A. C. A. Song Book

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The next Cooperative Recreation Service publication that contributed to the spread of “Kumbaya” was issued by the American Camping Association in 1958.  It came ten years after CRS published the A. C. A. Song Book. [1]

The organization then was beginning its transition from a small group of private camp directors to a professional organization.  The ACA president in 1948 was Carol Gulick Hulbert, [2] whose uncle founded the Camp Fire Girls [3] and whose parents opened a private girls’ camp in Vermont in 1905. [4]  In 1922, Edward Gulick opened Lanakila for boys.  It was run by Carol’s husband, Chauncey Hulbert.  She took over in 1924. [5]

Hulbert was succeeded as ACA president by Reynold Carlson. [6]  He had joined by faculty of Indiana University’s Health, Physical Education and Recreation school in 1947.  Previously, he had worked for the National Recreation Association. [7]

Under Hulbert, the organization changed the name of its periodical from the Camp Directors Bulletin to Camping Magazine in 1946. [8]  The ACA began accrediting camps in 1948. [9]  It was countering Porter Sargent’s A Handbook of Summer Camps, which he had begun publishing in 1924 [10]  This complemented his Handbook of Private Schools that first appeared in 1915. [11]

Of the 68 camps, which existed in 1948 in Michigan and still were accredited by the ACA in 1974, half were sponsored by five youth groups: the YMCA (16), Girl Scouts (9), Camp Fire Girls (4), YWCA (4), and Boy Scouts (1).  Less than a quarter were private, and those of the Camp Fire Girls, YWCA, and Kings’ Daughters emulated their programs, bringing their influence to 36%.  The remaining 25% were religious, settlement houses, or special interest. [12]

No one is credited with editing the ACA songbook, but songs are included from three private camps: Wabukani and Winona in Maine, and Severance in New York.  Emily Welch, the owner of Wabukani, was the ACA president in 1932. [13]

The one thing that distinguished private camps from others was the length of time children and adolescents spent in them.  Private camps before 1950 tended to have one session that lasted all summer, while the others catered to groups that changed every week.  This had a strong impact of their repertoires. [14]

Private camps often developed traditions that included a number of songs written in the camps, which had been passed on for years.  New campers learned them as part of their initiation into the mores of camps.  Few spread beyond a camp’s boundaries.  The exceptions in the A. C. A. Song Book are: “My Paddle’s Keen and Bright” from the Gulick’s camp Sebago, [15] and “Whipporwill.”  The last was written by Anne Chapin at a Girl Scout training camp in 1921. [16]  Both spread through organization channels.

Camps that emulated private ones, like the CFG camp I attended in 1951, still assumed returning campers would learn the local repertoire a bit at a time, some songs each year.  Camp owners, who ran camps for profit, could not assume community prestige would move young children to accept such demands.  They realized they needed songs children could learn quickly, and something more was needed than “Row, Row Your Boat.”

The 1948 A. C. A Song Book was an attempt to fill the gap.  It still included many of the songs that had been sung in camps since the 1920s, like “The Border Trail,” [17] “Each Campfire Lights Anew” [18] and “Father Time.” [19]  It had a few from English and American folk tradition, like “The Keeper” [20] and “Old Smoky,” [21] and a few cowboy songs like “Night Herding Song” [22] and “Round-Up Lullaby” [23] that came from the popular view of folk music derived from collections published by Carl Sandburg and John Lomax. [24]

Many of the European folk songs were popularized by the National Recreation Association, or its music specialist, Augustus D. Zanzig. [25]   Seven came from their Singing America, [26] three from Folk Songs and Ballads published by Zanzig’s earlier employer, [27] and “Toviska” from an NRA publication from 1938. [28]

Lynn Rohrbough had not yet begun amassing a collection of international songs.  The ones in the A. C. A. Song Book that came from the CRS repertoire were from Bliss Wiant’s The Pagoda of 1946, [29] Olcutt Sanders’ Amigos Cantando of 1948, [30] and UNESCO’s Work and Sing of 1948. [31]

A large number of songs in the A. C. A. Song Book were religious, including three graces, [32] and eight spirituals. [33]  Except for the “Hannukah Hymn,” [34] they were from the Protestant tradition.  Two, “Day Is Dying in the West” [35] and “Now the Day Is Over” [36] came from the Chautauqua strain of camp meetings.

