Last weekend I was invited to present a workshop on the history of spirituals at the Marble Gospel Choir Retreat. During the final portion of the workshop, I shared with them how the congregational spirituals of the 18th & 19th Centuries were revivified in the 20th Century as the Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement.
What has once been a cry for emancipation from enslavement became a cry to complete the process by recognizing all people as free, equal and made in God's image.
With Djore's leadership we sang a few songs and experienced the special "sound of those songs running through our bodies" as Bernice Johnson Reagon would say. Finally, we sang a song that, I must confess, I relearned from my child's school celebreations.
The lyrics include the following verse:
If you miss me on the back of the bus
or you can't find me nowhere
Come up to the front of the bus
I'll be riding up there.
All the verses of the song are poignant and deeply meaningful for US Civil Rights Movement history. However, the verse that grabbed me the most was this one:
If you miss me at the jailhouse
and you can't find me nowhere
Come on over to the courthouse,
I'll be voting up there.
Voting was so bound up in the journey toward human dignity that was the Civil Rights Movement. During the workshop, we discussed the importance of the spirituality and the practicality of the issues expressed in the freedom songs.
It is worthwhile to think of how important voting was to those people. It is true of so many of our ancestors, not only descendants of enslaved Africans, but all women, immigrants, and poor people.
This is all to remind everyone to register to vote. Deadlines all over this region are fast approaching.
If you've moved, you have to submit a new registration form. Check and make sure you're registered. And then, by all means, take yourself to the polls to vote—if it is not important for you personally, do it to honor generations past who were unable.