Podcasts about jubilee singers

Florence Cole Talbert was a trailblazer in the world of opera, especially for Black women. Yves composes they story of her life and accomplishments. Link to Hann's Jubilee Singers brochure: https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/node/384232 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

150 Years Ago (August 1874) When a traveler near the Pacific Hotel hired Theodore Morrison for $1 [about $28 today] to row him to Cornwall, Leonard Schegel offered to do it for 75 cents. The hacks argued; after Schegel struck Morrison with his cane, Morrison shoved him. That's when Schegel's son, James, threw a rock that hit Morrison in the forehead. James was charged with assault, but a jury found no cause for action against his father. A granite crosswalk was laid across Main Street from Garden Street to Kemble Avenue. The Cold Spring Recorder soon after complained that the contractors had not removed the chippings and blocks, creating a hazard that required nearby store owners to keep their lanterns on. Moyse opened a store near the Sunk Mine and, in a display of his service, pushed a barrel of flour and a ham in a wheelbarrow for half a mile to a customer's door. Nine members of the Jubilee Singers of Wilmington, North Carolina, visited the Methodist Church. The Recorder assured readers that those expecting a "vulgar" minstrel would be disappointed; instead, the singers performed "those peculiar songs of the Negro camp meeting, which express a distinct religious idea, although grotesquely worded." A woman who fell off the gangplank of an excursion steamer at the dock was quickly lifted from the river because the tide was high. A rumor that James Ruddiman had drowned spread for four hours until he showed up. A canal boat sank in 15 feet of water at the wharf. It required eight hydraulic pumps to raise but its coal remained on the deck. At his discretion, the town assessor added $30,000 [$825,000] to the value of the New York City & Hudson River Railroad property. The Recorder editor lamented that documentation of the early history of Philipstown was sparse. "Little can be found upon the records but the brief entries concerning the elections of officers and the laying out of roads," he wrote. A Steiner Repeating Fire Extinguisher salesman left samples of its portable home unit with two merchants. W. Foster, of the Kellogg Base Ball Club, was applauded after he leaped aboard a riderless wagon on Main Street, grabbed the reins and brought the horse to a stop. After drinking three beers at a Cold Spring saloon and taking the train home to Garrison, Morris Osborne was struck and killed while walking on the tracks. A station agent found his body at 4:30 a.m. In a letter to The Recorder, a reader noted that Osborne and three other local "drunkards" had died since Jan. 1 and called on the village to enforce its temperance laws. While playing with his children, John Hustis stepped on an iron garden rake and was severely injured by a tooth that went through his shoe. E.J. Pierce, a female physician from the Highlands Medical Institute in Newburgh, delivered a "lecture for ladies" at Town Hall. A young man named Levy was standing at the railroad station when a mailbag tossed from the 9:46 a.m. express knocked the pipe from his mouth. Although the pump at the depot had been repaired, The Recorder noted that the cup was so often missing that thirsty travelers had to borrow the one in the ladies' room. Harry Porter, 8, drowned after falling from the decaying dock on West Street. Three men dove into the muddy, oily water and Capt. George Wise threw a scap net until its iron ring caught on the boy's leg. He was pulled out, but 15 minutes had passed. Isaac Finch, a former Cold Spring resident who moved to Oregon, mailed the editor of The Recorder 8-foot-tall spires of timothy grass. An intoxicated Gilbert Christian was arrested after making a scene inside a Nelsonville store by insisting he could lick any Irishman in town. Nichols and Mckeel constructed a black walnut numismatic cabinet for James Nelson that had 21 drawers. Owen & Webb painted their store on Stone Street to resemble a brownstone. 125 Years Ago (August 1899) While cleaning his bicycle, Fred Andrews lost the end of a finger in the rear sprocket. A horse kicked Frank Warren...

Intro by: Gail NoblesStory by: Gail NoblesDo you remember Paul Williams, one of the founding members and the original lead singer of the Motown group the Temptations?  He was the son of Sophia and Rufus Williams, a gospel singer in the gospel music vocal group called the Ensley Jubilee Singers. Let's see there were 1,2,3-4,5,6,7 of them were in the group according to the Birmingham News (anold newspaper clipping). They were familiar to Birmingham audiences both live and on radio. Silas Wooley, Lon hanlpr, Rufus Williams, James Williams (the leader), Marshall Johnson, Tommy Walton, and Morris Ridley. Ridgely played the guitar. They were well known at the church and performed old plantation numbers and appeared in the auditorium. You can hear the Ensley Jubilee Singers on YouTube, and see a photo of them in the video. I'm Gail Nobles. Thank you for listening to the Gospel Greats Podcast.

Expressions presents a special program featuring the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers. You will hear selections from a concert recorded at Ithaca College with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra as well as an interview with artistic director Dr. Baruch Whitehead. Setlist: 1) Order My Steps 2) For Every Mountain 3) Total Praise 4) Twelve Gates to the City 5) For the Goodness of God 6) Did My Lord Deliver Daniel? 7) Anticipation Guest Soloist on tracks 1-4: Krista Overby | Audio was recorded and mastered by Jeff Stachyra | Edited by Brent Fox

What started out as a project in a screenwriting class in a writers boot camp, has turned into a novel describing how Nashville, also known as “Music City” evolved into what it is today… or not. Nashville Tennessee is well known for its Country music, but did you know that the birthplace of Rhythm and Blues, or what we these days call “R&B” actually was born in this Middle Tennessee City we call Nashville. The moniker “Music City” was actually derived from the1860's after the Civil War, when the Jubilee Singers from Nashville's Fisk University performed in front of England's Queen Victoria, preceding Country music by approximately 80 years or so. In the studio today, we chat with author Paula Blackman about the “night music” that took place in Nashville in the midst of segregation in the 40's, 50's and early 60's, how the legendary Nashville TN based WLAC Radio had the ability to broadcast across the Eastern United States, and how this worked out in the favor of introducing R&B Music to the World. A retired gemologist, Paula Hope Blackman turned her lifelong storytelling hobby into a second career, becoming an author, screenwriter and playwright. She is a sixth generation native of Tennessee, who divides her time between Nashville and Southwest Florida, where she lives with her husband, Michael Iacampo. www.paulahope.com Creator and Executive Producer Emeritus: Tom Sabella Showrunner and Host (the guy who has a face for podcasting): Bob Bender Management Representation: Chuck Thompson for Thompson Entertainment Group, LLC Co-Producer - Audio/Video Editor (the man behind the curtain): Mark Sabella Director of Video and Continuity (the brains of the entire operation): Deborah Halle Marketing and Social Media (all knowing): Sarah Fleshner for 362 Entertainment All Around Problem Solver (and Mental Health Therapist for us): Connie Ribas Recorded at Music Dog Studios in Nashville TN Mixed and Mastered at Bobby's Diner & Studio in Nashville, TN Editing and Post at Midnight Express Studio located in Olian, NY Production Sound Design: Keith Stark Voice Over and Promo: Lisa Fuson Special Thanks to the creator and founder of the podcast, Tom Sabella, along with Traci Snow for producing and hosting over 100 episodes of the original "Business Side of Music" podcast and trusting us to carry on their legacy. Website: If you would like to be a guest on the show, please submit a request to: bob@businesssideofmusic.com If you're interested in becoming a sponsor for the show, let us know and we'll send you a media / sponsorship kit to you. Contact us at bob@businesssideofmusic.com The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this show provided by the guest(s), are those of the guest(s) own, and do not necessarily represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the host or producers of this podcast. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The Business Side of Music's name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner (Lotta Dogs Productions LLC), and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service. Copyright © 2024 Lotta Dogs Productions, LLC, All rights reserved.

Christine and Brandon read aloud Fisk Jubilee Proclamation, by contemporary poet Tyehimba Jess. This poem comes from Jess's 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry-winning book Olio. They discuss Jess's masterful marriage of form and content and spectacular word choice.Olio: https://bookshop.org/a/1329/9781940696201Jess discussing Jubilee Singers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7j8jThOYa8Jess - popular music through poetry: https://lithub.com/tyehimba-jess-on-excavating-popular-music-through-poetry/NPR on Jess: https://www.npr.org/2017/07/15/537381252/the-unconventional-poetry-of-tyehimba-jessJoe Carter on Negro Spirituals: https://onbeing.org/programs/joe-carter-the-spirituals-aug2018/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Honor of Black Music Month, Lin. Woods Gospel Entertainment Podcast shares with you a Rewind episode of an interview with Dr. Paul Kwami, the late musical director of the legendary Fisk Jubilee Singers of Nashville's historic Fisk University, one of the United States's oldest HBCU's. Dr. Kwami tells his backstory, the story of the famed Jubilee Singers who saved Fisk from closing in the late 1800s by introducing the world to Negro Spirituals, the importance of Negro Spirituals to the history of American music, and Celebrating Fisk! The 150th Anniversary Album.Listen. Follow. Leave a Comment. Download FREE. #LinWoodsGospelEntertainmentPodcast #NegroSpirituals #FiskJubileeSingers #podcastConnect on Social Media:Twitter: @linwoods; Instagram and TickTok: @linwoods96; Facebook: @Lin Woods; LinkedIn: @Lin. Woods

Dr. Vernell Bennett-Fairs began her tenure as the 13th president of LeMoyne-Owen College on January 5, 2021. Dr. Bennett-Fairs is the second woman chosen to lead the only historically black college in Memphis, TN. Dr. Bennett-Fairs' career spans 26 years in higher education. She is a trained vocalist and orator who has served as an associate professor and college administrator. However, her most cherished role is that of student advocate. Previously, Dr. Bennett-Fairs served as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Delta State University. A native of Lorain, Ohio, Dr. Bennett-Fairs began her postsecondary career at Kentucky State University as a non-tenure tract Instructor of Music. Dr. Bennett-Fairs' career spanned 20 years at KSU where her final role was as the Vice President for Student Affairs. Dr. Bennett-Fairs is a HBUC alum of Fisk University where she sang and traveled worldwide with the esteemed Jubilee Singers. She also joined the Pi Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. while attending Fisk. Take a listen as Dr. Bennett-Fairs discusses her journey as a Fisk University Jubilee Singer, leadership in higher education and her outlook both personally and professionally in the next ten years.