It is difficult to judge the impact of this songbook.  I remember 15 of the 94 songs at Kitanniwa.  Most were available from other sources and I know some were introduced after my first summer.

Notes on Performers
Wabunaki was founded in 1910 by Amy Dunlap.  At the time, she was working for the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  The camp apparently closed and the site “on an island in Hancock Lake, near Hillside,” Maine, [37] was purchased by Welch in 1921. [38]  It did not survive into the 1970s.

Welch graduated from Vassar in 1904, and worked as a teacher.  In 1914, she became principal of the Charlton  School in New York. [39]  She left for Richmond, Virginia, in 1917 where she was headmistress of Saint Catherine’s School.  The school said “her early retirement was influenced by the precarious state of the School’s finances as well as the increased family responsibilities which she faced following the death of her sister.” [40]  Her nephew recalls she started the camp because her teacher’s salary was insufficient to raise him and his two brothers. [41]

The two songs in the ACA collection from Wabunaki [42] were written by Isabel Grimes Booth and Ethel Wilcox.  Booth was writing music [43] when she was a senior at Vassar College in 1921. [44]  Wilcox had to leave Vassar when her father died. [45]  Thereafter, she lived in Poughkeepsie where she sang at programs sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church. [46]  One assumes both worked at Wabunaki.

Winona was founded in 1908 by Charles Cobb in Denmark, Maine, as the brother camp to Wyonegonic.  In the 1940s, it was managed by his grandson, Roland. [47]  In 1973, an eight-week session for boys cost $1,075. [48]  In comparison, Kitanniwa charged $39 for a one-week session.  The total income, per camper for the summer, was $241. [49]

One song appeared in the A. C. A. Songbook from Winona by F. E. Jones: “Off to the Hills.” [50]

Severance was found in 1917 on Paradox Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. [51]  Carrie Sinn was the owner in the 1940s. [52]  The girls’ camp closed in 1972. [53]  At that time, an eight-week session cost $1,400. [54]

No author was given for “We Think of Camping.” [55]  Like many camp songs before CRS began publishing custom songsters, it was written to a popular song.  The melody for “The Old Refrain” was composed for a Viennese operetta in 1887 by Johann Bundle and popularized in this country by Fritz Kreisler. [56]

End Notes
1.  American Camping Association, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.  A. C. A. Song Book.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Song Service, Cooperative Recreation Service.  Undated; the most recent songs in the book are from 1948.

2.  “A History of ACA Presidents and Board Chairs.”  American Camp Association website; based on Eleanor Fell’s History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 1986.

3.  Luther Halsey Gulick is discussed in note 35 in the entry for 5 September 2021.  He also is discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  12.

4.  Hulbert’s parents, Edward Leeds Gulick and the former Harriet Marie Farnsworth, are discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  341.  The first camp was Aloha.

5.  “Who We Are.”  Aloha Foundation website; accessed 26 May 2023.
6.  “History of ACA Presidents.”

7.  Joel Meier.  “Reynold E. Carlson: A Distinguished Pioneer in Outdoor Education.”  Research in Outdoor Education  6:article 4:2002.  3.

8.  “Timeline of ACA and Summer Camp.”  American Camp Association website.
9.  “American Camp Association.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 April 2023.
10.  A Handbook of Summer Camps.  Boston: Porter Sargent, 1924.

11.  “Porter Sargent.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 20 Mary 2023.

The Handbook of Private Schools.  Boston: P. Sargent, 1915.

12.  National Directory of Accredited Camps for Boys and Girls.  Martinsville, Indiana: American Camping Association, 14th edition, 1974.  I chose Michigan as my sample because I am from Michigan and have some sense of the camps listed.  Beyond that pragmatic reason, the state was typical of camps in the 1970s.  Camps not only had a variety of owners, but the sponsors were based in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  This was because cities like Chicago and Toledo did not have the same types of small lakes and big lake waterfronts that are found in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

13.  “History of ACA Presidents.”

