Jacksonville in the Civil War

Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson described ring shouts he saw in Florida, in the 1880s.  As mentioned in the post for 12 February 2022, he generalized his experience to fit everything he read later.  That was necessary when he was discussing ring shouts in the introduction to his collection of spirituals.

However, it makes it difficult to know what existed in Fernandina and Jacksonville where he spent time as a boy.  As should be clear to anyone who has read many of these posts, Black experiences differed by location.  This would especially be true of Florida where Spain controlled territory until 1821. [1]  Spain imported its slaves from central Africa, rather than west Africa, and many were baptized in the Roman Catholic church. [2]

Ring shouts may not have existed in northeastern Florida under the Spanish, but they were there, in a modified form, in 1871.  When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Jacksonville that year, she asked to “visit the meetings of the coloured people.”  She found it “quite easy to do” because “there were two very large, active prayer meetings, the one Baptist and the other Methodist.”  The Presbyterian [3] did not say which she visited. [4]

Whatever slave communities existed after the United States took control were disrupted by the Civil War.  When hostilities broke out, local white men were sent to fight in Tennessee and Virginia.  Union forces from Port Royal, South Carolina, [5] took advantage of the vacuum on 4 March 1862 and seized control of Fernandina’s Amelia Island. [6]  The ocean port on the Saint Mary’s River, which flows south from Georgia, was used a “base of operations” until the end of war. [7]

Runaway slaves flocked to Fernandina.  The Black population of surrounding Nassau County in 1860 had been 1,606. [8]  700 more had arrived by 1863 [9].  They may have come from nearby coastal areas of Florida and Georgia, or may have followed the river down from the interior.

Jacksonville was an inland port on the Saint John’s River, which flows north, parallel to the coast, for more than 300 miles.  When Confederate sympathizers heard news of Fernandina, they fled west. [10]

The United States Navy made its first foray into Jacksonville on 11 March 1861.  Confederate troops responded by burning all but one lumber mill.  Then, a mob of “refugees from Fernandina and Jacksonville” set fire to more buildings. [11]  The navy stayed until 1 April. [12]  The loyal citizens, who had stayed in March, moved to Fernandina with the troops. [13]

The next expedition to Jacksonville occurred after Confederates built fortifications south of the city.  The northern troops from Hilton Head found the town to be “nearly deserted” in October 1862. [14]  One soldier noted “Grass and weeds grow rank and tall in the principal streets,” while “about the streets you see darkies, a few women, and a very few men.” [15]  They took the slaves back with them. [16]

The Army hierarchy was hesitant to enlist Black soldiers.  The first tentative experiments were at Port Royal, where Thomas Wentworth Higginson was named commander of the First South Carolina Infantry regiment in November 1862. [17]  He noted that plantation owners had taken their house slaves with them when they fled Saint Helena Island.  The field hands were “very black.” [18]

He also observed that the slaves who had come back from the October expedition to Jacksonville were “much lighter in complexion & decidedly more intelligent.” [19]  When they proved they could master the drills, he sent recruiters to Fernandina and Saint Augustine in December 1862.  They filled the regiment. [20]

The First South Carolina saw its first action in January 1863 when it sailed to Fernandina, then went up the Saint Mary’s river into Georgia. [21]  Their success prompted James Montgomery to organize the Second South Carolina Infantry in Beaufort. [22]

Higginson’s troops were part of the longest occupation of Jacksonville, which began in March 1863. [23]  The general overseeing operations from Hilton Head said “the negroes are collecting at Jacksonville from all quarters.” [24]

The troops spent time building forts.  Their camp was in pine woods on an island west of Jacksonville near a brick church [25] that was built before the war by Baptists. [26]  One imagines the men recreated the camp life they had had in South Carolina, which included frequent ring shouts.  Although a contingent was left with the fortifications, most returned to South Carolina at the end of March to support “operations against Charleston and Savannah.” [27]