Dr. Vernell Bennett-Fairs began her tenure as the 13th president of LeMoyne-Owen College on January 5, 2021. Dr. Bennett-Fairs is the second woman chosen to lead the only historically black college in Memphis, TN.Dr. Bennett-Fairs' career spans 26 years in higher education. She is a trained vocalist and orator who has served as an associate professor and college administrator. However, her most cherished role is that of student advocate. Previously, Dr. Bennett-Fairs served as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Delta State University.A native of Lorain, Ohio, Dr. Bennett-Fairs began her postsecondary career at Kentucky State University as a non-tenure tract Instructor of Music. Dr. Bennett-Fairs' career spanned 20 years at KSU where her final role was as the Vice President for Student Affairs.Dr. Bennett-Fairs is a HBUC alum of Fisk University where she sang and traveled worldwide with the esteemed Jubilee Singers. She also joined the Pi Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. while attending Fisk. Take a listen as Dr. Bennett-Fairs discusses her journey as a Fisk University Jubilee Singer, leadership in higher education and her outlook both personally and professionally in the next ten years.

BTSE Carlin the Great and Lance Jay with more pre-game coverage and general sports talk LIVE from Fisk University before the Oakwood Ambassadors game...

Travel to Nashville, Tennessee, “the cradle of student protest,” to learn about Fisk University's activist legacy–from the Jubilee Singers in the 1800s to the sit-ins of the 1960s to Black Lives Matter today.

Follow Stephen: Website: https://www.stephenashleyblake.com/IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0086726/Follow Steal Away:Web: https://www.realmpictures.co/IG: https://www.instagram.com/stealawaymovie/FB: https://www.facebook.com/StealAwayMovieOfficial/LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/realm-pictures-international/TT: https://www.tiktok.com/@stealawaymovie?TW: https://twitter.com/stealawaymovieThe Jason Damico Show #134 - Stephen Ashley Blake New Blue Entertainment, LLC - Copyright 2022

Hosts Nate Wilcox & Garrett Cash continue their discussion of the evolution of American Gospel music with a look at the evolution of Afro-American music in the late 19th Century. Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Facebook. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosts Nate Wilcox & Garrett Cash continue their discussion of the evolution of American Gospel music with a look at the evolution of Afro-American music in the late 19th Century.Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Hosts Nate Wilcox & Garrett Cash continue their discussion of the evolution of American Gospel music with a look at the evolution of Afro-American music in the late 19th Century. Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Facebook. Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosts Nate Wilcox & Garrett Cash continue their discussion of the evolution of American Gospel music with a look at the evolution of Afro-American music in the late 19th Century.Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts.

On the 4th episode of our 3rd season, Ced takes over the hosting and we discuss the following:Q1) What are your thoughts on Critical Race Theory? - 00:04:36Q2) What do you feel like is behind this becoming such a hot topic and the big push now to remove Critical Race Theory from schools and teachings? - 00:36:46~ We are now accepting sponsor for future episodes. If you would like to be considered, please email us at the1528podcast@gmail.com or send us a message on any of our social media pages @the1528podcast. Thanks! ~Check out all our web links in one convenient location including direct to our Patreon Account and the YouTube channel to watch the full video versions of each episode: https://linktr.ee/the1528podcastNew episodes releasing on the 1st and 15th of every month, just like your paychecks!

Timeless, authorless songs that are soulful and full of yearning is an apt description of the Negro spirituals that were born of slavery. The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, named for the biblical year of Jubilee when slaves were liberated as found in Leviticus 25, helped bring these spirituals to America and the world. One of the favorites they brought out is this song, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Article taken from Then Sings My Soul, Volumes 1 & 2 by Robert J. Morgan. Copyright © 2003 by Robert J. Morgan. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. www.thomasnelson.com

The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers have been thrilling Chicago's gospel audiences for half a century.

The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers have been thrilling Chicago's gospel audiences for half a century. Click to listen to this episode. Click the title above to read along. Listen to this episode's featured song:

You're listening to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University sing Peter on the Sea, from 1927,

In this program, you will hear the Fisk Jubilee Singers perform “Way Over in Egypt Land” (arr. John W. Work III), “Run Mourner, Run” (arr. John W. Work III), “Old Time Religion” (arr. Moses Hogan), “There Is a Balm in Gilead” (arr. William L. Dawson), “Poor Man Laz'rus” (arr. Jester Hairston), “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (arr. Paul T. Kwami), “Daniel! Daniel! Servant of the Lord” (arr. Undine S. Moore), “Mr. Banjo” (arr. Moses Hogan), “Let the Church Roll On” (arr. John W. Work III), “Jubilee! Jubilee!” (arr. John W. Work III), “My Lord Is So High” (arr. Noah F. Ryder), “There's a Meeting Here Tonight” (arr. R. Nathaniel Dett), “Do Lord Remember Me” (arr. John W. Work III), “Rise, Shine for Thy Light Is A-Comin'” (arr. John W. Work III), and “There's a Great Camp Meeting” (arr. John W. Work III). The Fisk Jubilee Singers are vocal artists and students at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, who sing and travel worldwide. The original Jubilee Singers introduced “slave songs” to the world in 1871 and were instrumental in preserving this unique American musical tradition known today as Negro spirituals. The group broke racial barriers in the United States and abroad in the late nineteenth century and entertained kings and queens in Europe. At the same time, they raised money in support of their beloved university. This concert was held at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, January 17, 2016.

