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Nothing but Love in God’s Water: Volume 2: Black Sacred Music from Sit-Ins to Resurrection City
Volume 1 of Nothing but Love in God’s Water traced the music of protest spirituals from the Civil War to the American labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and on through the Montgomery bus boycott. This second volume continues the journey, chronicling the role this music played in energizing and sustaining those most heavily involved in the civil rights movement.
Robert Darden, former gospel music editor for Billboard magazine and the founder of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University, brings this vivid, vital story to life. He explains why black sacred music helped foster community within the civil rights movement and attract new adherents; shows how Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders used music to underscore and support their message; and reveals how the songs themselves traveled and changed as the fight for freedom for African Americans continued. Darden makes an unassailable case for the importance of black sacred music not only to the civil rights era but also to present-day struggles in and beyond the United States.
Taking us from the Deep South to Chicago and on to the nation’s capital, Darden’s grittily detailed, lively telling is peppered throughout with the words of those who were there, famous and forgotten alike: activists such as Rep. John Lewis, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and Willie Bolden, as well as musical virtuosos such as Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, and The Mighty Wonders. Expertly assembled from published and unpublished writing, oral histories, and rare recordings, this is the history of the soundtrack that fueled the long march toward freedom and equality for the black community in the United States and that continues to inspire and uplift people all over the world.
A group of African American women and men holding signs and clapping outside the Sir Walter Hotel in Raleigh. State Library of North Carolina, North Caroline Digital Collections, Civil Rights. Courtesy of The Raleigh News & Observer and State Archives of North Carolina.
Civil rights activists are booked into Raleigh jail cells after a protest march. State Library of North Carolina. North Carolina Digital Collections, Civil Rights. Courtesy of The News & Observer and State Archives of North Carolina.
African American men protestors crowded into a jail cell. State Library of North Carolina, North Caroline Digital Collections, Civil Rights. Courtesy of The Raleigh News & Observer and State Archives of North Carolina.
A little girl plays with a toy train outside temporary plywood shacks in Resurrection City, an encampment erected on the Mall in Washington D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign, May 1968. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection.
The exterior of the Mason Temple in Memphis in early 1970. The venue, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ denomination, was the site of King’s prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address the night before his assassination. Courtesy of University of Memphis Libraries and Special Collections Department.
This photograph has hung in the office of the Rev. Clay Evans of Chicago for nearly 50 years. Evans was the movement’s most ardent supporter when the SCLC came to Chicago. From left, Evans, Rev. Louis Boddie, Mahalia Jackson, Rev. B.F. Paxton. Photographs courtesy of the Rev. Clay Evans.
Soul legend James Brown performing at a rally at Tougaloo College in Mississippi during the “March Against Fear,” June 25, 1966. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Greenville, Alabama, in December 1965. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection.
Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins mediates with representatives from SCLC and SNCC during one of the marches outside Selma, Alabama in March 1965. A segregationist backlash to this photo eventually cost Collins’ his political career. From left: John Lewis, Andrew Young, Collins, Martin Luther King Jr., and Coretta King. Image courtesy of State Library and Archives of Florida.
Rachel (Nelson) West in the audience at Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, during a civil rights meeting, May 10, 1966. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Jim Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection.
Freedom Summer volunteers join local residents in singing Freedom Songs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Courtesy of Miami University Libraries. Carole Gross Colca Collection, Miami University Digital Archives, Oxford, OH.
Folksinger “Folksy” Joe Harrison entertains Hattiesburg Freedom School students during the Freedom Summer of 1964. McCain Library and Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi. Randall (Herbert) Freedom Summer photograph.
Carole (Gross) Colca (center, looking at camera), along with local residents and children and other civil rights workers, clapping and singing Freedom Songs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Courtesy of Miami University Libraries. Carole Gross Colca Collection, Miami University Digital Archives, Oxford, OH.
Flanked by portraits of murdered civil rights workers James Earl Chaney and Andrew Goodman, an unidentified man in Atlantic City, New Jersey, sings Freedom Songs during a nighttime demonstration at the Democratic National Convention in August 1964. The photograph is from the records of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-98097.
Photographer Yoichi Okamoto catches Martin Luther King with a rare smile during a meeting with President Johnson on the proposed Civil Rights Act legislation. Photographed January 19, 1964 in the Cabinet Room. Photographs courtesy of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, LBJ Collection.
Two unidentified women clapping and singing Freedom Songs at the Freedom School Convention on August 8, 1964 in Meridian, Mississippi. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-98834.
Following a performance of In White America by the Free Southern Theater, actors, singers and residents of Hattiesburg join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” in True Light Baptist Church. The Free Southern Theater toured throughout Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. McCain Library and Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi. Randall (Herbert) Freedom Summer photograph.
Activist/author/folksinger Julius Lester plays guitar and teaches Freedom Songs with Freedom School students at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Hattiesburg during the Freedom Summer of 1964. McCain Library and Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi. Randall (Herbert) Freedom Summer photograph.
SNCC staffers, including Fannie Lou Hamer (far right) and Chuck Neblett (center) address Mississippi Freedom Summer volunteers in the Western College for Women auditorium, June 1964. McCain Library and Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi. Randall (Herbert) Freedom Summer photograph.
Pete Seeger leaving a concert in a church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on July 14, 1964. Notes accompanying the photograph indicate that the temperature reached 100 degrees inside the church that day during heat of the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-97481.
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