinké de Kita: Contribution à une Anthropologie Social et Politique du Mali. Bamako: Editions Populaires, 1970. 211, 249. Quoted by Christopher L. Miller. Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. 141.

32. Niane’s map showed Kamaro was south of Niani with an arrow pointing to the forest. (page 128)

33. Wikipedia. "History of Timbuktu."
34. Wikipedia, Timbuktu.
35. Wikipedia. "History of Portugal.

36. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 58. João Fernandes stayed on the Bay of Arguin in 1455.

37. M . Ly-Tall. "The decline of the Mali Empire. 172–186 in Niane. 174.
38. Wikipedia, Timbuktu.
39. Wikipedia. "Mali Empire."
40. Wikpedia. "Potosí."

41. Ferdinand Braudel. La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéan à l’Epoque. 1966. Translated by Siân Reynolds as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. New York: Harper and Row, 1975 paperback edition. On Italian banks 496–497; gold hoarding, 499.

42. Yves Person. "Ethnic Movements and Acculturation in Upper Guinea since the Fifteenth Century." African Historical Studies 4:669–689:1971. "The Vai eruption must have been aimed at the kola and sea salt trade. The Mane, one century later, were probably motivated at least in part by the desire to trade with white men." (page 676)

43. Person. 681.
44. Person. 678.

Ritual Initiations and Conversion Experiences

Topic: Origins - Slaves
European traders discovered the mix of cultures described in the post for 13 March 2019 when they arrived on the coast of Africa. Their demands for slaves exacerbated existing divisions and encouraged warfare. In this country captives were recombined on plantations in groups of a hundred or less. [1]

The puzzle for historians was how this potpourri was molded into identifiable antebellum cultures when many plantation owners kept their slaves as isolated as possible from those on other plantations.

One factor was the psychological response to bondage, unpredictability, and threats of terror. Stimulated by Eugene Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll, [2] historians documented ways slaves circumvented the limits placed upon them.

Michael Gomez, as mentioned in the post for 13 March 2019, took a different tact in Exchanging Our Countries Marks. [3] He examined religious beliefs of Africans and highlighted those that were common. Margaret Washington Creel was more specific: she looked at the religion of slaves in the South Carolina lowlands where Gullah was spoken. She argued:

"in the Carolina Lowcountry there was an early cultural dominance of BaKongo peoples of Kongo-Angolan origin, followed by Upper Guinea Africans of the Senegambia and Windward Coasts. Upper Guinea peoples coming to Carolina found a creolized black culture already adjusting and acculturating." [4]

Sterling Stuckey believed the ring shout "gave form and meaning to black religion." [5] Washington thought West African initiation rituals handled by the female Sande and male Poro [6] societies served as the bridge between native religions and Christianity.

During those initiations, adolescents were sent into the wilderness to make contact with the spirit world. How that occurred was one of the carefully held secrets. Washington combed through the work of anthropologists to learn initiates were supervised by "Poro-Sande priests and priestesses, called altar mothers and fathers." She concluded:

"The boys and girls conversed with the spirits and related these conversations to the altar parent, who interpreted them. Little is known of the initiates’ experiences while on the journey through the spirit world. But their soul was considered to be in a state of anxiety and confusion, seeking to ‘recover balance and collect itself.’ The encounter with ‘nameless spirits’ in the sacred grove was manifested in dreams and prayers since these were common forms of revelation and communication." [7]

One reason these rituals survived on plantations was owners were reluctant to prosthelytize their slaves, especially after the Stono Rebellion of 1739 [8] and the Denmark Vesey conspiracy in 1822. In the first case, slaves were able to read Spanish invitations. In the second, several of the condemned freed men, including Vesey, were members of Charleston’s African Methodist Episcopal Church. [9]

Parts of Georgia and southern South Carolina where John Wesley had spent time with James Oglethorpe were the exception to this prohibition. The year after the Stono Rebellion, George Whitefield convinced one family of slave owners to open a religious school for slaves [10] overseen by William Hutson. [11] The authorities soon shut it down. [12]

As a consequence of Methodist activity in Georgia, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney asked the church to recommend an overseer in 1829. He explained a friend had told him of the "happy results which had followed the endeavors of a Methodist overseer." Instead, the local church head offered to send missionaries. [13]

One of William Caper’s evangelists complained in 1846 that African-American converts did not properly atone for their sinful natures before being baptized. Instead, he said conversion began with a "warning in a dream." [14]

The seeker as he was called, selected someone, often a woman, "by the direction of ‘the spirit’." The mentor then, rather than a Methodist minister, "is now a prophet to teach him how to conduct himself, and particularly how to pray. He is also ‘an interpreter of visions’ to whom the seeker relates all his ‘travel’." [15]

The Methodist missionary warned his brethren the word "travel" had a unique meaning for African Americans.