Episode 124 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “People Get Ready", the Impressions, and the early career of Curtis Mayfield.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Henry VIII I Am" by Herman's Hermits. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy and Candie Carawan is a combination oral history of the Civil Rights movement and songbook. Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power by Aaron Cohen is a history of Chicago soul music and the way it intersected with politics. Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield  by Todd Mayfield with Travis Atria is a biography of Mayfield by one of his sons, and rather better than one might expect given that. Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner looks at the parallels and divergences in the careers of its three titular soul stars. This compilation has a decent selection of recordings Mayfield wrote and produced for other artists on OKeh in the early sixties. This single-CD set of Jerry Butler recordings contains his Impressions recordings as well as several songs written or co-written by Mayfield. This double-CD of Major Lance's recordings contains all the hits Mayfield wrote for him. And this double-CD collection has all the Impressions' singles from 1961 through 1968. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A couple of episodes ago we had a look at one of the first classic protest songs of the soul genre. Today we're going to look at how Sam Cooke's baton was passed on to another generation of soul singer/songwriters, and at one of the greatest songwriters of that generation. We're going to look at the early career of Curtis Mayfield, and at "People Get Ready" by the Impressions: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] A quick note before I start this one -- there is no way in this episode of avoiding dealing with the fact that the Impressions' first hit with a Curtis Mayfield lead vocal has, in its title, a commonly used word for Romany people beginning with "g" that many of those people regard as a slur -- while others embrace the term for themselves. I've thought long and hard about how to deal with this, and the compromise I've come up with is that I will use excerpts from the song, which will contain that word, but I won't use the word myself. I'm not happy with that compromise, but it's the best I can do. It's unfortunate that that word turns up a *lot* in music in the period I'm covering -- it's basically impossible to avoid. Anyway, on with the show... Curtis Mayfield is one of those musicians who this podcast will almost by definition underserve -- my current plan is to do a second episode on him, but if this was a thousand-song podcast he would have a *lot* more than just two episodes. He was one of the great musical forces of the sixties and seventies, and listeners to the Patreon bonus episodes will already have come across him several times before, as he was one of those musicians who becomes the centre of a whole musical scene, writing and producing for most of the other soul musicians to come out of Chicago in the late fifties and early 1960s. Mayfield grew up in Chicago, in the kind of poverty that is, I hope, unimaginable to most of my listeners. He had to become "the man of the house" from age five, looking after his younger siblings as his mother went out looking for work, as his father abandoned his family, moved away, and changed his name. His mother was on welfare for much of the time, and Mayfield's siblings have talked about how their special Christmas meal often consisted of cornbread and syrup, and they lived off beans, rice, and maybe a scrap of chicken neck every two weeks. They were so hungry so often that they used to make a game of it -- drinking water until they were full, and then making sloshing noises with their bellies, laughing at them making noises other than rumbling. But while his mother was poor, Mayfield saw that there was a way to escape from poverty. Specifically, he saw it in his paternal grandmother, the Reverend A.B. Mayfield, a Spiritualist priest, who was the closest thing to a rich person in his life. For those who don't know what Spiritualism is, it's one of the many new religious movements that sprouted up in the Northeastern US in the mid to late nineteenth centuries, like the Holiness Movement (which became Pentecostalism), the New Thought, Christian Science, Mormonism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Spiritualists believe, unlike mainstream Christianity, that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and that those spirits can provide information about the afterlife, and about the nature of God and angels. If you've ever seen, either in real life or in a fictional depiction, a medium communicating with spirits through a seance, that's spiritualism. There are numbers of splinter spiritualist movements, and the one Reverend Mayfield, and most Black American Spiritualists at this time, belonged to was one that used a lot of elements of Pentecostalism and couched its teachings in the Bible -- to an outside observer not conversant with the theology, it might seem no different from any other Black church of the period, other than having a woman in charge. But most other churches would not have been funded by their presiding minister's winnings from illegal gambling, as she claimed to have the winning numbers in the local numbers racket come to her in dreams, and won often enough that people believed her. Reverend Mayfield's theology also incorporated elements from the Nation of Islam, which at that time was growing in popularity, and was based in Chicago. Chicago was also the home of gospel music -- it was where Sister Rosetta Tharpe had got her start and where Mahalia Jackson and Thomas Dorsey and the Soul Stirrers were all based -- and so of course Reverend Mayfield's church got its own gospel quartet, the Northern Jubilee Singers. They modelled themselves explicitly on the Soul Stirrers, who at the time were led by Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Curtis desperately wanted to join the Northern Jubilee Singers, and particularly admired their lead singer, Jerry Butler, as well as being a huge fan of their inspiration Sam Cooke. But he was too young -- he was eight years old, and the group members were twelve and thirteen, an incommensurable gap at that age. So Curtis couldn't join the Jubilee singers, but he kept trying to perform, and not just with gospel -- as well as gospel, Chicago was also the home of electric blues, being where Chess Records was based, and young Curtis Mayfield was surrounded by the music of people like Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Rollin' and Tumblin'"] And so as well as singing gospel songs, he started singing and playing the blues, inspired by Waters, Little Walter, and other Chess acts. His first instrument was the piano, and young Curtis found that he naturally gravitated to the black keys -- he liked the sound of those best, and didn't really like playing the white keys. I won't get into the music theory too much here, but the black keys on a piano make what is called a pentatonic scale -- a five-note scale that is actually the basis for most folk music forms, whether Celtic folk, Indian traditional music, the blues, bluegrass, Chinese traditional music... pentatonic scales have been independently invented by almost every culture, and you might think of them as the "natural" music, what people default to. The black notes on the piano make that scale in the key of F#: [Excerpt: pentatonic scale in F#] The notes in that are F#, G#, A#, C#, and D#. When young Curtis found a guitar in his grandmother's closet, he didn't like the way it sounded -- if you strum the open strings of a guitar they don't make a chord (well, every combination of notes is a chord, but they don't make one most people think of as pleasant) -- the standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E. Little Curtis didn't like this sound, so he retuned the guitar to F#, A#, C#, F#, A#, F# -- notes from the chord of F#, and all of them black keys on the piano. Now, tuning a guitar to open chords is a fairly standard thing to do -- guitarists as varied as Keith Richards, Steve Cropper, and Dolly Parton tune their guitars to open chords -- but doing it to F# is something that pretty much only Mayfield ever did, and it meant his note choices were odd ones. He would later say with pride that he used to love it when other guitarists picked up his guitar, because no matter how good they were they couldn't play on his instrument. He quickly became extremely proficient as a blues guitarist, and his guitar playing soon led the Northern Jubilee Singers to reconsider having him in the band. By the time he was eleven he was a member of the group and travelling with them to gospel conventions all over the US. But he had his fingers in multiple musical pies -- he formed a blues group, who would busk outside the pool-hall where his uncle was playing, and he also formed a doo-wop group, the Alphatones, who became locally popular. Jerry Butler, the Jubilee Singers' lead vocalist, had also joined a doo-wop group -- a group called the Roosters, who had moved up to Chicago from Chattanooga. Butler was convinced that to make the Roosters stand out, they needed a guitarist like Mayfield, but Mayfield at first remained uninterested -- he already had his own group, the Alphatones. Butler suggested that Mayfield should rehearse with both groups, three days a week each, and then stick with the group that was better. Soon Mayfield found himself a full-time member of the Roosters. In 1957, when Curtis was fifteen, the group entered a talent contest at a local school, headlined by the Medallionaires, a locally-popular group who had released a single on Mercury, "Magic Moonlight": [Excerpt: The Medallionaires, "Magic Moonlight"] The Medallionaires' manager, Eddie Thomas, had been around the music industry since he was a child – his stepfather had been the great blues pianist Big Maceo Merriweather, who had made records like "Worried Life Blues": [Excerpt: Big Maceo Merriweather, "Worried Life Blues"] Thomas hadn't had any success in the industry yet, but at this talent contest, the Roosters did a close-harmony version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me", and Thomas decided that they had potential, especially Mayfield and Butler. He signed them to a management contract, but insisted they changed their name. They cast around for a long time to find something more suitable, and eventually decided on The Impressions, because they'd made such an impression on Thomas. The group were immediately taken by Thomas on a tour of the large indie labels, and at each one they sang a song that members of the group had written, which was inspired by a song called "Open Our Eyes" by the Gospel Clefs: [Excerpt: The Gospel Clefs, "Open Our Eyes"] Herman Lubinsky at Savoy liked the song, and suggested that Jerry speak-sing it, which was a suggestion the group took up, but he passed on them. So did Ralph Bass at King. Mercury Records gave them some session work, but weren't able to sign the group themselves -- the session was with the big band singer Eddie Howard, singing backing vocals on a remake of "My Last Goodbye", a song he'd recorded multiple times before. