Swing Low Sweet Chariot - let's put all the cultural baggage aside and appreciate a great song

Today I want to talk about how today’s debate about race and injustice seems to have drifted off into a world of intolerance and hyper sensitivity – where everyone is, or professes to be, angry and ready to take offense about pretty much anything – statues, historic slavery, microaggressions and cultural appropriation, attitudes from years ago.   I want to make a plea for everyone to stop rushing to judgement and to take offense, because in a real way that is the perfect example of prejudice.

It seems we’ve got this rush-to-judgement in our DNA – when we were hunter gatherers, we needed to know at a glance whether a wild animal, for example, was dangerous.  Of if someone posted a threat – stopping to worry about prejudice didn’t come into it. It was a matter of life and death.

So, today, we still can’t help ourselves, to a degree … but what we CAN do is recognise this genetic programming and check ourselves.  It’s a Christian thing to do.  We’re no longer being attacked by sabre-toothed tigers, thankfully.  (I used to think that these creatures didn’t co-exist with humans, but apparently that’s being reconsidered).

Anyway, today I want to consider a current example of the way intolerance, history, cultural appropriation and a fear of being seen to act inappropriately, are being mixed up in a way that could stop people enjoying a song that has brought joy and hope to millions – ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’.

The story of Swing Low brings together a whole melange of cultures, races, oppressions and Christianity.  I think it shows how complex these things are and that the song, the music, transcend all this baggage, and the concept of ‘ownership’.  And that we all just need to chill out a bit more.

 I think I‘m allowed to call it a ‘negro spiritual’.  You no doubt know that it’s been sung at English rugby matches for years, sometimes accompanied by crude hand-gestures.  You may also know that it’s associated with a brilliant English, black, player called Martin Offiah – obviously he became known as ‘Chariots’.   Anyway, there are calls now to ban the song at rugby matches, or at least the line from the song, “carry them home” because of its ‘historical context’.

 The historical context is that the song was written by a black slave from Oklahoma and 100 years later was adopted by the US Civil Rights movement. .  So, the knee jerk reaction is that it’s inappropriate to sing at a rugby match.  It’s also being g touted as an example of cultural appropriation, where an artistic creation that’s associated with a particular race must not be ‘appropriated’ i.e. stolen to be used by another race.  You can make your own mind up about that.

 But I’ve read a lot about this particular song and I think it illustrates cultural richness, diversity, tolerance. With a dash of Christianity thrown in.

 Here goes …

The song was composed by ‘Uncle’ Wallace Willis and ‘Aunt Minerva’ two freed slaves of African origin in Mississippi in the early part of the 19^th century.  Swing Low was a work song and it was Christian – both ‘Uncle Wallace’ and Aunt Minerva were married and almost certainly practicing Christians.  They composed, but never wrote down that song and other songs that have remained in, popular usage including Steal Away to Jesus, The Angels are Coming and I’m A Rolling.

 But Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva weren’t owned by a cruel white slave-owner.  They were owned by a wealthy, half-Irish, half-Choctaw Indian called Britt Willis in Holly Springs, Mississippi. And Britt, himself, was married to a Choctaw Indian.

Britt may have been cruel by modern standards, but I can’t find any record of anything beyond the basic fact that he owned slaves, as many as 300 who worked on his cotton plantation.

But you could argue that Britt and his family, his slaves and his business were themselves victims of a racism and oppression when in 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, and what was called Treaty of the Dancing Rabbit. Forcing he and his wife and slaves together with tens of thousands of other Native Americans throughout the South, to relocate what was is now Oklahoma. , …

Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva wrote those songs, including Swing Low while working in their new plantation in Doaksville, Southern Oklahoma,

Willis used to hire out Wallace and Minerva to perform at the Spencer Academy, a Choctaw boys' school nearby.

And here’s where the church comes in, in about 1849 Reverend Alexander Reid, the Scottish-born superintendent of the school heard Willis and Minerva singing these spirituals.  He was impressed and moved and although he had no musical training, he memorised the tunes and wrote down the lyrics. You can assume that Uncle Wallace and Minerva were illiterate and, quite possibly, their owners were too.

Reid, who was an opponent of slavery, was at the school for 12 years and, we’re told, he and his family grew to love the couple and their music.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Reid and another minister took Wallace, Minerva, and some of their children to a local Confederate Army Depot 

But the story of how Wallace and Minerva’s songs became famous is brilliant.  Bear with me. In or around 1869 Reid’s wife died in childbirth and he and his children returned to Princeton, New Jersey. 

A couple of years later he went to hear the Jubilee Singers from Fisk University, an all-black college from Nashville.  It seems that the group’s ‘plantation songs’ jogged Reid’s memories of Wallace and Minerva’s music so after the show he made contact with the Jubilee singer’s leader, Professor White.

The Fisk Singers in 1909, below

Incidentally, the group didn’t only sing plantation songs – they also sang songs by Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American songwriter known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music. He wrote more than 200 songs, including "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer", and many of his compositions remain popular today. He has been identified as "the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century" and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries.[4] Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost, but editions issued by publishers of his day feature in various collections.[5]

By the way, Steven Collins Foster was white 

Another prompt might have been Professor White’s announcement after the show that further performances would have to be repeats of what the audience has just heard because they’d run out of material.

Reid, Professor White and the Jubilee Singers subsequently met up to share Wallace and Minerva’s so0nmgs, six of them, and they became a popular part of their repertoire. 

The rest is history – the Jubilee Singers performed in Europe and, it’s a said, they performed in front of Queen Victoria who requested an encore of "Steal Away to Jesus."

What we don’t know, sadly, is if Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva ever benefited financially from tgheikr creations.  But we do know that the money raised by the Jubilee Singers was ploughed back into education for former slaves. The last mention I can find of Uncle Wallace Willis and Aunt Minerva is in 1883 when Reverend Reid arranged for them to be photographed and prints sent to Fisk University in remembrance of their musical contributions.

Although Civil War-era documentation surrounding Wallace Willis is scarce, it is often reported that Willis and Minerva lived out their lives in Old Boggy Depot after slavery came to an end in the U.S. Most historians believe Wallace is buried in an unmarked grave within the slave burial section of the old Doaksville Cemetery.

I find Swing Low’s mournful lyrics uplifting. They are a classic example of black spirituals of the time– songs that were sung by slaves toiling under back-breaking labour in the fields. Taken at face value, the lyrics of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” express hope that divine help was on its way. Most historians also attribute a secret meaning to Willis’ lyrics with many arguing that they were used as a coded message about escaping the shackles of slavery and heading north.

 

I am certain that this song, this spiritual, this Christian hymn transcends oppression, race, cultural-ownership and that its powerful message of hope is an inspiration to us all.