14.  The following discussion is based on a more detailed analysis in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

15.  “My Paddle’s Keen and Bright” is discussed in the post for 5 December 371 (note 46) and on pages 445 and 565 in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

16.  “Whipporwill” and Chapin are discussed on pages 445 and 571 in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

17.  Carol Peterson.  “The Border Trail.”  Written to “Road to the Isles” as transcribed by Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser in Songs of the Hebrides.  London: Boosey and Company, 1917. [57]

18.  “Each Campfire Lights Anew” is reproduced in the posts for 28 November 2021 and 13 March 2020, and is mentioned in posts for 5 December 2021 and 20 February 2022.

19.  “Father Time” is mentioned in the post for 13 March 2022.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs quotes a woman who believed it was from Vassar (page 341).

20.  “The Keeper” is discussed in the post for 5 December 2021.

21.  “Old Smoky,” is identified in the A. C. A.  Song Book as an  American folk song recorded by Greta Biddle Kaylor in Knox County, Tennessee.  This was before the song was popularized by The Weavers in 1951. [58]  By then, it had been collected by a number of folklorists. [59]

22.  “Night Herding Song.”   Published by Ina Sires in Songs of the Open Range.  Boston: C. C. Birchard and Company, 1928.  Ellen Ina Sires grew up in Navarro County, Texas, [60] about 40 miles south of Dallas. [61]  She taught school [62] and lectured on cowboy culture. [63]

23.  “Round-Up Lullaby” is discussed in note 32 of the post for 20 March 2022.

24.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs describes the music that developed from the publications of Carl Sandburg and John Lomax as “consensus folk music  [64]  Sandburg is discussed in the post for 5 May 2019.  Lomax is discussed in the post for 12 May 2019.

25.  For more on Zanzig, see the column at the right of the screen.

26.  “America the Beautiful,” “At the Gate of Heaven,” “Down in the Valley,” “Over the Meadows,” “Prayer” from Engelbert Humperdinck’s  Hansel and Gretel, “Våsång,” and “Walking at Night.”

27.  “Morning Comes Early,” “The Silver Moon Is Shining,” and “Tiritomba.”

28.  “Toviska.”  Songs for Informal Singing.  New York: National Recreation Association, 1938. [WorldCat entry]  The A. C. A. Song Book identifies it as a Moravian folk song arranged by Max V. Exner.

29.  “After School” and “Yangtze Boatman’s Chantey” appear in The Pagoda, arranged by Bliss Wiant.  Cooperative Recreation Service Inc, © 1946.  This is mentioned in the post for 2 October 2022.

30.  “The Carpenters” and “My Farm” appear in Amigos Candando, edited by Phyllis Aden Sanders and Olcutt Sanders.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service; copyrighted 15 October 1948.  This is mentioned briefly in the post for 13 February 2022.

31.  “Ahrirang,” “Holla Hi, Holla Ho!,” “Mill on the Rhine,” “My Bela Bimba,” and “Tamo Daleko” appear in UNESCO, Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service.  Work and Sing: An International Songbook.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Inc.  It was copyrighted in 1948, but the earliest edition I own was edited by Patricia Dunham Hunt.

32.  “Chimes Grace,” “Round of Thanks,” and “Praise for Bread.”

33.  “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Nobody Knows,” “Steal Away,” “Study War No More,” “Trampin’,” and “Won’t You Sit Down.”  James Weldon Johnson’s “Life Every Voice and Sing” is not a spiritual but often is treated as one.

34.  “Hannukah Hymn,” which begins “Rock of Ages, let our song.”   It was copyrighted in 1932 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  The group represented the Reformed Jewish tradition. [65]

35.  Mary A. Lathbury and William F Sherwin.  “Day Is Dying in the West.”  It was written in 1877 for the Chautauqua Assembly. [66]

36.  Sabine Baring-Gould wrote “Now the Day Is Over” in 1865, and Joseph Barnby composed the melody in 1869.  It appeared in the 1868 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern edited by William Henry Monk.  London: J. Alfred Novello. [67]

37.  Handbook of Private Schools.  1915.
38.  Handbook of Summer Camps.  1935.  262.
39.  Handbook of Private Schools.  1915.
40.  “School Leadership.”  Saint Catherine’s School, Richmond, Virginia, website.