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down a copy of that recording, the Impressions' first, only Howard's other recordings of the song. Eventually, the group got the interest of a tiny label called Bandera, whose owner Vi Muszynski was interested -- but she had to get the approval of Vee-Jay Records, the larger label that distributed Bandera's records. Vee-Jay was a very odd label. It was one of a tiny number of Black-owned record labels in America at the time, and possibly the biggest of them, and it's interesting to compare them to Chess Records, which was based literally across the road. Both put out R&B records, but Chess was white-owned and specialised in hardcore Chicago electric blues -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and so on. Vee-Jay, on the other hand, certainly put out its fair share of that kind of music, but they also put out a lot of much smoother doo-wop and early soul, and they would have their biggest hits a few years after this, not with blues artists, but with the Four Seasons, and with their licensing of British records by Frank Ifield and the Beatles. Both Vee-Jay and Chess were aiming at a largely Black market, but Black-owned Vee-Jay was much more comfortable with white pop acts than white-owned Chess. Muszynski set up an audition with Calvin Carter, the head of A&R at Vee-Jay, and selected the material the group were to perform for Carter -- rather corny songs the group were not at all comfortable with. They ran through that repertoire, and Carter said they sounded good but didn't they have any originals? They played a couple of originals, and Carter wasn't interested in those. Then Carter had a thought -- did they have any songs they felt ashamed of playing for him? Something that they didn't normally do? They did -- they played that song that the group had written, the one based on "Open Our Eyes". It was called "For Your Precious Love", and Carter immediately called in another group, the Spaniels, who were favourites of the Impressions and had had hits with records like "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite": [Excerpt: The Spaniels, "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite"] Carter insisted on the Impressions singing their song for the Spaniels, and Butler in particular was very worried -- he assumed that Carter just wanted to take their song and give it to the bigger group. But after they played the song again, the Spaniels all enthused about how great the Impressions were and what a big hit the Impressions were going to have with the song. They realised that Carter just *really liked* them and the song, and wanted to show them off. The group went into the studio, and recorded half a dozen takes of "For Your Precious Love", but none of them came off correctly. Eventually Carter realised what the problem was -- Mayfield wasn't a member of the musicians' union, and so Carter had hired session guitarists, but they couldn't play the song the way Mayfield did. Eventually, Carter got the guitarists to agree to take the money, not play, and not tell the union if he got Mayfield to play on the track instead of them. After that, they got it in two takes: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "For Your Precious Love"] When it came out, the record caused a major problem for the group, because they discovered when they saw the label that it wasn't credited to "The Impressions", but to "Jerry Butler and the Impressions". The label had decided that they were going to follow the strategy that had worked for so many acts before -- put out records credited to "Singer and Group", and then if they were successful develop that into two separate acts. To his credit, Butler immediately insisted that the record company get the label reprinted, but Vee-Jay said that wasn't something they could do. It was too late, the record was going out as Jerry Butler and the Impressions and that was an end to it. The group were immediately put on the promotional circuit -- there was a rumour that Roy Hamilton, the star who had had hits with "Unchained Melody" and "Ebb Tide", was going to put out a cover version, as the song was perfectly in his style, and so the group needed to get their version known before he could cut his cover. They travelled to Philadelphia, where they performed for the DJ Georgie Woods. We talked about Woods briefly last episode -- he was the one who would later coin the term "blue-eyed soul" to describe the Righteous Brothers -- and Woods was also the person who let Dick Clark know what the important Black records were, so Clark could feature them on his show. Woods started to promote the record, and suddenly Jerry Butler and the Impressions were huge -- "For Your Precious Love" made number three on the R&B charts and number eleven on the pop charts. Their next session produced another hit, "Come Back My Love", although that only made the R&B top thirty and was nowhere near as big a hit: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "Come Back My Love"] That would be the last time the original lineup of the Impressions would record together. Shortly afterwards, before a gig in Texas, Jerry Butler called the President of the record label to sort out a minor financial problem. Once the problem had been sorted out, the president put the phone down, but then one of the other Impressions, Arthur Brooks, asked if he could have a word. Butler explained that the other person had hung up, and Brooks went ballistic, saying that Butler thought he was in charge, and thought that he could do all the talking for the group. Well, if he thought that, he could do all the singing too. Brooks and his brother Richard weren't going on stage. Sam Gooden said he wasn't going on either -- he'd been an original Rooster with the Brooks brothers before Butler had joined the group, and he was siding with them. That left Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield said he was still going on stage, because he wanted to get paid. The group solidarity having crumbled, Gooden changed his mind and said he might as well go on with them, so Butler, Mayfield, and Gooden went on as a trio. Butler noticed that the audience didn't notice a difference -- they literally didn't know the Brooks brothers existed -- and that was the point at which he decided to go solo. The Impressions continued without Butler, with Mayfield, Gooden, and the Brooks brothers recruiting Fred Cash, who had sung with the Roosters when they were still in Tennessee. Mayfield took over the lead vocals and soon started attracting the same resentment that Butler had. Vee-Jay dropped the Impressions, and they started looking round for other labels and working whatever odd jobs they could. Mayfield did get some work from Vee-Jay, though, working as a session player on records by people like Jimmy Reed. There's some question about which sessions Mayfield actually played -- I've seen conflicting information in different sessionographies -- but it's at least possible that Mayfield's playing on Reed's most famous record, "Baby What You Want Me to Do": [Excerpt: Jimmy Reed, "Baby What You Want Me to Do"] And one of Mayfield's friends, a singer called Major Lance, managed to get himself a one-off single deal with Mercury Records after becoming a minor celebrity as a dancer on a TV show. Mayfield wrote that one single, though it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "I Got a Girl"] Someone else who wasn't having hits was Jerry Butler. By late 1960 it had been two years since "For Your Precious Love" and Butler hadn't made the Hot One Hundred in that time, though he'd had a few minor R&B hits. He was playing the chitlin' circuit, and in the middle of a tour, his guitarist quit. Butler phoned Mayfield, who had just received a four hundred dollar tax bill he couldn't pay -- a lot of money for an unemployed musician in 1960. Mayfield immediately joined Butler's band to pay off his back taxes, and he also started writing songs with Butler. "He Will Break Your Heart", a collaboration between the two (with Calvin Carter also credited), made the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "He Will Break Your Heart"] Even more important for Mayfield than writing a top ten hit, though, was his experience playing for Butler at the Harlem Apollo. Not because of the shows themselves, but because playing a residency in New York allowed him to hang out at the Turf, a restaurant near the Brill Building where all the songwriters would hang out. Or, more specifically, where all the *poorer* songwriters would hang out -- the Turf did roast beef sandwiches for fifty cents if you ate standing at the counter rather than seated at a table, and it also had twenty payphones, so all those songwriters who didn't have their own offices would do their business from the phone booths. Mayfield would hang out there to learn the secrets of the business, and that meant he learned the single most important lesson there is -- keep your own publishing. These writers, some of whom had written many hit songs, were living off twenty-five-dollar advances while the publishing companies were making millions. Mayfield also discovered that Sam Cooke, the man he saw as the model for how his career should go, owned his own publishing company. So he did some research, found out that it didn't actually cost anything to start up a publishing company, and started his own, Curtom, named as a portmanteau of his forename and the surname of Eddie Thomas, the Impressions' manager. While the Impressions' career was in the doldrums, Thomas, too, had been working for Butler, as his driver and valet, and he and Mayfield became close, sharing costs and hotel rooms in order to save money. Mayfield not only paid his tax bill, but by cutting costs everywhere he could he saved up a thousand dollars, which he decided to use to record a song he'd written specifically for the Impressions, not for Butler. (This is the song I mentioned at the beginning with the potential slur in the title. If you don't want to hear that, skip forward thirty seconds now): [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Gypsy Woman"] That track got the Impressions signed to ABC/Paramount records, and it made the top twenty on the pop charts and sold half a million copies, thanks once again to promotion from Georgie Woods. But once again, the follow-ups flopped badly, and the Brooks brothers quit the group, because they wanted to be doing harder-edged R&B in the mould of Little Richard, Hank Ballard, and James Brown, not the soft melodic stuff that Mayfield was writing. The Impressions continued as a three-piece group, and Mayfield would later say that this had been the making of them. A three-part harmony group allowed for much more spontaneity and trading of parts, for the singers to move freely between lead and backing vocals and to move into different parts of their ranges, where when they had been a five-piece group everything had been much more rigid, as if a singer moved away from his assigned part, he would find himself clashing with another singer's part. But as the group were not having hits, Mayfield was still looking for other work, and he found it at OKeh Records, which was going through something of a boom in this period thanks to the producer Carl Davis. Davis took Mayfield on as an associate producer and right-hand man,  primarily in order to get him as a guitarist, but Mayfield was also a valuable talent scout, backing vocalist, and especially songwriter. Working with Davis and arranger Johnny Pate, between 1963 and 1965 Mayfield wrote and played on a huge