Once the First South Carolina Infantry had proven the value of Black troops, the Army organized more companies with recruits from the north. [28]  When Union troops returned to Jacksonville in January 1864, seven of the fifteen infantry regiments were Black.  They came from Massachusetts (2), North Carolina (1), and South Carolina (4).  Higginson’s First South Carolina was not included, but Montgomery’s Second was. [29]

The main purpose was to support the siege of Charleston by stopping the flow of food from central Florida. [30]  The army was routed when it moved inland. [31]  They began leaving in April, and by May most of the “2,500 or 3,000 men” left were Blacks. [32]  They left in July. [33]  While Confederates rightly boasted of their victory, [34] commanders in Washington were moving troops away from peripheral areas to mount the attack in Virginia [35] that resulted in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.

At war’s end, the Army’s primary purpose was protecting federal buildings and supplies. [36]  The Seventh Infantry of the regular army was assigned to Florida in May. [37]  Otherwise, the military began mustering out volunteer units.  It began with the expensive calvary in May 1865. [38]  The Black regiments from the North left Florida in December. [39]

Congress was slower to respond to post-War needs.  It established the Freedmen’s Bureau on 3 March 1865, but no one was sent to Florida until 1 September. [40]  By then the planters were reestablishing their power.  The legislature they elected passed its first laws controlling African Americans in October. [41]

Former slaves flocked to cities where there still were soldiers.  Thomas Osborn, head of the Bureau, discontinued their rations in Fernandina and Jacksonville in November.  He wanted them working on plantations, not living off the government. [42]  His requests for continued military support were ignored by the War Department. [43]

Finally, in February 1866, nearly a year after Appomattox, Osborn was able to open an office in Jacksonville. [44]

A year later, on 15 March 1867, Congress put the South under martial law. [45]  There must have been some troops in Jacksonville, [46] because the Freedmen’s Bureau moved its headquarters there in May. [47]

By 1868, Southern states had Republican governments, and Congress was preparing to declare victory.  Florida elected Harrison Reed in July, and on the Fourth John Sprague, head of the Bureau, surrendered his authority to Reed.  Reed’s request to have troops remain was refused. [48]

In October 1868, the head of the Army’s Department of the East moved troops to protect rail centers.  Jacksonville had two companies of the Seventh Infantry, with men going to Fernandina as needed. [49]  This was the regular army, and they were mainly white men from outside the South.

In December, Congress reduced the Freedman’s Bureau’s functions to education, and eliminated most of its employees.  In February, the Seventh Infantry was moved to Montana [50] to protect miners against attacks by Native Americans. [51]  Before they left, the soldiers opened fire on rioting Blacks in Jacksonville. [52]  Sprague complained anarchy had returned. [53]

Graphics
Karl Musser.  “St. Marys River Watershed.”  Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 15 March 2007.

End Notes
1.  Bland and Associates, Inc.  “Historic Context and References.”  Appendix A to The Historic Properties Resurvey, City of Fernandina Beach, Nassau County, Florida.  2007.  12.

2.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  397-398.

Michael A. Gomez.  Exchanging Our Country Marks.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.  145-146.

3.  John Gatta.  “The Anglican Aspect of Harriet Beecher Stowe.”  The New England Quarterly 73(3):412-433:September 2000.  312.

4.  Stowe’s version is discussed in the post for 30 September 2018, and reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.”  The latter is available on the Academia.edu website.

5.  Union activities in Port Royal Sound are discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.

6.  Bland.  24.
7.  Bland.  25.

8.  United States Census.  1880.  Population, By Race, Sex, and Nativity.  Table V.  “Population, by Race and by Counties: 1880, 1870, 1860.”  384.

9.  Bland.  32.

10.  Thomas Frederick Davis.  History of Early Jacksonville.  Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911.  160.