"These travels may differ in some things; and in others they all agree. Each seeker meets with warnings—awful sights or sounds, and always has a vision of a white man who talks with him, warns him, and sometimes makes him carry a burden, and in the end leads him to the river." [16]

In Sierra Leone, F. W. H. Migeod was told in the 1920s , when the male "initiate goes into the Poro bush, the Poro ‘ngafe’ (spirit, or in Creole English ‘devil’) is supposed to have swallowed him, and the marks on his back are said ‘devil’s’ teeth-marks." [17]

During the American Civil War, William Francis Allen made the connection between seeking and the ring shout explicit. First, he told readers of his Slave Song collection that "one of the customs, often alluded to in the songs, is that of wandering through the woods and swamps, when under religious excitement, like the ancient bacchantes. To get religion is with them to ‘fin’ dat ting’." [18]

He then quoted a woman who said her sister "Couldn’t fin’ dat leetle ting—huntin’ for ’em all de time—las’ foun’ ’em." [19] Then, he added, once when he was headed to a ring shout, he asked another man if he was going. He answered:

"No, ma’am, wouldn’t let me in—hain’t foun’ dat ting yet—hain’t been on my knees in de swamp." [20]

End Notes
1. Rice growers had a perception that a manageable plantation was of a certain size; the acreage then determined the number of laborers needed. When Nathaniel Heyward died in 1851 he had 1,900 slaves working on 17 plantations, or an average of 112 per operation. He owned other slaves and some cotton plantations as well, according to William Dusinberre [21] Josephine Pinckney’s family plantation had "ninety-something slaves" before the Civil War. [22]

2. Eugene Genovese. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.

3. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

4. Margaret Washington Creel. "A Peculiar People." New York: New York University Press, 1988. 43–44.

5. Sterling Stuckey. Slave Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 edition. 10. Ring shouts were discussed in a series posted between 18 September 2018 and 9 October 2018.

6. The groups have had other names. I’m standardizing on Poro and Sande.
7. Washington. 288–289.

8. The Stono Rebellion was mentioned in the posts for 18 September 2018 and 6 January 2019.

9. Wikipedia. "Denmark Vesey." His religion was discussed by Gomez (pages 1–4), Stuckey pages 47, 52–55, 58), and Washington (pages 153–155).

10. William A. Sloat, II. "George Whitefield, African-Americans, and Slavery." Methodist History 33:3–13:October 1994. 3. The slave owner were Hugh Bryan.

11. Hutson was the great-great-grandfather of Mary Elliot Hutson, who was active in the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals mentioned in the post for 6 January 2019. (William Maine Hutson. "The Hutson Family of South Carolina." The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 9:127–140:1908.)

12. Nathan E. Stalvey. "Bryan, Hugh." South Carolina Encyclopedia website. 17 May 2016; last updated 24 July 2016.

13. William M. Wrightman. Life of William Capers, D. D. Nashville: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1902. 291–2. Washington brought this to by attention. 176. Barbara L. Bellows said he was the grandfather of Josephine Pinckney, first mentioned in the post for 6 January 2019. (A Talent for Living: Josephine Pinckney and the Charleston Literary Tradition. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 14.)

14. Southern Christian Advocate. 30 October 1846 and 30 October 1847. Quoted by Washington. 286.

15. Southern Christian Advocate. The author is using "he" in the generic sense to refer to both men and women.

16. Southern Christian Advocate.

17. F. W. H Migeod. A View of Sierra Leone. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Company, 1926. 238. The scars were made during the initiation period. The post for 13 March 2019 said the ngafaga were the spirits of the dead.

18. William Francis Allen. "Introduction." The Slave Songs of the United States. Edited by Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867. xii. Allen was assigned to Edgar Fripp’s Seaside plantation on Saint Helena Island.

19. Mosley. Quoted by Allen. xii.

20. Bristol. Quoted by Allen. xii. The unidentified woman addressed as ma’am was probably Allen’s wife. However, she died in 1865, before work had begun on the song collection. The alternative was that Allen was quoting a letter from Charles Pickard Ware. Then the woman would have been his sister Harriet Ware, and the ex-slaves would have been on Thomas Ashton Coffin’s Coffin Point plantation.

21. William Dusinberre. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000. 33.

22. "Black and White: Plantation Scenes of South Carolina." Caption for "El Dorado Plantation, 1891." Charleston Museum website.