number of R&B hits for OKeh, including "It's All Over" by Walter Jackson: [Excerpt: Walter Jackson, "It's All Over"] "Gonna Be Good Times" for Gene Chandler: [Excerpt: Gene Chandler, "Gonna Be Good Times"] And a whole string of hits for Jerry Butler's brother Billy and his group The Enchanters, starting with "Gotta Get Away": [Excerpt: Billy Butler and the Enchanters, "Gotta Get Away"] But the real commercial success came from Mayfield's old friend Major Lance, who Mayfield got signed to OKeh. Lance had several minor hits written by Mayfield, but his big success came with a song that Mayfield had written for the Impressions, but decided against recording with them, as it was a novelty dance song and he didn't think that they should be doing that kind of material. The Impressions sang backing vocals on Major Lance's "The Monkey Time", written by Mayfield, which became a top ten pop hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "The Monkey Time"] Mayfield would write several more hits for Major Lance, including the one that became his biggest hit, "Um Um Um Um Um Um", which went top five pop and made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "Um Um Um Um Um Um (Curious Mind)"] So Mayfield was making hits for other people at a furious rate, but he was somehow unable to have hits with his own group. He was still pushing the Impressions, but they had to be a weekend commitment -- the group would play gigs all over the country at weekends, but Monday through Friday Mayfield was in the studio cutting hits for other people -- and he was also trying to keep up a relationship not only with his wife and first child, but with the woman who would become his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first. He was young enough that he could just about keep this up -- he was only twenty at this point, though he was already a veteran of the music industry -- but it did mean that the Impressions were a lower priority than they might have been. At least, they were until, in August 1963, between those two huge Major Lance hits, Curtis Mayfield finally wrote another big hit for the Impressions -- their first in their new three-piece lineup. Everyone could tell "It's All Right" was a hit, and Gene Chandler begged to be allowed to record it, but Mayfield insisted that his new song was for his group: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "It's All Right"] "It's All Right" went to number four on the pop chart, and number one R&B. And this time, the group didn't mess up the follow-up.  Their next two singles, "Talking About My Baby" and "I'm So Proud", both made the pop top twenty, and the Impressions were now stars. Mayfield also took a trip to Jamaica around this time, with Carl Davis, to produce an album of Jamaican artists, titled "The Real Jamaica Ska", featuring acts like Lord Creator and Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Jimmy Cliff, "Ska All Over the World"] But Mayfield was also becoming increasingly politically aware. As the Civil Rights movement in the US was gaining steam, it was also starting to expose broader systemic problems that affected Black people in the North, not just the South. In Chicago, while Black people had been able to vote for decades, and indeed were a substantial political power block, all that this actually meant in practice was that a few powerful self-appointed community leaders had a vested interest in keeping things as they were. Segregation still existed -- in 1963, around the time that "It's All Right" came out, there was a school strike in the city, where nearly a quarter of a million children refused to go to school. Black schools were so overcrowded that it became impossible for children to learn there, but rather than integrate the schools and let Black kids go to the less-crowded white schools, the head of public education in Chicago decided instead to make the children go to school in shifts, so some were going ridiculously early in the morning while others were having to go to school in the evening. And there were more difficult arguments going on around segregation among Black people in Chicago. The issues in the South seemed straightforward in comparison -- no Black person wanted to be lynched or to be denied the right to vote. But in Chicago there was the question of integrating the two musicians' union chapters in the city. Some Black proponents of integration saw merging the two union chapters as a way for Black musicians to get the opportunity to play lucrative sessions for advertising jingles and so on, which only went to white players. But a vocal minority of musicians were convinced that the upshot of integrating the unions would be that Black players would still be denied those jobs, but white players would start getting some of the soul and R&B sessions that only Black players were playing, and thought that the end result would be that white people would gentrify those areas of music and culture where Black people had carved out spaces for themselves, while still denying Black people the opportunity to move into the white spaces. Mayfield was deeply, deeply, invested in the Civil Rights movement, and the wider discourse as more radical voices started to gain strength in the movement. And he was particularly inspired by his hero, Sam Cooke, recording "A Change is Gonna Come".  As the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement was so deeply rooted in religious language, it was natural that Mayfield would turn to the gospel music he'd grown up on for his own first song about these issues, "Keep on Pushing": [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Keep on Pushing"] That became another huge hit, making the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart. It's instructive to look at reactions to the Impressions, and to Mayfield's sweet, melodic, singing. White audiences were often dismissive of the Impressions, believing they were attempting to sell out to white people and were therefore not Black enough -- a typical reaction is that of Arnold Shaw, the white music writer, who in 1970 referred to the Impressions as Oreos -- a derogatory term for people who are "Black on the outside, white inside". Oddly, though, Black audiences seem not to have recognised the expertise of elderly white men on who was Black enough, and despite white critics' protestations continued listening to and buying the Impressions' records, and incorporating Mayfield's songs into their activism. For example, Sing For Freedom, a great oral-history-cum-songbook which collects songs sung by Civil Rights activists, collected contemporaneously by folklorists, has no fewer than four Impressions songs included, in lightly adapted versions, as sung by the Chicago Freedom Movement, the group led by Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and others, who campaigned for an end to housing segregation in Chicago. It quotes Jimmy Collier, a Black civil rights activist and folk singer, saying "There's a rock 'n' roll group called the Impressions and we call them ‘movement fellows' and we try to sing a lot of their songs. Songs like ‘Keep On Pushin',' ‘I Been Trying,' ‘I'm So Proud,' ‘It's Gonna Be a Long, Long Winter,' ‘People Get Ready, There's a Train a-Comin',' ‘There's a Meeting Over Yonder' really speak to the situation a lot of us find ourselves in." I mention this discrepancy because this is something that comes up throughout music history -- white people dismissing Black people as not being "Black enough" and trying to appeal to whites, even as Black audiences were embracing those artists in preference to the artists who had white people's seal of approval as being authentically Black. I mention this because I am myself a white man, and it is very important for me to acknowledge that I will make similar errors when talking about Black culture, as I am here. "Keep on Pushing" was the Impressions' first political record, but by no means the most important. In 1965 the Civil Rights movement seemed to be starting to unravel, and there were increasing ruptures between the hardliners who would go on to form what would become the Black Power movement and the more moderate older generation. These ruptures were only exacerbated by the murder of Malcolm X, the most powerful voice on the radical side. Mayfield was depressed by this fragmentation, and wanted to write a song of hope, one that brought everyone together. To see the roots of the song Mayfield came up with we have to go all the way back to episode five, and to "This Train", the old gospel song which Rosetta Tharpe had made famous: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "This Train (live)"] The image of the train leading to freedom had always been a powerful one in Black culture, dating back to the Underground Railroad -- the network of people who helped enslaved people flee their abusers and get away to countries where they could be free. It was also a particularly potent image for Black people in the northern cities, many of whom had travelled there by train from the South, or whose parents had. Mayfield took the old song, and built a new song around it. His melody is closer than it might seem to that of "This Train", but has a totally different sound and feeling, one of gentle hope rather than fervent excitement. And there's a difference of emphasis in the lyrics too. "This Train", as befits a singer like Tharpe who belonged to a Pentecostal "holiness" sect which taught the need for upright conduct at all times, is mostly a list of those sinners who won't be allowed on the train. Mayfield, by contrast, had been brought up in a Spiritualist church, and one of the nine affirmations of Spiritualism is "We affirm that the doorway to reformation is never closed against any soul here or hereafter". Mayfield's song does talk about how "There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner, Whom would hurt all mankind just to save his own", but the emphasis is on how "there's hope for *all*, among those loved the most", and how "you don't need no baggage", and "don't need no ticket". It's a song which is fundamentally inclusive, offering a vision of hope and freedom in which all are welcome: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] The song quickly became one of the most important songs to the Civil Rights movement -- Doctor King called it "the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights movement" -- as well as becoming yet another big hit. We will continue to explore the way Mayfield and the Impressions reacted to, were inspired by, and themselves inspired Black political movements when we look at them again, and their political importance was extraordinary. But this is a podcast about music, and so I'll finish with a note about their musical importance. As with many R&B acts, the Impressions were massive in Jamaica, and they toured there in 1966. In the front row when they played the Carib Theatre in Kingston were three young men who had recently formed a group which they had explicitly modelled on the Impressions and their three-part harmonies. That group had even taken advantage of Jamaica's nonexistent copyright laws to incorporate a big chunk of "People Get Ready" into one of their own songs, which was included on their first album: [Excerpt: The Wailers, "One Love (1965 version)"] Bob Marley and the Wailers would soon become a lot more than an Impressions soundalike group, but that, of course, is a story for a future episode...