11.  Davis.  161.
12.  Davis.  167.
13.  Davis.  169.
14.  Davis.  174.

15.  Valentine Chamberlain.  “A Letter of Captain V. Chamberlain, 7th Connecticut Volunteers.”  Florida Historical Quarterly 15:93:October 1935.  Quoted by Samuel Proctor.  “Jacksonville During the Civil War.”  Florida Historical Quarterly 41(4):343-355:1962.  351.

16.  Davis.  174.

17.  William A. Dobak.  Freedom by the Sword: The U. S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867.  Washington DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 2011.  34-35.

18.  Thomas Wentworth Higginson.  Quoted by Dobak.  35.  His source is: The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Christopher Looby.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.  Higginson is discussed in the post for 20 September 2018, which is reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.”

19.  Higginson.  Quoted by Dobak.  36.  Dobak suggests Higginson’s views were typical of the time, when whites thought people who were more like them, i.e., with lighter skins, were better than those that differed.  This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when lighter skinned slaves were given more access to whites, and thus were more socialized into western ways, than those who were left alone because they had darker skins.

20.  Dobak.  36.
21.  Dobak.  39.
22.  Dobak.  40.
23.  Davis.  175.
24.  Davis.  176.
25.  Proctor.  352.

26.  “Bethel Church (Jacksonville, Florida).”  Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.

27.  Davis.  178.

28.  Dobak.  55.  Joshua Rieger noted that families from areas controlled by the Union continued to move into the center of the state, and that “ planters’ families from across the South migrated to Middle Florida and southwest Georgia to protect their property interests in slaves.” [54]  This would have increased the productive capacity of the area.

29.  Dobak.  64.
30.  Dubak.  61.
31.  Davis.  186.
32.  Davis.  189.
33.  Davis.  191.

34.  During Reconstruction, Joe Richardson said: “Floridians boasted that theirs was the only capital east of the Mississippi not captured during the war.  The only attempt to take Tallahassee had been defeated in large part by a group of young boys and old men in March 1865.  Though the Confederacy had fallen, the people did not feel that Florida had been conquered and they were inclined to be defiant and belligerent.” [55]

35.  Dubak.  70.
36.  Dubak.  459.

37.  Steve A. Hawks.  “7th United States Infantry Regiment.”  Civil War in the East website, 2023.  He has one sentence on its role in Reconstruction.

38.  Dubak.  471.
39.  Dubak.  473.

40.  Reginald Washington.  “Introduction” to Records of the Assistant Commissioner and subordinate field offices for the state of Florida, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872.  Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002.  1.

41.  Joe M. Richardson.  “Florida Black Codes.”  Florida Historical Quarterly 47(4):365-379:1968.

42.  Joshua Rieger.  “Florida Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction, 1865-1872.”  University of Florida senior paper, 8 April 2015.  14.

43.  Rieger.  9.
44.  Rieger.  19.

45.  Merlin G. Cox.  “Military Reconstruction in Florida.”  Florida Historical Quarterly 46(3):219-233:1967.  219.

46.  Most of the published research on Reconstruction in Florida deals with politics and vigilante groups in the central part of state.  Little exists on the military.  Even descriptions of the Seventh Infantry are sparse for the period between Chancellorsville and Montana.

47.  Washington.  1.

48.  Ralph L. Peek.  “Aftermath of Military Reconstruction, 1868-1869.”  Florida Historical Quarterly 43(2):123-141:1964.  123.

49.  Peek. 133.  The commander was George Meade.
50.  Peek.  138.
51.  “Fort Shaw.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 17 February 2023.
52.  Peek.  138.
53.  Peek.  140.

54.  Rieger.  His source was Jerrell H. Shofner.  Nor Is It Over Yet.  Gainesville, University Presses of Florida, 1974.  3.

55.  Richardson.  371.

James Weldon Johnson - Ring Shout

Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
I just came across another description of a ring shout.  This one was written by James Weldon Johnson in 1925, and reprinted with slight changes in 1933.