41.  Ralph Hubbell.  “As It Was at the Beginning!”  Living Prime Time website, August 1997.

42.  “Come All You Campers” and “When a Breezy Morning.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  36–37.

43.  “Jadda Bird” was published by Isabel Grimes in 1921. [68]
44.  Item.  Vassar Quarterly 25(1):1 October 1939.
45.  Item.  Kappa Kappa Gamma’s The Key 29(2):154:May 1912.

46.  Item.  Pokeepsie Evening Enterprise, Poughkeepsie, New York, 20 February 1915.  6.

“Sunday School Association Convention, Oct 31.”  Poughkeepsie Eagle, Poughkeepsie, New York, 30 October 1914.  7.

Vassar is in Poughkeepsie.

47.  “Camp Wyonegonic.”  Sensagent website reproduces a Wikipedia post that no longer exists.

48.  National Directory.  96.

49.  National Directory.  39.  This included six one-week sessions, and two five-day sessions.

50.   F. E. Jones.  “Off to the Hills.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  34.  Nothing could be found about Jones.

51.  A. C. A. Song Book.  186.
52.  Item.  Ticonderoga Sentinel, Ticondergoa, New York, 6 June 1940.  3.

53.  “Sleepaway: Two Chances to Go Back to Summer Camp.”  American Heritage 43(3):June/July 2003.

54.  National Directory.  186.
55.  “We Think of Camping.”  A. C. A. Song Book.  35.

56.  James J.  Fuld.  The Book of World-Famous Music.  New York: Dover Publications, 2000 edition.  414–415.

57.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  282.

58.  The Weavers And Terry Gilkyson.  “Across The Wide Missouri / On Top Of Old Smoky.”  Decca 9-27515; issued 1951. [Discogs entry]

59.  “On Top of Old Smokey.”  The Traditional Ballad Index.  Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle, Ballad Index website, 2023.

60.  “Obe Hoy Sires.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.  He was her father.

61.  Julie G. Miller.  “Navarro County.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  1976; last updated 28 May 2021.

62.  Ina Sires, Dallas, Texas.  Letter to Erwin E. Smith, 9 July 1926.  Reproduced on Amon Carter Museum of American Art website.

63.  Guy Logsdon.  “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.  Quoted in a review by George W. Lyon.  Ethnologies 17(2):168–171:1995.  169–170.

64.  Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  54–55.

65.  “Central Conference of American Rabbis.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 27 May 2023.

66.  Donald P.  Hustad.  Dictionary-Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church.  Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing, 1978.  184.

67.  Hustad.  184.
68.  Item on Picclick website selling sheet music.

Florida Ring Shouts

Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
James Weldon Jackson discussed ring shouts in his 1933 autobiography, Along This Way, [1] and in the preface to The Book of American Negro Spirituals, which he compiled with his brother J. Rosamund Johnson in 1925. [2]  In the post for 12 February 2023, I suggested it is difficult to identify the sections of his descriptions that are based on first-hand experiences.  I devoted more space in that post to his discussions of the accompanying music.

Joe Richardson uncovered a ring shout description from Lake City, Florida, in 1870.  It would be useful to compare a letter from Ambrose Hart to Johnson’s recollections.

Lake City is located on the banks of the Suwannee River near the border with Georgia.  Land to the north was devoted to cotton; land to the west was considered central Florida. [3]  The town itself was primarily a transit point.  The largest taxpayers in 1845 were five whiskey merchants [4] who owned twenty to thirty slaves. [5]

In 1854, an Englishman described it as “a collection of log cabins, occupying a cheerless sandy clearing in the midst of pine woods.” [6]  Charles Lanman could not see what supported the settlement “unless it be the fact that it is a sort of resting place for the teamsters and travellers, who have occasion to pass from Jacksonville to Middle Florida.” [7]