Attention all!  This is our second episode in our series of the Many Styles of Christian Music.  This episode touches on the "protest" songs in Gospel music.  But we also want to appeal to all you "Vinyl" collectors, enthusiasts, addicts, and lovers, how you can help Professor Robert Darden and his team at the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project make a copy of every song released by every Black Gospel artist or group ever.   He and his team provide the Gospel music for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture.  And of course, Professor Darden shares with us a list of his Gospel music selections to introduce new listeners or to remind old listeners of some of the great songs of Gospel.Contextualized playlisthttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH_EIRKmIkHx1a0D_wA7TOw/playlists

The song is significant enough to make the list of important recording in US history and a blacklist in Nazi Germany, but the road to cherished American classic was a long and unlikely one for the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."  0:00 Introduction 1:21 Jubilee Singers 3:32 Success! 5:31 the story behind the story 8:13 Conclusion 10:02 Credits www.withinpodcast.com  

Hello Podcast listeners and Jubilee fans. This episode introduces Frederick Loudin who was born free, older than the other students, and never enrolled into the Fisk Freed-Colored School; yet, he became one of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, Professor White's confidant, and eventually started his own chapter of Jubilee Singers. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-story-of-jubilee/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-story-of-jubilee/support

Surprise friends! You’re getting an extra episode of the Simply Stories Podcast this week!  There was so much happening in my conversation with Dorena, we had to split it into two. So whether you’re traveling for the holidays, still working, or preparing a meal, let’s pick up with Dorena and I talking about how history’s narrative is being broadened by hearing it being told from new perspectives, especially from the perspective of people of color.  This quote from our conversation is going to stay with me for a LONG time: “If parents [during Jim Crow], would have the audacity to bring their children to see a fellow image bearer treated like this, why can we not read our children these stories? Why can we not subject ourselves to the discomfort of unpacking history so that we can do better because we can’t do better if we don’t learn from the past, and we can’t learn from the past if we don’t acknowledge all of it.” There is so much grace as we learn, friends. I’m so grateful that Dorena presented a seat at this table  to me, and I hope you felt welcomed there too. Its true that we cannot fix or change history, but we most certainly can be attentive to how others experience it, what we uproot and sow into the present and how that affects future generations.  They who have ears to hear, let them hear.  Resources: Dorena’s books: Colorfull, Thoughtfull, Gracefull “Harriet” movie (find showings here!) The Central Park Five aka Central Park Jogger Case  // documentary “When They See Us” /// commentary on film vs. reality New Yorker article (not Washington Post) “Who Speaks for Crazy Horse?” Charles and Susan Robinson : The Red Road Pocohontas (The person, not the movie. This article from the Smithsonian is FASCINATING about how the story we’ve also known may not actually be what happened. Additionally, I'd love to know what Native Americans think of the animated film... If anyone wants to enlighten me, I’d love to listen!) -Squanto -Sacagawea -Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library downtown -Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka Knoxville, TN’s super delayed desegregation of schools (Brown v. Board was in 1954, the ruling that officially STARTED desegregation in Knoxville was called Goss v. Board of Education, Knoxville took place in 1963. The story I told about my Mom seeing dummies in blackface hanging in the trees at her high school took place in 1965. This article details how the city was not fully “under compliance of the ruling” and “officially” desegregated until the early 1970’s. The article is an eye-opening read.  -Our side bar about teaching children about their bodies, I can’t suggest this book enough: God Made All of Me: A Book that helps children protect their bodies -Dorena’s tweet about the little boy bullied for his skin being the color of “poop”  -Internment camps for Japanese Americans -Tamera Alexander: Belmont Series, Belle Meade, Carnton -- fictional stories based on real people and real events during and after the war in Nashville, TN. (The two books I mention about Belle Meade are 1) this one with the attack on BMP and the Irish American immigrant 2) this one tells the story of a gal who attends Fisk University and joins the Jubilee Singers on their tour that saved the school --which is a true story--  that is FASCINATING.)  -Freedmen Schools -Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America by Ruth Gruber  -Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY, the haven/camp for the refugees. I misquoted the number of refugees who  came on the ship 984 made it. This article I just read called their process of being in America “their being given sanctuary on an old army base in Oswego, New York.” Which. Yes. But there were people who had relatives in America that wanted to take them home and they were. not. allowed. to. leave. Whether we like it or not, they were interred until the government could figure out what to do after being literal prisoners and victims of the Nazi party. I’m not saying it wasn’t complicated, but let’s not mince words.  ::Off soap box:: This article is beautiful because it equally (towards the bottom) shares the accounts of people who were there who share how hard and painful it was, but also how many people of Oswego tried to care for them regardless of the literal fence in between them. Read the book, y’all. There’s a lot of freedom and joy in the story, but there’s a hot mess of not caring for people as hurting humans in there too. We can hold them both in the same hand, just like the rest of this conversation about history and how we approach the narrative.  -Crazy Rich Asians: movie // book (which I JUST learned is a trilogy! Here’s a link to all three.) -Washington Post Article I read about using the song “Yellow” by Coldplay -“Black Panther” // the movie, and an article highlighting its power -Ann Voskamp and Lisa Sharon Harper -Enneagram 2 -The Great Migration  -Reconstruction (The Act of 1867; some perspective from Time Magazine about what went wrong- I’m a history buff, I could do this all day long ;)) Thank you, B&H, for publishing these incredible books and for allowing me to read little bits from them on the podcast! Scripture References: 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 John 10:10  John 8:42-47 Matthew 6:6 Proverbs 16:20 2 Corinthians 2:15 Matthew 9:36 Mark 4:1-19 From Dorena: At Strong Tower, we do a little bit of everything in & through church; we teach a GDK (God's Diverse Kingdom) class in the spring that focuses on race and justice. Chris preaches series at times and we've done book studies as well. Truly it's a part of our DNA! Here is information on getting connected with them if you find yourself in Middle TN! On locally ministering/helping/giving to the homeless in Middle TN: -Project615 is a local apparel company that is passionate about giving back to the community. When you purchase one of their “Consider Others First” shirts, it gives FIVE meals to a homeless person in Nashville via, The Bridge. They also have a clothing drive for the homeless where you can bring items to their local store and receive a discount on other Project615 apparel. You can find that info here. -The Bridge in Nashville that ministers to the homeless on Tuesday nights. -The corner standing friends usually sell for The Contributor whose mission is: “The Contributor creates economic opportunity with dignity by investing in the lives of people experiencing homelessness and poverty” -Nashville Rescue Mission does good work to help those in housing transition. -Last Call 4 Grace in Murfreesboro (they also partner with Rescue 1 Global who are part of the fight against sex trafficing. Whole. Other. Podcast.) -Green House Ministries in Murfreesboro -Amelia’s Closet in Murfreesboro is a company whose mission is: “Providing professional apparel & hope to deserving women as they open the employment door.” They work to equip women and fight against poverty, homelessness, trafficking and more. “We want to help women feel valued, confident, and hopeful as they soar to new heights.” (AMEN!) -Murfreesboro Rescue Mission ***I do not benefit from any of the organizations that mentioned above. I am just trying to spread the word about them, especially the local ones. The amazon book links are the only part of these very detailed lists of resources that I receive any incentive from as an amazon affiliate. However, I’d send and recommend these books to you no. matter. what. However, I am humbled and grateful for your support of the podcast and my family through their purchase.  Dorena mentions (and part 1 and 2 of our conversation!) some people she follows that have given her great perspective, here is her list she shared with me in addition to people we brought up: Michelle Reyes @drmichellereyes Jemar Tisby @JemarTisby  Ray Chang @tweetraychang Christina Edmondson @DrCEdmondson  LaTasha Morrison @LaTashaMorrison Sarah Shin @SarahShinAuthor. Dorena also mentioned going to the library and finding resources, and my son and I stumbled upon this heart breaking book called Stolen Words about how Native Americans have lost their language during the white-washing of their identities in order to assimilate into white society. Reading the book brought such a wave of compassion over my heart. It does not matter if you agree or understand it all, their stories matter and are worth telling and hearing.  Connecting with Dorena: Facebook Instagram Twitter Website  Intro and outro music by audionautix.com

Today we share some background on the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers better known as the Golden Gate Quartet

Today we share some background on the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers better known as the Golden Gate Quartet