African Beliefs

Topic: Origins - Africa
West Africa was not some isolated backwater, when Portuguese navigators first kidnapped men from the coast in 1444. [1] It may not have been Roman Catholic, but it was part of the Mediterranean regional community, even if it was on its outer boundary. Each incoming group had carried new ideas that overlaid a substratum of concepts shared with people already in the area.

Many perceived a single superior god who produced a subsidiary layer of deities, then lost interest in human activities. Michael Gomez explained the Bambara of the upper Niger river [2] thought Bemba formed the lesser gods, then made women and the earth. Chaos followed the creation of plants and animals, but order was restored by one of the subordinate beings. [3]

Similarly, the Akan of modern Ghana, claimed Onayme created Assa Ya (the Earth mother) and demigods, [4] while Chineke made Ala, the Igbo Earth mother. [5] The Mende god sent rain to his wife, the Earth, then withdrew. [6]

Julian Jaynes hypothesized the perception of a remote creator arose in the chaos that followed an eruption on the island of Thera in the Mediterranean [7] some time between 1600 bc and 1525 bc. [18] Ash fell from "from the coastline of the Peloponissos to the west, over all of Crete to the south, over western Anatolia to the east, and as far as the Black Sea to the north-northwest." [9]

The volcanic activity set off internal migrations, while others fled inundated coasts. Jaynes argued the social disorder was so traumatic, it altered individuals’ mental processes. He pointed to the Iliad and Amos, written before, in which gods communicated directly to people through their voices. In contrast, in the later Odyssey, individuals turned to prayer and other means of approaching a god who had abandoned them. Charlotte Pearson’s team asserted the aftereffects coincided with the emergence of Egypt’s New Kingdom. [10]

Egyptians envisioned humans as composed of multiple elements, although the number varied from one historic period to another. The ka was a person’s "vital essence," which was depicted as an individual’s twin. When one died, one returned to the ka and needed to be sustained with food offerings. The ba was one’s personality that "Egyptians believed would live after the body died, and it is sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the ka in the afterlife." [11]

The Bambara taught a person was composed of his or her soul, the ni and its double the dya, and his or her character, the tere. [12] Gomez reported the Akan believed an individual was part blood (mogya), part spirit (ntoro), and part soul (kra). [13] Newbell Puckett noted the Ewe to the east presumed every person had "an indwelling spirit (kra)," [14] an immortal soul, [15] and a bush soul that resided in an animal. [16]

When a Bambara died, the dya entered the water, the ni returned to the ancestors, and the tere roamed loose. [17] For the Akan, the ntoro returned to the ancestors, while the mogya returned to the spirit world. [18] The Ewe kra survived to enter another infant or to wander as a sisa, a "kra without a tenement," [19] while the immortal soul became the person’s ghost. [20]

The Igbo of southeastern Nigeria simply assumed one’s soul was the chi, which returned to the land where it was born. [21]

The Kongo saw the afterworld as a mountain that mirrored the ordinary, separated from it by a river. [22] Likewise, Sjoerd Hofstra discovered the Mende believed the spirit of the dead needed to be helped over a river with gifts of food. If a ngafaga did not pass, it roamed the world of the living. [23]

These views were similar to those of the Greeks who thought the dead crossed the river Styx to enter the underworld of Hades. The boatman, Charon, was paid with a coin placed in the mouth of the dead. If there was no payment, the spirit of the dead stayed on the river shore. "Greeks offered propitiatory libations to prevent the deceased from returning to the upper world to ‘haunt’ those who had not given them a proper burial." [24]

Africans presumed the soul could be reborn. The Bambara thought the dya of one generation became the ni of the next, [25] while the Akan claimed the mogya was reborn. [26] The unborn child bartered with Chineke for its chi, predetermining "his length of life and his future activities." [27]. As soon as an infant was born, the parents consulted a professional who divined the identity of the baby’s chi. [28]

Egyptians were the ones who originated the concept of soul transmigration, according to Jaynes. Pythagoras, took the idea to Greece in the middle-500s bc. [29]

The ways individuals approached a god reflected more recent experiences. The Akan had created the Ghana empire. [30] They erected temples to the lesser gods, the abosom, who spoke through possession of professional priests and priestesses. [31]

The Bambara were part of the Mali Empire that succeeded Ghana. [32] Each village had a sacred space devoted to its particular deity, or boli. "Supplications for health, marital problems, the weather, and so on were made" to it through a jar of amulets. [33]

The Igbo had no hierarchical structures. [34] Each village had a shrine to its ancestor. Contact was made through sacrifices and prayers. [35]

The Mende came closest to maintaining the relationship with a god like that posited by Jaynes for the Iliad. Hofstra said they believed the ancestors were guardians who protected individuals. [36] The recently dead maintained contact through dreams, [37] which individuals shared with others. [38]. The visits slowly become less frequent and limited to times of trouble. [39]

Michael Gomez suggested it was these commonalities in world views that allowed slaves to form communities, first on plantations, then again under the aegis of Christianity. After all, the religion arose in the same eastern Mediterranean region.