The railroad transformed the frontier community.  Before it arrived in 1858, cotton was shipped down the Suwannee “to Cedar Key and from there by boat on the long voyage around the peninsula to the east coast of Florida.”  Now it could go directly to Jacksonville or Fernandina. [8]

In 1850, surrounding Columbia County had a population of 4,808, of whom 26.3% were slaves. [9]  A decade later, the population had dropped to 4,646, and the percentage of slaves had increased to 44.4%. [10]  In 1845, whiskey merchant Thomas Dexter owned twenty slaves. [11] Claude Augusta Wilson was born on his plantation in 1857.  He remembered there were “about 100 slaves including children.” [12]

When Union troops were advancing on Jacksonville in 1862, residents fled to Lake City on the railroad. [13]  When Thomas Wentworth Higginson arrived in Jacksonville in 1863, he sent the remaining women and children to Lake City. [14]  Once there, they began growing more cattle to feed Confederate troops. [15]  This not only increased the white population, but imported a new group of slaves with different origins than those in the central part of the state.

Hart served in the Union Army in Louisiana in 1862. [16]  After the war, he headed for Florida, where he landed in Fernandina in late 1866. [17]  In Jacksonville he met S. B. Thompson, who made him a partner in his logging business in Clay County. [18]  In 1868, Hart moved on to Lake City where he grew cotton. [19]  It was there that he wrote his description of a ring shout in a letter to his sister:

“the Negroes began ‘screeching, dancing, stamping and jumping . . . . They got to tearing around in a circle with two old preachers bobbing up and down in the center . . . . They broke the flooring all to pieces, cracked the still’ and finally the chimney began to show signs of crumbling before the demonstration was stopped.” [20]

The only Christianization that had occurred was the substitution of preachers for the men in the middle. [21]  Johnson described a ritual that was resisting being westernized.  When he was fifty-four years old, he wrote:

“I can remember seeing this dance many times when I was a boy.  A space is cleared by moving the benches, and the men and women arrange themselves, generally alternately, in a ring, their bodies quite close.  The music starts and the ring begins to move.  Around it goes, at first slowly, then with quickening pace.  Around and around it moves on shuffling feet that do not leave the floor, one foot beating with the heel a decided accent in strict two-four time.  The music is supplemented by the clapping of hands.  As the ring goes around it begins to take on signs of frenzy.  The music, starting, perhaps, with a Spiritual, becomes a wild, monotonous chant.  The same musical phrase is repeated over and over one, two, three, four, five hours.  The words become a repetition of an incoherent cry.  The very monotony of sound and motion produces an ecstatic state.  Women, screaming, fall to the ground prone and quivering.  Men, exhausted, drop out of the shout.  But the ring closes up and moves around and around.

“I remember, too, that even then the ‘ring shout’ was looked upon as a very questionable form of worship.  It was distinctly frowned upon by a great many colored people.  Indeed, I do not recall ever seeing a ‘ring shout’ except after the regular services.  Almost whispered invitations would go around, ‘Stay after church; there’s going to be a “ring shout”.’” [22]

He could have been describing something he saw at his father’s Baptist church, either in Fernandina or in Jacksonville, or in his grandmother’s Methodist church in Jacksonville.  When he was sixty-two, he described the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in LaVilla:

“The shouters formed in a ring, men and women alternative, their bodies close together, moved round and round of shuffling feet that never left the floor.  With the heel of the right foot they pounded out the fundamental beat of the dance and with their hands clapped out the varying rhythmical accents of the chant; for the music was, in fact, African chant and the shout an African dance, the whole pagan rite transplanted and adapted to Christian worship.  Round and round the ring would go; one, two, three, four, five hours, the very monotony of sound and motion indusing an ecstatic frenzy.” [23]

End Notes
1.  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.

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

3.  “History of Slavery in Florida.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 23 April 2023.

4.  Edward F. Keuchel.  A History of Columbia County, Florida.  Tallahassee, Florida: Sentry Press, 1981.  82.

5.  Keuchel.  83.

6.  Charles Lanman.  Adventures in the Wilds of the United States and British American Provinces.  Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1856.  2:133.  Quoted by Keuchel.  87.