Today we are going to talk about the Step 4 of your kid’s summer homework. Regular listeners know that this summer homework is based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. It’s not too late to get one from Amazon for your son or daughter. In the last two episodes, you and your kid have been getting ready to start the real work. You have hopefully completed Step 1 by creating the all-important Long List of College Options (or LLCO, as we like to call it). And you have hopefully completed Step 2 by reviewing our College Profile Worksheet and Step 3 by browsing both a variety of college websites and College Navigator, the excellent online tool provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. So, here we go with Step 4: Research the College’s History and Mission. From now on, your son or daughter (and/or you) will need to answer every one of our questions about every college on the LLCO. So, get a copy of the College Profile Worksheet out of the workbook, or make your own. Just remember there are 52 questions in all! Yes, we know that sounds like a lot of questions. But is that too much to know about a place where your kid will be spending four years? 1. College History This is what we wrote to high school students about our very first category of questions about a college’s history and mission:  We believe that lots of students are proud of the beginnings and traditions of the college they choose to attend. In fact, some students choose a college because of its history and its traditions. By the way, don’t forget that the reasons why a college is public or private are part of a college’s history and mission. This category might mean more to you than you expect. As you complete Step 4 by researching each college on your LLCO on its website, you will see that some colleges started out as private colleges and became public for lots of interesting reasons. Some colleges started out as single-sex colleges, serving only men or only women, and became coeducational colleges for lots of interesting reasons. Some colleges started out as faith-based colleges and became less so for lots of interesting reasons. And some colleges just have truly remarkable stories--including, for example, the many HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) that have taken a longtime stand on behalf of the rights of African-American students to a college education.   There is lots for you to learn in this category. Our loyal listeners all know that college histories are one of my favorite topics. I find them fascinating. When we were writing the workbook, Marie kept making me cut down the number of histories I wanted to present as examples of how rich and varied college histories are. I was allowed to include only 9. I could have written 99. At this moment, I would like to read you all 9, but I know Marie will think that is excessive. So I am settling for reading you just 4 (please, go read the others): When the University of Iowa started holding classes in 1855, 41 of its 124 students were women—one-third of the student body. UI was the first public university to award a law degree to an African American (in 1870) and to a woman (in 1873). And it was the first public university to allow an African-American athlete to play on a varsity team (in 1895). UI was also the first university to create a department of education, which became the birthplace of a number of famous standardized tests, including the ACT. The public University of Delaware was founded in 1743 (in Pennsylvania!) as a private academy to educate ministers and was moved to Delaware in 1765. Its first class boasted three students who went on to sign the Declaration of Independence, one of whom also signed the U.S. Constitution. UD’s colors of blue and gold were taken from the Delaware State flag, which got them from the colors of George Washington’s uniform. They also represent the colors of the flag of Delaware’s first Swedish colonists. In 1749, Benjamin Franklin formed the Academy and Charitable School that became the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin served as its president and then as a trustee until 1790. His goal, considered radical for the times, was to offer something like a modern liberal arts curriculum to train students for business, government, and public service rather than for the ministry. The first medical school in the colonies was established at Penn in 1765. The now-renowned Jubilee Singers of Fisk University left their almost-bankrupt campus in 1871 to try to raise enough money to keep their HBCU open by embarking on a tour that introduced the world to traditional spirituals. They succeeded. Decades later, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, the intellectual architect of the Harlem Renaissance, became a professor at Fisk and later its first African-American president in 1946. He eventually brought to Fisk a number of Harlem Renaissance stars, like Aaron Douglas, James Weldon Johnson, and Arna Bontemps. I know that one reason I chose the college I did for my undergraduate studies was because of its history as the only Ivy League school that was coeducational from its founding. That was important to me and to my father, who had graduated from an Ivy School that did not have a similar history. Sometimes history--even if it happened a couple of hundred years ago--can make a difference. Will it make a difference to your kid? Question 1 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to jot down a brief history of the college, as told on the college’s website.  2. Claims About the College And here’s what Question 2 is about, as we wrote to high school students in the workbook: You might have noticed some “firsts” in the website’s explanation of the college’s history (e.g., the first public university in the South, the first college to award a bachelor’s degree to a woman, etc.), but there might be another section of the website devoted to “firsts” and to other claims about how great the college is. It is always useful to read these and to consider how persuaded you are that these claims make a college great. Personally, we are swept away sometimes by how impressive a college is, and sometimes we are not very impressed at all. It is worthwhile, though, to see how good a story a college can tell about itself when it tries really hard to do so. One feature of many of these brag lists is how highly ranked, nationally and even internationally, various academic departments are (e.g., the ninth-best electrical engineering department in the U.S., in the top 20 departments of political science nationwide, etc.). You might not find these claims too interesting--unless you want to major in a department that is highly ranked. . . . And what about the rankings of colleges that are done by various well-known organizations and popular publications? If a college gets a high ranking on one list or another, it will usually publicize that ranking on its website. When looking at such rankings, remember that different ranking systems base their rankings on different factors--some of which might be of no interest at all to you. So look at rankings if you wish (because it is actually rather hard to ignore them), but keep in mind that college rankings won’t tell you how you will fit into that campus—academically or socially. And it’s that “fit” that will determine just how happy you will be. Will any of these claims make a difference to your kid? Or to you? Question 2 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to jot down any “firsts,” any top-ranked departments, etc., as publicized on the college’s website. 3. Type of College For many parents, the type of college--that is, public, private nonprofit, a public/private mix in a large university, or private for-profit--will make all the difference. (Often, that is because of the perceived difference in the price tag of a degree from a public and a private college.) The workbook fully explains these different types of colleges in case your kid does not know the difference--as, we find, is often the case for many high schoolers. One of the most important types of colleges for kids to understand is the public flagship university (a subset of public colleges) and one of the most interesting is the public/private mix. Here is what we wrote about those two types: Public colleges are paid for, in part, by state and local governments—that means, by taxes. For this reason, they are understandably operated primarily for the benefit of their own residents. As a result, public colleges have reasonably low tuition for state and local residents, but nonresidents have to pay more. . . . Each state has a public flagship university. . . . Public flagship universities are not equally good or equally respected; some are much more attractive than others--both to students in their own states and to out-of-state students. Just to make it more complicated, the public flagship university in some states is actually a university “system,” with a main campus (referred to as the flagship campus) plus regional campuses throughout the state. . . . In those cases, the flagship campus is typically the most prestigious.  Some states have more than one public system. . . .When a state has more than one public system, make sure you understand which public system the college on your LLCO is part of. Pay attention to how selective and how widely respected that particular system is. Public-private partnerships are rare, but here is a great example. On its Ithaca campus in upstate New York, Cornell University offers a variety of schools/colleges to choose from at the undergraduate level--some private, some public. The private ones are the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Engineering; and the School of Hotel Administration (which is now part of a newly formed College of Business). The public ones were established by an Act of the New York State Legislature and are funded, in part, by State money: the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Human Ecology, and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. A New York State resident attending any of the public ones would get an Ivy League education at a far more reasonable public price.  Is one or another type of college “best” for your kid--in his or her eyes or in yours? By the way, don’t forget something we find we have to remind people a lot: The fact is that some private colleges are indeed better than some public colleges; but, another fact is that some public colleges are indeed better than many private colleges. Question 3 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to check off the type of college for each option on the LLCO--in case that is going to make a difference to either one of you. 4. Special Mission of College By the time your son or daughter has finished reading and jotting down the history of each college on the LLCO, you all will know whether each college was founded with any special mission and whether that mission continues today. In the workbook, we discussed four missions that have been and still are relatively common among U.S. colleges (feel free to read more about all of them in the workbook): Faith-based colleges and universities, including Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish institutions, with varying degrees of emphasis on religious life and study HBCUs, originally established with the mission of educating African-American students, but today serving many more students in just over 100 institutions--public and private, large and small, faith-based and not, two-year and four-year and graduate HSIs--that is, over 250 Hispanic-Serving Institutions--which have been designated as such in just the past 50 years as a result of having a student enrollment that is at least 25 percent Hispanic Single-sex colleges and universities, which are private institutions enrolling only women or only men (now, just over 40 women’s colleges in the U.S., but only a handful of men’s colleges)--including Marie’s alma mater, Barnard College, of course There are lots of great colleges with special missions, as your kid will learn when answering Question 4 on the College Profile Worksheet.  Well, these were just the first four questions--the first four things you and your kid should know about a college before deciding whether to apply. There are 48 more things! So, get your son or daughter How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students or make sure you don’t miss any episodes over the next two months. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode167 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina  

Story describes how several including one of the favorite Gospel Spiritual Songs was written by a Choctaw Freedman Couple in approximately 1860's, crediting them with its writing and how the song grew from the fields to being loved by millions all over the world.