Thus, slaves confronted with a god who created a son and ghost, already knew a god who formed lesser beings. Further, they expected some spirits to intercede for them, much like the Holy Ghost would do. [40]

Few had problems with Christ’s ritual rebirth. Instead of returning in the next generation, African Americans were willing to accept a period when they were united with Him, before the final resurrection. [41]

Slaves easily understood crossing the Jordan "represented death and the hereafter." [42] Puckett met a man from Johns Island, South Carolina, in the 1920s who said one flew above the river. [43] A man in Jacksonville, Florida, told him Jesus took one over on the Old Ship of Zion, [44] while a woman in Houston simply assumed one waded across. [45]

Gomez noted the only thing many didn’t understand was the absence of a mother Earth figure. [46]

End Notes
1. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 22.

2. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 46. He said the Bambara were most common in Louisiana [page 42].

3. Gomez. 49.

4. Gomez. 111. He said most went to Jamaica, [page 106] and then to the tobacco lands of Virginia and Maryland [page 107].

5. Gomez. 129. The Igbo were sent to Virginia and the area around Chesapeake Bay.

6. Gomez. 95. The Mende were discussed in a series posted between 30 March 2019 and 31 March 2019.

7. Julian Jaynes. The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990 paperback edition. 209. The island of Thera is now called Santorini.

8. Charlotte L. Pearson, Peter W. Brewer, David Brown, Timothy J. Heaton, Gregory W. L. Hodgins, A. J. Timothy Jull, Todd Lange, and Matthew W. Salzer. "Annual Radiocarbon Record Indicates 16th Century BCE Date for the Thera Eruption." Science Advances 15 August 2018.

9. F. W. McCoy and S. E. Dunn. "Modelling the Climatic Effects of the LBA Eruption of Thera: New Calculations of Tephra Volumes May Suggest a Significantly Larger Eruption than Previously Reported." American Geographical Union, Chapman Conference on Volcanism and the Earth’s Atmosphere, Thera, Greece, 2002.

10. Pearson.
11. Wikipedia. "Ancient Egyptian Concept of the Soul."
12. Gomez. 49.
13. Gomez. 111.

14. Newbell Niles Puckett. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926. 109. Gomez suggested the Ewe were shipped to Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba; in this country they were sent to Louisiana [page 54].

15. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 111.
16. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 112.
17. Gomez. 49.
18. Gomez. 112.
19. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 109.
20. Puckett, Folk Beliefs. 111.
21. Gomez. 120.
22. Gomez. 147.

23. Sjoerd Hofstra. "The Ancestral Spirits of the Mendi." Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie 39:177-196:1941. Translation in Among the Mende in Sierra Leone, 299–318. Edited by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra. Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum, 2014. 322.

24. Wikipedia. "Hades."
25. Gomez. 49.
26. Gomez. 112.
27. Gomez. 130.
28. Stuart J. Edelstein. The Sickled Cell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 66.
29. Jaynes. 290.
30. Wikipedia. "Akan People."
31. Gomez. 111.
32. Wikipedia. "Mali Empire."
33. Gomez. 49-50.
34. Gomez. 128.
35. Gomez. 129.
36. Hofstra. 325.
37. Hofstra. 322, 327.
38. Hofstra. 327-328.
39. Hofstra. 328.
40. Gomez. 278-279.
41. Gomez. 278.
42. Gomez. 274.

43. Henry Walker, Johns Island, South Carolina. Quoted by Newball N. Puckett. "Religious Folk Beliefs of Whites and Negroes." Journal of Negro History 16:9-35:1931. 12.

44. B. Smith, Jacksonville, Florida. Quoted by Puckett, Religious Folk Beliefs. 12.
45. Mrs. B. Jones, Houston, Texas. Quoted by Puckett, Religious Folk Beliefs. 12.
46. Gomez. 278.

Charleston Society for the Preservation of Spirituals

Topic: Early Versions - Performers
The Charleston Society for the Preservation of Spirituals did not indicate where it collected its version of "Come by Here." For most of the other songs, it provided the name of an island, river, town, parish, or plantation. They were spread from the Santee River north of Charleston to Beaufort.

