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.