The preface to his Book of Spirituals drew upon both his boyhood experiences in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, and later research. [1]  The hard part is isolating those sections which represent his first-hand experience in the 1880s in LaVilla.

In his 1933 autobiography, [2] he mentioned three churches: one he attended that was a mile from his home, one a block away from his house, and the ones his father served as a minister.

As a child, he walked two blocks to his maternal grandmother’s house.  In his autobiography he mentioned the perils a small boy faced who knew things more by hearsay, than experience.  He said he did not cross the street until he passed the house of Mr. Cole who “everybody said was crazy.” [3]

Next he passed the houses of two older women.  He remembered: “we were a little bit afraid of Aunt Venie, too; for she was said to have fits.” [4]  He added she was “the champion of all ‘ring shouters’ at the “colored church on the corner.” [5]

He gives no evidence he ever went into the church.  Saint Paul was an African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded in 1869. [6]  The AME denomination was introduced into Jacksonville by Charles Pearce in 1866, with the permission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. [7]

Johnson’s grandmother joined Mount Zion Methodist Church. [8]  It was organized by the Northern Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864.  The Methodists had split over slavery in 1844. [9]  The Southern branch was the one that proselytized slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, then shucked them off into the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870. [10]

The northern church sent its first missionary south to Beaufort. South Carolina, in 1862. [11]  During the war, the hierarchy began recruiting “disabled clergy” to send to the “warmer climates” to serve soldiers.  Sanford Swain went to Jacksonville in 1864 [12] where he began with Black soldiers. [13]  He organized Mount Zion in May of 1866 with both Black and white members. [14]

The difference between Saint Paul’s and Mount Zion was more than the difference between the Northern and Southern branches of the Methodist Church.  Neither of Johnson’s parents were ever slaves on plantations in this country.  His mother was raised in the Bahamas after England abolished slavery in 1833. [15]  Both her father and her grandfather were white. [16]

His father, James Johnson, was born free in Richmond, Virginia, and ran away to New York City when he was a teen. [17]  Less information exists about him.  Johnson admits he never heard his father “speak of his childhood and what lay back and beyond it.” [18]  He learned about his father’s religious conversion from his maternal grandmother. [19]

The elder Johnson was in his fifties when he became a Baptist minister.  His first assignment was in Fernandina, an old settlement thirty miles northeast of Jacksonville. [20]  Johnson remembered he and his brother went to visit him for “a few days at a time” [21] and that the church was “large.” [22]

By 1886, his father had found a pulpit in Jacksonville, and returned home.  Johnson described it as “little” [23].  In fact, it had some prestige in LaVilla.  Shiloh Baptist was built in 1875 by several prominent Blacks. [24]  When Johnson’s father was an alderman in 1872, the tax collector for the town was Samuel Spearing. [25]  Spearing supervised the Sunday School. [26]

Later, Johnson’s brother, Rosamond, was the choir director and organist for Bethel Baptist church. [27]

I am not sure that Johnson saw a ring shout when he was young, despite asserting in Spirituals that he remembered “remember seeing this dance many times when I was a boy.” [28]  His description matches that of many others, and include details someone who did not participate would not notice.

In his autobiography, he says something different.  There he wrote:

“When there was a ‘ring shout’ the weird music and the sound of thudding feet set the silences of the night vibrating and throbbing with a vague terror.  Many a time I woke suddenly and lay a long while strangely troubled by these sounds.” [29]

What is true in this statement is his reaction to the music.  It may not have been a “ring shout” but an emotional religious service.  He may not have known the difference as a child.  The only experience he mentions is a revival he attended when he was nine years old.  He contrasted the “decorum of the regular Sunday services” with “overlaid emotions” that came “to the surface.” [30]

I trust him on music because it was something he was attuned to as a child.  His mother had a good voice, [31] and both he and Rosamund took piano lessons. [32]  Drums were the one instrument he mentioned several times.  They may be all he recalled about his visit to the Bahamas with his mother when he was four years old. [33]