To know something about the performers then requires learning more about the Gullah-speaking slaves in coastal South Carolina than appeared in earlier posts. [1]

Lorenzo Dow Turner documented the presence of some 4,000 African words in Gullah in the early 1930s. His primary South Carolina sources were individuals living on Edisto Island, Saint Helena Island near Beaufort, and Johns and Wadmalaw islands near Charleston. He also talked to people from two other locations mentioned by the Charleston Society, Bluffton and James Island. [2]

P. E. H. Hair found 30% of the general terms Turner collected were used by the Yorùbá of modern Nigeria; 25% were from Sierra Leone, home of the Mende, and 20% were Kongo. More important, 65% of the words retained in ritual and narrative materials, like stories, songs, and prayers, were Mende. The Vai of neighboring, modern Liberia contributed 21%. [3]

This mirrors Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s analysis of shipping manifests in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database. [4] From 1801 to 1807, most of the captives who arrived in Charleston were from Kongo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast of modern Ghana. Between 1750 and 1775, when 43% of South Carolina and Georgia’s total slave population was imported, [5] the largest number came from modern Sénégal-Gambia and Sierra Leone. The Gold Coast and Kongo were a distant third and fourth. [6]

These groups came from different parts of the continent, and had cultures that began developing at different times. The earliest evidence for humanoid evolution has been found in Ethiopia by archaeologists. Lucy’s remains were discovered in 1974 by Donald Johansen in the Afar section of the Great Rift Valley. [7]

Geneticists attempted to define what happened next by looking at genomes that could be distinguished by particular clusters of mutations called haplogroups. Those based on variations associated with the paternal Y chromosome located the center of diversity in Cameroon, the silver star on the map below. [8]

Scientists assigned letters in chronological order, so that the A group was the earliest. The current location of individuals carrying that genome was only a relic of the past. New groups tended to displace earlier ones that then survived in remote areas. The large A area along the southeastern Atlantic coast coincided with the Kalahari Desert.

After the migration out of Africa during the Ice Age that led to the development of the C and D groups, the next major mutation emerged with the E group in Ethiopia. It eventually filled the continent.

Linguists’ attempts at reconstructing the development of African languages created a more nuanced interpretation of the movement of the E group. As shown in the map below, the A haplogroup appeared as the light-yellow population of Khoi-San speakers.

The primary language family of group E in sub-Saharan African was the Niger-Congo that spanned the area below the Sénégal river east along the Niger to the drainage of the Congo. [9] Kay Williamson argued that, "on the basis of the principle of least moves," the original homeland was the confluence on the Benue and Niger rivers at Lokoja in central Nigeria. From there its speakers spread west, east, and south subdividing as they migrated. [10]

As succeeding groups moved west they either absorbed the earlier populations or forced them to relocate. Thus, three major Niger-Congo subfamilies appear in the map for western Africa.

To the west of the Volta subgroups, the rose-colored Mandé was a separate, coherent clade.

Gerrit Dimmendaal and Anne Storch suggested "The internal diversification within Greenberg’s West Atlantic (or Atlantic in current terminology) indeed was so huge that some scholars would argue that it is primarily an areal grouping representing a number of independent, early descendants of Niger-Congo." [11]

David Sapir found enough commonalities within the Atlantic group to propose two sub-groups an early Southern Mel, and a later Northern Mel. [12] Gola was part of the earlier group that was expanding "about 2500 years ago" in what is now Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. [13]

The migration south by the Bantu (tan on the map) came after the moves west. One characteristic of linguistic and genetic evolution was greater diversity in earlier areas than later zones, simply because not enough time had passed for variation to develop in the younger regions.

Graphics
1. U. S. Geological Survey, National Atlas. "Average Rainfall for South Carolina." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Thegreatdr on 18 March 2008. The dark area near the coast where tidal rice was grown is the darker green.

Total of spirituals collected along the Santee River includes Santee River.

Charleston includes Back River, Charleston, Cooper River, Grayton Hall, Goose Creek, James Island, Red Top.

Edisto Island includes Christ Church Parish, Edisto Island, and Saint Andrews Parish.

Beaufort includes Ashepoo River Plantation, Beaufort, Bluffton, and Tomotley Plantation.

Berkeley County includes Pinopolis and Upper St Johns Parish.

Hampton County includes McPhersonville and Pocotaligo.

No location mentioned: 6
Two locations mentioned: 6

2. Section of Irish. "World Map of Y-Chromosome Haplogroups - Dominant Haplogroups in Pre-Colonial Populations with Possible Migrations Routes." Wikimedia Commons. 6 July 2018.