It is officially March, and I feel that we have done all we can for the Class of 2022.  Before we head into advice for the Class of 2023, we are going to do a few episodes on things we didn’t know about certain colleges--or about higher education generally.  As we have always said, we learn something every time we do an episode, even though this is our business and we have been doing it a very long time. Today’s episode focuses on a favorite topic of ours here at USACollegeChat--that is, our nation’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).  We have spotlighted HBCUs in several of our episodes over the years (Episodes 32, 90, 100, and 117), and we mentioned them on many of our episodes that took you on our virtual nationwide tour of colleges quite some time ago.  And while we will give you some background and some statistics in this episode, for those of you who are not familiar with HBCUs, the real purpose of the episode today is to praise the new documentary on HBCUs that recently aired on PBS’s Independent Lens series.  The documentary, entitled Tell Them We Are Rising, is the work of filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams.  And it is fantastic! As our regular listeners know, there are just over 100 HBCUs in the U.S.  About half are public, and half are private.  HBCUs are large and small (many are very small), faith-based and not, two-year and four-year colleges and universities; some also have graduate and professional schools, including the well-known Howard University School of Law, which is the focus of one segment of the new documentary.  HBCUs were originally founded to serve black students who had been excluded from other higher education institutions because of their race.  The three earliest HBCUs were founded in Pennsylvania and Ohio before the Civil War, but many were founded in the South shortly after the Civil War.  Those Southern HBCUs share a proud tradition of becoming the first colleges to provide higher education to the family members of freed slaves.  Over the years, HBCUs have produced extraordinary leaders in every field of endeavor and thousands and thousands of well-educated American citizens.  A list of their famous graduates would be too long to read to you. 1.  Why Watch?  So, why should your kids (and you) watch this documentary?  (If you can’t still find it on the air on PBS or streaming on the PBS website, buy it or tell your high school to buy it and show it to all of the students.)  There are a lot of reasons to watch.  First, it is a great piece of documentary filmmaking.  It includes take-your-breath-away and heartbreaking archival photographs and film of black American life during segregation and during the end of segregation.  It includes archival photographs and film of HBCU students on campus going back a hundred years, including the horrifying 1972 shooting of two students in an otherwise peaceful protest on the campus of Southern University (in Baton Rouge, Louisiana); more about that later.  It includes insightful interviews with former HBCU students now in their 70s and 80s, with HBCU presidents, with historians, and more.  It includes evocative and relevant music.  Second, the film gives an impressively organized overview of 150 years of African-American history, focusing on higher education in the form of HBCUs, but including everything from the beginning of elementary education for black children to the debate about the education philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois to the role of the remarkable Thurgood Marshall (who graduated from both Lincoln University and Howard University School of Law, two HBCUs) in ending school segregation to the lunch counter sit-in protests staged by HBCU college students during the struggle for civil rights.  If your kid does not know this history (and many don’t), here is a powerful way to help him or her learn it. Third, if your kid does not know what an HBCU is, it is time your kid learned.  That is especially true if your family is African American--or Hispanic, because Hispanic enrollment at HBCUs has been increasing (as we have said in earlier episodes).  And while white students can and do also enroll at HBCUs, white students should also have an understanding of these historic institutions and their continuing important role in our nation’s social and cultural fabric.  We have heard too many anecdotes (including in this documentary) of black high school students who want to go to an HBCU only to have their friends ask them why in the world they would want to do that.  Early in the film, HBCUs are described as an “unapologetic black space.”  Late in the film, they are described as the place where “you’ll find something you won’t find anywhere else.”  That’s why.  No one could have said it better. 2.  Some Background If you all thought that you were going to get away without hearing one more time about my favorite HBCU, Fisk University, you were wrong.  Oddly enough, in a PBS interview by Craig Phillips with the filmmakers, Mr. Williams said that they had written a segment, which they did not end up using, about the Fisk University Jubilee Singers.  The Jubilee Singers, organized in 1871, saved the University from closing in its early days by raising money on their concert tours, and they continue to tour today.  I love their story.  And, of course, there is Charles Spurgeon Johnson, the intellectual architect of the Harlem Renaissance, who served as Fisk’s first black president, and the Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, like Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Aaron Douglas, whom he brought to Fisk to work with him.  Well, Mr. Williams, I would love to have seen your segment on the Jubilee Singers, though I was interested in the segment you do have on Fisk.  And you all should be, too. As we just said, today HBCUs enroll students who are not black--just as historically white colleges and universities (referred to as predominantly white institutions, or PWIs) now enroll students who are not white.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2015, students who were not black made up 22 percent of the enrollment at HBCUs.  That was up from 15 percent back in 1976.  And while the number of students enrolled at HBCUs rose by 32 percent in those years—which was good for them—total college enrollment rose by 81 percent in those same years.  Some observers say that it has become harder for HBCUs to recruit African-American students now that they have been welcome at both selective and nonselective colleges across the U.S.  That is undoubedly true to some degree. Nonetheless, there is still a strong sense of community among the alumni/alumnae of HBCUs and a strong sense of tradition on HBCU campuses.  You can see that in the new documentary, for sure.  And there have been very recent and impressive spikes in HBCU applications, as we said back in Episode 100.  For some African-American students, the sense of community at HBCUs could be a good fit for what they are looking for in a college, and a shared culture could go a long way toward helping them feel comfortable on a college campus, especially if it is far from home.  Some observers say that Hispanic students often feel more comfortable in the family-like environment of many HBCUs, which could account, in part, for the increase in Hispanic enrollment. And, parents, in case you are interested, lower-than-average tuition rates at both public and private HBCUs (sometimes literally half of the going rate at PWIs) are one more attractive feature.  Just go check out a few.  I think you will be surprised. So, if you and your kid are tempted to investigate further after watching Tell Them We Are Rising, here are some HBCUs to consider (some you will probably know, and some you might not know): Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee) Howard University (Washington, D.C.) Spelman College (Atlanta, Georgia) Morehouse College (Atlanta, Georgia) Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, Alabama) Hampton University (Hampton, Virginia) Lincoln University (Lincoln University, Pennsylvania) Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, Florida) Xavier University of Louisiana (New Orleans, Louisiana) North Carolina A&T State University (Greensboro, North Carolina) Claflin University (Orangeburg, South Carolina) Delaware State University (Dover, Delaware) Morgan State University (Baltimore, Maryland) And there are plenty more. 3.  What We Didn’t Know So, let me return for a moment to the shooting at Southern University, which I am embarrassed to say I knew nothing about.  I would like to think that is because I myself was just a college student in those days, but that is really no excuse.  Here is an excellent synopsis of what happened, as told last month by reporter Mike Scott, of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, on the occasion of the documentary’s airing on PBS: Forty-five years after two Southern University students were shot dead by police who had been sent in [to] quash weeks of demonstrations on the school’s Baton Rouge campus--which included occupation of the university president’s office--the 1972 incident is once more getting attention. The documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities will make its broadcast premiere Monday night (Feb. 19) on PBS--and online a day later….  In addition to starting with a drum cadence by the Southern University drum corps, the 85-minute film features a 10-minute segment on the Southern [University] shootings, which are brought to life through interviews, photos and video--and which vividly, and poignantly, illustrate the on-campus tumult at HBCUs in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “They were exercising their constitutional rights. And they get killed for it. They die,” former student Michael Cato says in the film of the slain students. “Nobody sent their child to school to die. It shouldn’t have happened.” The Southern shootings took place Nov. 16, 1972, after weeks of demonstrations by students protesting inadequate services. When the students marched on University President Leon Netterville’s office, Gov. Edwin Edwards sent 300 police officers in to break up the demonstrations. It was during the subsequent confrontation that a still-unidentified officer fired a shotgun at students in violation of orders. When the smoke cleared, two 20-year-old students--Leonard Brown and Denver Smith--were dead. No one was ever charged in their deaths. Edwards, who is interviewed in Tell Them We Are Rising, blamed the students, saying their actions were a “trigger” for the police response. In 2017, the Southern University System board’s academic affairs committee voted to award Brown and Smith posthumous degrees.  (quoted from the article) The documentary shows the actual shots being fired and the bodies of the two students being taken away.  It includes a touching interview with the sister of one of those students.  It tells a story that all of us should know.  4.  Final Thoughts In an interview for PBS with the filmmakers, writer Craig Phillips asked why they had wanted to make a film about HBCUs.  Here are their answers: Stanley Nelson: In fundamental ways, historically Black colleges and universities form the core of the African American community. They are the engine that has driven the ascent from enslavement to the highest positions in business, government, education, science, technology and entertainment. The sacrifices made to create these institutions are significant, and are what compelled me to capture this essential chapter of American History.  Marco Williams: HBCUs are the engines of American democracy. These institutions, in the education of African Americans activate what it means to be American. I was invested in telling this story because I am committed to highlighting the fact that African American history is American history. People often ask about is there a need for HBCUs? I always answer: why don’t we ask is there a need for PWIs (predominantly white institutions)? This answer, coupled with the viewing of the film, provides the most salient understanding of the significance and the value of these essential institutions to the creation of America.  (quoted from the article) Mr. Nelson goes on to say this: My goal is to highlight the indisputable importance of these institutions within Black communities and invite Americans to consider how different our country might look without the existence of these institutions. I also hope this film prompts viewers to not only celebrate the legacy of HBCUs, but also reinvest in them.  (quoted from the article) I think that the film will absolutely do that.  I think it is hard to watch it and not want to go to an HBCU.  Remember, parents, that HBCUs come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are well known, and others are not.  But their history as a group and as individual institutions is remarkable, as Tell Them We Are Rising teaches all of us. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode153 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

You’re listening to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University sing Peter on the Sea, from 1927,

Hosted By: Michelle Materre, The Grande Dame of Black Whole  Thomas Allen Harris/Director was born in 1962 in the Bronx, New York, and spent his adolescent years in Tanzania. His television documentary work has been twice nominated for an Emmy Award. In addition to producing films, installations, and experimental video works, Harris has produced documentaries for public television. His 2001 documentary E Minha Cara/ That's My Face received numerous international awards and premiered at major film festivals.   Don Perry/Producer/Writer is Chief Operating Office of Chimpanzee Productions, Inc., which is a Harlem-based film, television and multimedia production company founded by filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris in 1992 that is dedicated to producing unique visual experiences that embody the search for identity, family and spirituality. He was also co-writer and co-producer of Thomas Allen Harris' feature length documentary "E Minha Cara/That's My Face".  Ann Bennett/Producer is a producer, director and writer for documentary films and multimedia projects with over twenty years of experience. She is a producer on the PBS feature documentary, Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People as well as the multi-platform community engagement initiative, Digital Diaspora Family Reunion (DDFR). Bennett's production credits include; Citizen King and Jubilee Singers for the PBS series "American Experience", Hymn for Alvin Ailey for "Dance in America", among others.

Phil Proctor has voiced Mr. Coreli in “The Other Side of the Glass,”  Principal Spence in the “The Jubilee Singers,” and even Eugene’s father Leonard Meltsner. Phil shares secrets of voice acting and the surprising connection between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and Detective Polehaus.

A Choctaw freedman in the old Indian Territory, Wallis Willis, wrote "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" ,in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma sometime before 1862. He was inspired by the Red River, which reminded him of the Jordan River and of the Prophet Elijah's being taken to heaven by a chariot (2 Kings 2:11). Many sources claim that this song and "Steal Away" (also composed by Willis) had lyrics that referred to the Underground Railroad, the resistance movement that helped slaves escape from the South to the North and Canada.Alexander Reid, a minister at the Old Spencer Academy, Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis singing these two songs and transcribed the words and melodies. He sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Jubilee Singers popularized the songs during a tour of the United States and Europe.TRADITIONAL LYRICSChorus:Swing low, sweet chariotComing for to carry me home,Swing low, sweet chariot,Coming for to carry me home.I looked over Jordan, and what did I seeComing for to carry me home?A band of angels coming after me,Coming for to carry me home.ChorusSometimes I'm up, and sometimes I'm down,(Coming for to carry me home)But still my soul feels heavenly bound.(Coming for to carry me home)ChorusThe brightest day that I can say,(Coming for to carry me home)When Jesus washed my sins away.(Coming for to carry me home)ChorusIf I get there before you do,(Coming for to carry me home)I'll cut a hole and pull you through.(Coming for to carry me home)ChorusIf you get there before I do,(Coming for to carry me home)Tell all my friends I'm coming too.(Coming for to carry me home)Chorus"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a historic American Negro spiritual. The first recording was in 1909, by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University.In 2002, the Library of Congress honored the song as one of 50 recordings chosen that year to be added to the National Recording Registry. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.© 2012 Shiloh Worship Music COPY FREELY;This Music is copyrighted to prevent misuse, however,permission is granted for non-commercial copying-Radio play permitted- www.shilohworshipmusic.com

Mandisa talks about her experience in the Jubilee Singers at Fisk University and how they influenced her life and career. Plus: Submit your nominations for the Whitty awards! "Oh My Lord" used by permission from EMI CMG Publishing, Joy Williams, Spudnut Music, and WB Music Corp.