Later, he said he wanted to be a drummer in a brass band, and recalled the skills of Martin who “could beat a continuous and unbroken roll on his muffled drum all the way from the church to the cemetery.”  He added “I lost my ambition to be a drummer, but drums have never lost their tumultuous effect on me.” [34]

The question is why would Johnson write beyond his experience.  By 1925, he had become politically active with the NAACP, while his brother wrote popular music.  Rosamund created the piano arrangements for the Spirituals collection.  No doubt the two compared notes when James was writing the “Preface” where he took on the persona of an expert.  He broaches the ring shouts at the end of his discussion to distinguish them from spirituals.

“This term ‘shout songs’ has no reference to the loud, jubilant Spirituals, which are often so termed by writers on Negro music; it has reference to the songs or, better, the chants used to accompany the ‘ring shout’.” [35]

This led to a description of ring shouts.  In his autobiography, he introduces part of his 1925 descriptions to explain the word “shout” after he said Aunt Vinnie was a “shouter.”  Again, he may have felt a need to define a term for his less-informed readers.

If Johnson did see ring shouts when he was young, it was in one of the churches were his father was pastor. Rosamond was more likely to have seen them after James left for school in Atlanta in 1887.

End Notes
1.  James Weldon Johnson.  The Book of American Negro Spirituals.  New York: The Viking Press, 1925.

2.  James Weldon Johnson.  Along This Way.  New York: The Viking Press, 1933.  129–604 in James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews.  New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2004.

3.  Johnson, autobiography.  157.
4.  Johnson, autobiography.  157.
5.  Johnson, autobiography.  158.

6.  Teresa Stepzinski.  “St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church celebrates 150 years of serving God and Jacksonville.”  Jacksonville website, 15 September 2019.

7.  John R. Scott.  “Introduction of African Methodism into East Florida.”  168-174 in Proceedings of the Quatro-Centennial Conference of the African M. E. Church of South Carolina, edited by Benjamin W. Arnett.  Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Printing. House, 1890.  173.

8.  Johnson, autobiography.  143.  Mount Zion is now Ebenezer United Methodist Church.

9.  John T. Foster Jr. and Sarah Whitmer Foster.  “The Last Shall Be First: Northern Methodists in Reconstruction Jacksonville.”  The Florida Historical Quarterly 70(3):265–280:January 1992.  269.

10.  The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is discussed in the post for 15 November 2020.

11.  Foster.  269.
12.  Foster.  268.
13.  Foster.  270-271.
14.  Foster.  272.
15.  Johnson, autobiography.  135.
16.  Johnson, autobiography.  136.
17.  Johnson, autobiography.  137.
18.  Johnson, autobiography.  137.
19.  Johnson, autobiography.  163.
20.  Johnson, autobiography.  190.
21.  Johnson, autobiography.  193.
22.  Johnson, autobiography.  190.
23.  Johnson, autobiography.  198-199.

24.  Patricia Drozd Kenney.  “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and the Formation of a Black Community.”  MA thesis.  University of Florida, 1990.  57.

25.  Kenney.  34.
26.  Kenney.  57.

27.  Charlie Patton.  Jacksonville Native Left a Huge Legacy, But Nothing Marks It.”  The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Florida, 15 June 2012.  He said Johnson was the organist in the 1890s.

28.  Johnson, Spirituals.  33.
29.  Johnson, autobiography.  158.
30.  Johnson, autobiography.  161.
31.  Johnson, autobiography.  137.
32.  Johnson, autobiography.  147.
33.  Johnson, autobiography.  179.
34.  Johnson, autobiography.  197.

35.  Johnson, Spirituals.  33.  Rosamond added to the confusion.  His version of “Dry Bones” was advertised as a shout song in 1938. [36]

36.  J. Rosamond Johnson.  “Dry Bones: Descriptive, Characteristic Shout Song.”  New York: Handy Brothers, 1938.

Walter Anderson - Come By Here (Part 2)

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Continued from previous post dated 29 January 2023

Notes on Performance
Cover: “Nobody Knows.”  Linoleum cut on tanwove paper [1] of Negro head by William Smith.