3. Ulamm. "Niger-Congo Languages." Wikimedia Commons. 28 October 2007.

End Notes
1. The Charleston Society and the development of rice plantations in South Carolina were discussed in a series posted between 6 January 2019 and 20 January 2019. Gullah was described in the post for 6 January 2019.

2. Lorenzo Dow Turner. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2002 edition. Gullah vocabulary, chapter 3; list of informants, 291-292. He also collected from people living along the Georgia coast and on its islands.

3. P. E. H. Hair. "Sierra Leone Items in the Gullah Dialect of American English." Sierra Leone Language Review 4:79-84:1965.

4. David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt, and Herbert S. Klein. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

5. David Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson. "Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas." The American Historical Review 112 (2007): 1329–1358, table 1. The other 57% was spread over one hundred thirty years.

6. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall. "Figure 4.1. Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages to South Carolina (1701-1807)." 94 in Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

7. Wikipedia. "Lucy (Australopithecus)."
8. Wikipedia. "Haplogroup."

9. John T. Bendor-Samuel. "Niger-Congo languages." Encyclopædia Britannica website. 26 July 1999; last updated 21 November 2017.

10. Kay Williamson’s work evolved in a number of papers including "Towards reconstructing Proto-Niger-Congo." 49-70 in Proceedings of the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig 1997. Edited by H. E. Wolff and O. Gensler. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2000.

11. Gerrit J. Dimmendaal and Anne Storch. "Niger-Congo: A Brief State of the Art." Oxford Handbooks Online. February 2016. Joseph H. Greenberg created the first accepted taxonomy in The Languages of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1963.

12. J. D. Sapir. "West Atlantic: An Inventory of the Languages, Their Noun Class Systems and Consonant Alteration." Current Trends in Linguistics 7:45-112:1971. Discussed by B. W. Andah. "The Peoples of Upper Guinea (between the Ivory Coast and the Casamance)." 530-558 in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. Edited by M. El Fasi. Paris: UNESCO, 1988. 539.

13. Andah. 552.

African American Heritage Hymnal - Kum Ba Yah/Come by Here, My Lord

Topic: Religious Uses - Hymnals
GIA Publications issued an ecumenical African American Heritage Hymnal in 2001 that contained 575 hymns, spirituals, and gospel songs. That was fifty-five more than were included in the National Baptist hymnal discussed in the post for 3 March 2019, and many more than were in the Songs of Zion supplement to the United Methodist Church hymnal discussed in the post for 3 March 2019.

More important 81 were shared by all three hymnals, 42 were in Zion, and 136 in the Baptist collection. The nine common gospel songs included "I’ll Fly Away" and "We’ve Come This Far by Faith Alone." The 37 hymns included "At the Cross," mentioned in the post for 22 November 2018, and "Life’s Railway to Heaven," alluded to in the post for 30 January 2019. Thirteen were classed as "songs for special occasions by the Methodist."

Twenty were spirituals that ranged from the Fisk Jubilee Singer’s "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to Marion Anderson’s "My Lord! What a Morning" and the Civil Rights era "We Shall Overcome." The Baptists and ecumenical hymnal also contained eleven Christmas carols and hymns that Zion didn’t copy from the denomination’s hymnal. They also included "I’ve Got Peace like a River," discussed in the post for 7 August 2018.

The editor, Delores Carpenter, included both "Kum Ba Ya" and "Come by Here, My Lord" which she connected to 2 Chronicles 6:21. She used the Berean Study Bible translation: "hear the plea of Your servant and of Your people Israel...hear and forgive."

The version of "Kumbaya" was influenced by Songs of Zion. It had its additional verse, "someone needs You," and dropped "someone’s singing" to maintain the four-verse form. The time signature was changed from 3/4 to 4/4.

"Come by Here" presented more challenges, since the 1-5 melody had not been published before and the most common versions used prelude-denouement forms that were not amenable to congregation singing. At best, one could reproduce the first part, which usually was shorter than the ad libitum sections.

Evelyn Simpson-Curenton’s text used three verses from "kumbaya" with "come by here" in lieu of "crying" and the pronoun "someone." That meant her 4/4 arrangement used 1-1-5-5-5, not the Hightower Brothers’ 1-1-1-5-5-5.

Performers
Kum Ba Yah
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: four-parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Come by Here, My Lord
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: four-parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Kum Ba Yah
Text: Marvin V. Frey, © 1957

Tune: DESMOND, 8885; Marvin V. Frey, © 1957; arr, by Dr. RobertJ. Fryson, © 2000, GIA Publications, Inc.