7.  Lanman.  2:133.  Quoted by Keuchel.  88.
8.  Keuchel.  91.

9.  United States Census.  1850.  Florida.  Table 1.  “Population by Counties—Age, Color, and Condition—Aggregates.”

10.  United States Census.  1860.  State of Florida.  Table 1.  “Population by Age and Sex.”

11.  Keuchel.  83.  Dexter may have understated his holdings to keep his taxes low.

12.  Claude Augusta Wilson.  Interviewed in Lake City, Florida, by James Johnson on 6 November 1936.  In George Rawick.  A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume 3, Florida Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  Wilson may have generalized the number of slaves; 100 may mean a large number.

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

14.  Davis.  177.
15.  “Lake City, Florida.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 22 February 2023.

16.  “Lieutenant Ambrose B. Hart, 128th New York.”  National Park Services, Monocacy National Battlefield website, Frederick, Maryland.

17.  Keuchel.  128.

18.  Mary Jo McTammany.  “Rich Timber Resources Sparked Clay County’s Recovery after Civil War.”  Clay Today On Line website, Clay County, Florida, 18 April 2018.

19.  Keuchel.  128.

20.  A. B. Hart.  Letter to Mary Hart, 31 July 1870.  Quoted by Joe M. Richardson.  The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1865-1877.  Tallahassee: The Florida State University, 1965.  89.  Richardson, comments before and after quotation; ellipsis in Richardson.

21.  More descriptions of ring shouts can be found in the posts for September and October, 2018.  These have been collected into “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples,” which is available on the Academia.com website.  The one seen by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Jacksonville is quoted in the post for 30 September 2018.

22.  Johnson, 1925.  33.
23.  Johnson, 1933.  158.

LaVilla Reconstruction Religion

Topic: Origins - Early Versions
One obstacle to understanding religious beliefs in LaVilla when James Weldon Johnson was a child is the lack of resources.  A great many African Americans are Baptists [1] but, because the denomination lacks the centralized structure of Methodists, it lacks the latter’s archives and central reports.  As mentioned in the post for 5 March 2023, James Bryant found details in popular religious publications like The Christian Index.

Joe Richardson found another source in reports by agents for the Freedmen’s Bureau.  C. M. Hamilton noted “freed slaves were strictly, and peculiarly, a religious people” who attended “services in churches and brush arbors on Sundays and Wednesday evenings.” [2]  Jacob Remley thought “this faculty of veneration appears to be such that it is a hard matter to engage their minds in any other direction.” [3]  In Jacksonville, one man told Edward L’Engle he needed a cook who was “not partial to all night prayer meetings.” [4]

Revivals periodically swept through the town.  In 1871, whites complained the services were noisy and lasted all night. [5]  Two years later, Jonathon Gibbs admitted African Americans “still preach and pray, sing and shout all night long,” but noted “many of the things that shock good taste and good morals, which a few years ago were so prevalent, have passed away.” [6]

Gibbs was raised free in Philadelphia, and became a Presbyterian minister in 1856.  The Black was active in Abolitionist activities during the Civil War, which led him to Charleston, South Carolina in 1865.  Two years later he moved to Jacksonville where he opened a school for Freedmen, and became active in Reconstruction politics.  By 1868 he was holding office in Tallahassee. [7]

Johnson’s grandmother affiliated with a Methodist church that had been organized by a northern white missionary in 1866. [8]  It followed the standard protocols of the white denomination, including love feasts [9] and weekly prayer meetings [10].  In 1880, a traveling evangelist descended on the church.

Years later, Johnson recalled:

“In these revival meetings the decorum of the regular Sunday services gave way to something primitive.  It was hard to realize that this was the same congregation which on Sunday mornings sat listening to the preacher’s exegesis of this text and joining in singing conventional hymns and anthems led by a choir.  Now the scene is changed.  The revivalist rants and roars, he exhorts and implores, he warns and threatens.  The air is charged.  Overlaid emotions come to the surface.  A woman gives a piercing scream and begins to ‘shout’; then another, and another.  The more hysterical ones must be held to be kept from ‘shouting’ out of their clothes.” [11]