Color Scheme: The cover uses dark brown ink on beige stock.  Inside, the pages employ brown ink on beige paper.

Reissue as 50 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a light brown cover and cream pages.  The version of “Come by Here” is the one used in Max Exner’s The Bridge of Song.  It used the plate made by Jane Keen for Indianola Sings with a revised title and no reference to Angola.

Reissue as 56 Negro Folk Songs: Same cover design, but with a goldenrod cover and white pages.  The plate for “Kum Ba Yah” is the one from that period.

Notes on Audience
The songbook Look Away seems to have had wide distribution: several libraries have recorded owning copies with WorldCat.  The publication dates are contradictory because Lynn Rohrbough, the owner of the company that issued Look Away, was not consistent in how he labeled his songbooks.

As mentioned in the post for 18 July 2021, Rohrbough or Walter Anderson, the editor of Look Away, may have sent copies to civil rights groups in Alabama in 1963.  Carlotta Scott King had been a student of Anderson’s at Antioch College, [2] and contributed a song to the 1963 revision. [3]

Anderson himself apparently carried copies to distribute.  In 1980, he gave a copy to John Paul II when he was invited to meet him at a United Nations conference held at the pope’s summer palace.  John Paul responded: “I love spirituals.  I like to sing them.” [4]

The anthology seems to have encouraged others to submit collections of spirituals to Rohrbough.  In 1961, CRS published Great Day.  The editor, Joseph Jones, was the son of a Black Presbyterian pastor who organized Sunday Schools in the south for the denomination.  He “frequently sang and led singing on his travels.” [5]  The artwork for Great Day was done by B. D. Roberts, the principal of a Black elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina. [6]

The 1963 revision of Look Away had Jones’ version of “Rock My Soul.”  It was illustrated with Roberts’ illustration for “Great Day.” [7]  Jones’ page for “Kum Ba Yah” had the drawing of a man sitting on the ground with a mule by Roberts. [8]

Sometime in the early 1960s, Rosa Page Welch also published a collection of Fifteen Negro Spirituals.  This may have been around the time she recorded “Kum Bah Yah” for a Waynesboro, Virginia, record company. [9]  She is discussed in the post for 31 January 2022.

Notes on Performers
Walter Franklin Anderson was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1915 to children of slaves.  His mother’s family had been owned by an Irishman near Asheville, North Carolina, who fathered Anderson’s grandmother. [10]  His father was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to slaves who had been purchased by Swedes. [11]

James Rosemond Anderson could read music and play piano. [12]  He sent all nine of his children to music classes. [13]  Leila Henrietta Weaver had attended Berea College for one year before Kentucky passed a law that prevented African Americans from sharing classes with whites. [14]  She made sure all the children could go to college.  Most went to Hampton Institute in Virginia.  One boy attended Wilberforce in Xenia, Ohio. [15]

Walter studied piano and organ at Oberlin College.  He spent his summers working at a summer residential camp run [16] by Karamu House, a Cleveland community center modeled on settlement houses. [17]

His first teaching job, after graduation, was at Wilberforce where he led a chorus that emphasized “gospel music, spirituals, and related sorts of ethnic music.” [18]  The Black college founded by Methodists was in the throes of reorganization, [19] and Anderson left after a year. [20]

In 1938, Anderson embarked on a career as a concert pianist. [21]  After a year on the road, he accepted a position at Kentucky State College. [22]  This time he had to direct the band [23] and a jazz orchestra. [24]  During February, he was able to book concerts. [25]  He also continued to work at the Karamu camp in summers. [26]  It hired him full-time in 1942. [27]

While he was working in Cleveland, he took classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music. [28]  A piece he wrote for his composition class, “Variations on the Negro Spiritual, Lord, Lord, Lord,” was played by the Cleveland Symphony in 1946. [29]  The arrangement of “Lord, Lord, Lord” in Look Away must have been based on that work.