Come by Here, My Lord
Text: Marvin V. Frey, © 1958

Tune: DESMOND, 8885; Marvin V. Frey, © 1958; arr, by Evelyn-Currenton, © 2000, GIA Publications, Inc.

Notes on Lyrics
Kum Ba Yah
Language: English
Pronunciation: dropped terminal g’s from prayin’ and cryin’
Verses: kumbaya, praying, crying, needs you
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Come by Here, My Lord
Language: English
Pronunciation: dropped terminal g from praying
Verses: come, needs you, praying, kumbaya
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Kum Ba Yah
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: two sharps

Singing Style: one note to one syllable except for last line which allotted two tones to "oh" and three to "Lord"

Harmony: parallel thirds with occasional fourths
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: chord on every note

Come by Here, My Lord
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: two sharps
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord"

Harmony: four-parts; except for opening notes of each line, upper parts were parallel thirds; much of the lower part used parallel octaves

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: chords on every note

Notes on Performers
The hymnal was very much a product of the African-American community in Washington, D. C. The editor, Delores Carpenter, earned her masters of divinity from Howard University in 1969, and later was on the faculty. [1] Her musical editor, Nolan Williams, also earned a masters in divinity from Howard in 1993. [2] Robert Fryson, the arranger of "Kumbaya" earned his advanced music degrees from Catholic University of America and Howard. [3] The arranger of "Come by Here" was educated in Philadelphia at Temple University, [4] but moved to Alexandria, Virginia. [5]

The Washington community arose from multiple migrations to the area from the South. Carpenter grew up with a semi-invalided grandmother who was visited by members of the Missionary Baptist church, Church of God in Christ, and Jehovah’s Witnesses in Towson, Maryland. She began preaching as an adolescent for a Freewill Baptist Church, but later moved her credentials to the Disciples of Christ. [6]

Williams was raised by a family that had produced Baptist ministers for three generations. He was drawn instead to music, which he said was

"more than hand-clapping and foot stomping — it’s the story of a broad history of human spirit, arising out of hard times and a belief in God. When you look at the anthems, hymns, spirituals and gospel songs, there's a story of faith and perseverance — of pain, but of hope and optimism throughout the pain and the harsh realities of life. You see reflected in the music the experiences of the people. It’s always about testimony — the words are connected with what we’re experiencing, and what we believe. And that’s the way in which faith is most profoundly practiced." [7]

Fryson was raised in the independent Black community of Oberlin Village outside Raleigh, North Carolina. [8] He organized the Voices Supreme gospel quartet, and recorded eight albums for Glori and Savoy between 1973 and 1982. [9]

Simpson-Curenton grew up in a performing family, The Singing Simpsons, in Philadelphia. [10] Choreographer Eva Magdalene Gholson worked with her in Philadelphia. She said her "arrangements of Black American hymns, her piano playing and her singing voice laid a foundation of spiritual reasoning in my work that was extremely important to my development. Both Evelyn and I are part of a Black Southern spiritual way of knowing. What she grasped as my collaborator was the marriage of Southern Black musical traditions and European classical musical styles." [11]

Availability
Book: African American Heritage Hymnal. Edited by Delores Carpenter. Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc., 2001. "Kum Ba Yah," 437; "Come by Here, My Lord," 438.

End Notes
1. Annie A. Lockhart-Gilroy. "Delores Carpenter." Biola University website.
2. "About inSpiration." CD Baby website.

3. "Hymn #53: Glorious Is Your Name, O Jesus." First Congregational Church, Madison, Wisconsin, website.

4. "About Evelyn." Her website.
5. "Evelyn Simpson-Curenton." LinkedIn website.
6. Lockhart-Gilroy.

7. Leah Fabel. "Credo: Nolan Williams Jr." Washington [D. C.] Examiner website. 1 January 2011.

8. "Dr. Robert J. Fryson." Wilson Temple United Methodist Church website, Oberlin Village, North Carolina.

9. "The Voices-Supreme." Discogs website.
10. "About Evelyn."

11. Eva Magdalene Gholson. Image of the Singing Air. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004. 85.

African American Church Hymnals - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Religious Uses - Hymnals
African Americans included "Kumbaya" in hymnals before whites did. The National Baptist Convention published it in its 1977 hymnal. A rump group within The United Methodist Church issued a songbook for Blacks in 1981 to counteract the "racial exclusivity" of the denomination’s 1963 hymnal. [1]

The two collections served different purposes, and emphasized different forms of religious music. The Methodist book was a supplement to an official hymnal, and was created to provide a resource for Black church members and educate whites about African-American music. The editors could assume users had access to the larger collection.