Willis Williams arrived in Jacksonville in 1879 as a mail clerk for the Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad.  At some time, he joined Johnson’s grandmother’s church.  In 1937, he told Viola Muse:

“The manner of worship was very much in keeping with present day modes.  Preachers appealed to the emotions of the ‘flock’ and the congregation responded with ‘amens,’ ‘halleluia,’ clapping of hands, shouting and screaming.” [12]

Saint Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church erected a building in LaVilla in 1883 [13] that was  between the homes of Johnson’s parents and his grandmother.  He remembered that, as a young adolescent, he often heard “the weird music and the sound of thudding feet” when he “woke suddenly.” [14]

Francis Asbury turned camp meetings into sites for annual conferences of Methodists before the Civil War. [15]  The AME church continued the practice.  In 1875, it held its annual meeting near Jacksonville for eleven days. [16]

Camp meetings continued beyond the purview of the press and neighbors who had to work every day and so could not be kept awake by noisy services.  Edward Lycurgis was born in 1872 in Saint Augustine.  He recalled that “all work ceased in a vicinity where a camp meeting was held. Farmers flocked to the meeting from all parts of Saint Johns County.”  They lasted for several days, and the “the stirring sermons and spirituals that rang through the woods and could be heard for several miles on a clear day.”  The meetings culminated in river baptisms where the preferred song was “Take Me to the River To Be Baptized. [17]

End Notes
1.  More than half the African Americans, who attended church in Florida in the late 1930s, were Baptists.  The “African Methodist” church was second. [18]  The current percentage of Baptist is 49.08%.  Methodist churches attract 5.88% of the Black population, and Pentecostal groups 8.62%. [19]

2.  C. M. Hamilton.  Report to J. G. Foster, 31 May 1867.  Bureau Records for Florida.  Quoted by Joe M. Richardson.  The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1865-1877.  Tallahassee: The Florida State University, 1965.  86-87.

3.  Jacob A. Remley.  Report to A. H. Jackson, 1 October 1868.  Bureau Records for Florida.  Quoted by Richardson.  87.

4.  S. D. McConnell.  Letter to E. M. L’Engle, 1 December 1869.  Quoted by Richardson.  87.  L’Engle, the brother of the man who established LaVilla, is discussed in the post for 19 March 2023.  Emphasis in the original.

5.  Courier, Jacksonville, Florida, October 1871.  Quoted by Richardson.  89.

6.  Jonathon Gibbs.  The Florida Agriculturalist 1:23:17 January 1874.  Quoted by Richardson.  89.

7.  “Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 21 April 2023.

8.  For more on the history of Ebenezer Methodist Church, see the post for 12 February 2023.

9.  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.  166.

10.  Johnson.  165.
11.  Johnson.  161.

12.  Willis Williams.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Viola B. Muse on 20 March 1937.  In George Rawick.  A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume 3, Florida Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  Reprinted by Greenwood Press of Westport, Connecticut, in 1972.  Williams was born in 1856 in Tallahassee, and lived in the city where his mother was the cook for a local merchant.

13.  Saint Paul’s AME church is discussed in the post for 12 February 2023.
14.  Johnson.  158.

15.  See the post for 8 November 2020 for more on Asbury’s use of camp meetings following the Cane Ridge Revival.

16.  Sentinel, Tallahassee, Florida, 11 September 1875.  Cited by Richardson.  89-90.  Black camp meetings are discussed in the post for 15 March 2020 on the area surrounding New Bern, North Carolina.

17.  Edward Lycurgis.  Interviewed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Pearl Randolph on 5 December 1936.  In Rawick.  He moved to Jacksonville’s Clara White Mission in his old age.

18.  The Florida Negro, edited by Gary W. McDonogh.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.  109.  Based on unpublished work by the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project in Florida, which is discussed in the post for 30 April 2023.  The manuscript did not use the terms African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the white Methodist Episcopal Church that sponsored the church Johnson attended, and the Black offshoot of the ME church.  I assume their ranking is based on the sum of some of these groups.

19.  Robert Joseph Taylor, Linda M. Chatters, and R. Khari Brown.  “African American Religious Participation.”  Review of Religious Research 56:513-38:2014.