In 1946, he found a home as chairman of the Antioch College music department.  He was then thirty years old. [30]  In addition to teaching, he continued to play concerts, and edited the songbooks issued by Lynn Rohrbough.  His next projects are discussed in the post for 4 June 2023.

The names listed on the Advisory Editorial Committee [31] suggest he asked for help from people he already knew.  Clarice Jones Michaels had been his department chairman at Kentucky State, [32] and Harry Baker later held that position. [33]  Anderson’s brother continued to live near Wilberforce, [34] and that probably is how Anna Terry became involved.

Other members of the committee were on the faculties at Southern University, [35] University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, [36] the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, [37] and Clark, [38] Howard, [39] Spellman, [40] Morgan State, [41] and North Carolina colleges. [42]  Anderson may have met people when he touring or at academic meetings.

Anderson was responsible for the aesthetic design of Look Away.  Karamu House had become an arts center.  The man whose artwork is on the cover, William Elijah Smith, moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Cleveland in 1927 where he was taken in by the center’s owners, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe.  His training in the 1930s included classes at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute.  During the 1950s he ran a gallery in Los Angeles devoted to art by African Americans.  He may have done the print used by Anderson for the WPA in the Depression. [43]

Rohrbough obviously had stayed in contact with Marion Downs and Olive Williams, and probably had met Welch at sometime when she was in Ohio. [44]  He, or Anderson, may have known Thomas Harrison who ran a private music school in Tallahassee, Florida. [45].  I could not find any information on line about E. Anderson of Langston, Oklahoma, [46] or Fred Hall of Montgomery, Alabama.

One of the most famous members of the committee was Charles Harris.  He had accompanied the concert tenor Roland Hayes. [47]  The other noted contributor was Bayard Rustin.  He then was with the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and later helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. [48]  FOR was the organization that sponsored the songbook for Conscientious Objectors edited by Olcutt Sanders.

Sanders’ role may have been a silent one.  As mentioned in the post for 22 January 2023, the 1940s songbook was the first to include a number of spirituals.  All ten he selected were in Look Away.  In 1963, was hired to direct Karamu House. [49]

Availability
Songbook: Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service.  Undated, but before Olive Williams moved from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1950s. [50]  Does not contain “Kumbaya.”

Songbook: “Come By Here (Kum Ba Yah).”  27 in Look Away: 50 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service.  Undated revision; dated to late 1957 or early 1958 by the plate.

Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  27 in in Look Away: 56 Negro Folk Songs, edited by Walter F. Anderson.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1963.

Songbook: “Kum Ba Yah.”  13 in J. T. Jones.  Great Day: Negro Spirituals as Sung and Directed by J. T. Jones.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1961.

Songbook:  Rosa Page Welch.  Fifteen Negro Spirituals.  Delaware, Ohio: Informal Music Service, 1960s.  It came up in my search for “Come by Here,” but the WorldCat entry did not provide any details to support the selection.  It probably was “Kum Ba Yah.”

Album:  Rosa Page Welch.  “Kum Bah Yah.”  Sings Of God’s World And “His Wondrous Love.  MRC LP 11-28.  The liner notes mention a 1963 event. [Discogs entry.]

End Notes
1.  “William E. Smith (1913 - 1997 ) Nobody Knows.”  Item offered by Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 7 October 2008.  Invaluable website.

2.  Joan Horn.  Playing on All the Keys: The Life of Walter F. Anderson.  Yellow Springs, Ohio: Yellow Springs Historical Society, 2007.  178-180.

3.  “Walk Together Children” as sung by Carlotta Scott King.  39 in Look Away, 1963.
4.  Horn.  178.

5.  LindaJo J. McKim.  The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion.  Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.  125.