Songs of Zion was divided into four sections, with essays on the history of each musical form. The first, representing close to 30% of the contents, was old hymns and gospel songs written between the Civil War and the emergence of modern gospel music in the early 1930s. It included hymns by Isaac Watts, and religious songs by people like Fanny Crosby, Philip Bliss, and William Bradbury. Seven were by the African-American composer Albert Tindley.

Modern gospel music by people like Thomas Dorsey, Andre Crouch, James Cleveland, and Clara War represented about 13% of the collection. A bit more, 19% of the songs, were included for the specific needs of services. "Amazing Grace" was included in this section.

The remaining songs, nearly 40%, were traditional spirituals. It might have been the largest denominational collection since the National Baptist Convention published Spirituals Triumphant Old and New in 1927. [2]

The New National Baptist Hymnal was more conservative than that of the Methodists and reflected the underlying emphasis of the convention on the priesthood of all believers and the autonomy of local congregations. There was some historic order in the way songs were presented, but no stated classification that would indicate how they should be utilized. The music was followed by spoken scriptural readings, calls to worship, and benedictions needed for a service.

Most of the songs it held in common with the Methodists were the older hymns and gospel songs, some 60% of the UMC collection. The Baptists used 45% of the modern gospel songs, and 30% of what the Methodists called "special occasion" music. The editors recognized only 23% of the spirituals.

Both editorial groups included "Kumbaya" as a spiritual, and made small modifications to the standard published version. The Baptists changed it from 3/4 to 4/4 time. The Methodists added a verse "Someone needs you" that was later included in the denomination’s revised hymnal discussed in the post for 14 February 2019.

Musically, the Baptists assumed unison singing by a congregation accompanied by a piano. The Methodists provided two-part harmony and guitar chords, but no bass clef line to guide a pianist.

Performers
Baptist
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: unison
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Methodist
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: two parts
Instrumental Accompaniment: guitar chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Credits
Baptist
African (Angola)

Methodist
Traditional

Notes on Lyrics
Baptist
Language: English
Pronunciation: no notes
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Methodist
Language: English
Pronunciation: no final g’s on cryin’, singin’, prayin’
Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying, needs you
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: five-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: needs you verse

Notes on Music
Baptist
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: not indicated
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: none
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final Lord
Harmony: none

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano plays melody and four-part chords at the beginnings of measures and mid-line phrases

Methodist
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slow, with feeling
Key Signature: no sharps or flats
Guitar Chords: C F Dm/F G⁷
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final Lord
Harmony: parallel thirds in treble clef

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: chords at the beginning of every measure and at the beginnings of the second phrases of first and third lines, and every note of the second and fourth lines

Notes on Performers
The National Baptist Convention was organized by freedmen excluded from white organizations in Alabama in 1880. It merged with other Baptist groups in 1895, and is now the largest African-American Baptist meeting. [3]

William McClain, the man who spearheaded the movement for an African-American song collection within the United Methodist Church, was from Gasden, Alabama, and educated at Clark University. He earned his advanced theology degrees from the Methodist seminary at Boston University. [4]

Judge Jefferson Cleveland was one of the songbook’s editors. He was from upland Georgia near the Savannah River, and earned his music degrees from Clark, Illinois Wesleyan, and Boston University. [5] He wrote all the essays on African-American music history and practice included in the collection.

The other editor, Verolga Nix, was raised in Philadelphia, where she taught music in the public schools. Her church career began when she played organ in her father’s church when she was sixteen-years-old. She later served as minister of music in Baptist and AME churches. In 1990, she founded the Institute for the Preservation of African American Music.

Availability
Book: National Baptist Convention. "Kum Ba Yah." The New National Baptist Hymnal. Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1977. 506.

Book: The United Methodist Church. "Kum Ba Ya, My Lord." Songs of Zion. Edited by J. Jefferson Cleveland and Verolga Nix. Nashville: Abingdon, 1981. 139.

End Notes
1. Jon Michael Spencer, Black Hymnody (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 61.

2. Spirituals Triumphant Old and New. Edited by Edward Boatner. Nashville: Sunday School Publishing Board, National Baptist Convention, 1927.

3. "History of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc." Its website.

4. Harry Butler. "The Rev. William Bobby McClain returns to Sweet Home UMC." The Gasden [Alabama] Times website. 16 September 2011.

5. Aurolyn Melba Hamm. Elbert County. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

5. Ayana Jones. "Rev. Verolga Nix Allen, 81, World-class Pianist, Chorale Director." Philadelphia Tribune website. 19 December 2014.