6.  Roberts was principal of the Myers Street School in Durham. [51]  “It was the largest elementary school in North Carolina for black children” in the “late 1940s.” [52]

7.  Jones.  1.
8.  Jones.  13.
9.  John Major ran MRC Records from the 1960s through the 1980s. [53]
10.  Horn.  2.
11.  Horn.  7.
12.  Horn.  24.
13.  Horn.  10.
14.  Horn.  3.
15.  Horn.  17.
16.  Horn.  39.
17.  “Karamu House.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.
18.  Horn.  49.
19.  Horn.  50-52.
20.  Horn.  54.
21.  Horn.  53.
22.  Horn.  59.
23.  Horn.  60.
24.  Horn.  61.
25.  Horn.  59.
26.  Horn.  40.
27.  Horn.  72.
28.  Horn.  80.
29.  Horn.  87.
30.  Horn.  96.
31.  Look Away, early 1950s.  2.
32.  Horn.  60.
33.  Thorobred, Kentucky State College yearbook, 1969, dedicated to Baker.
34.  Horn.  17.

35.  DeBose Tourgee should be Albion Tourgee DeBose.  He taught at Howard, Talladega College, and Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to the Debose Foundation website.

36.  Ariel M. Lovelace directed the Vesper Choir, according to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff website.

37.  The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga awards the Edmonia J. Simmons Endowed Scholarship in Music according to its website.

38.  J. DeKoven Killingsworth was chairman of the music department at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. [54]

39.  Walter Lawson was dean of Howard’s College of Fine Arts.  “He developed the art of choral singing among Negroes to perhaps its highest point.  He is credited with demonstrating that the Negro choir, while retaining its folk music, also could interpret the choral literature of the world.” [55]

40.  Kemper Harrold was a violinist [56] and head of the music department at Spellman in Atlanta. [57]

41.  Orville Moseley was head of the music department at Southern University in the 1940s [58] and directed the choir at Morgan State in the 1950s. [59]  Morgan State is in Baltimore where Williams later had close relations with it.

42.  Thomas Dorsey was chairman of the music department at North Carolina College in Durham. [60]

43.  “William E. Smith (Artist).”  Wikipedia website, accessed 4 January 2023.

44. Welch was often in Ohio, usually as a soloist for a Disciples of Christ or Christian Church gathering.  Irma Voight said she was at Ohio University for its 1943 Brotherhood Week, in part because she taught spirituals to youth groups. [61]

45.  “Students holding recital at the St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Tallahassee.”  Florida Memory website.

46.  He probably was associated with Langston University, but could I not confirm this.
47.  “Harris Family Papers.”  Durham County Library website, Durham, North Carolina.
48.  Bayard Rustin.  Wikipedia website, accessed 10 January 2023.
49.  Sanders is discussed in the post for 13 February 2022.
50.  Williams is discussed in the post for 22 January 2023.
51.  Jones.  32.
52.  Charlotte Mecklenburg Story website.
53.  “MRC (2).”  Discogs website.

54.  “The Renowned Dr. J. DeKoven Killingsworth, conducting the Clark College Philharmonic Society.”  National Museum of African American History and Culture website.

55.  Death Notice for Warner Lawson, Sr.  The Pittsburgh Courier, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 19 June 1971.  6.  Item posted by internet judith_lawson on 5 June 2015.

56.  Associated Negro Press.  “Musicians Open Meet At Hampton Institute.”  Published by Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 August 1931.

57.  Item.  Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 7 August 1943.
58.  Item.  Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 10 February 1940.
59.  Item.  Baltimore Afro American Newspaper Archives website, 4 December 1951.

60.  Johnny B. Hodge, Jr.  A Biography of Phillmore Mallard Hall with Particular Emphasis on His Contribution to the Development of Black School Bands in North Carolina.  PhD dissertation.  American University, 1997.  155.

61.  Irma Voight.  “The Religious Foundations of Ohio University.”  Ohio University website.