Spirituals inspired Martin Luther King and created the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement

By David Winship Imagine enslavement of the human spirit. Imagine bondage. Imagine a hard life of work under the whip, under demands that tear out one’s heart and soul. Then imagine the relief, for only a moment, that singing can bring. Imagine a vision, brought forth from stories of escape and liberation, liberation not only of body but of soul. This is a shared liberation with your fellows who are also enslaved, the relief and joy that comes in singing about the possibility of freedom. This is the foundation of the spirituals for our ancestors who were enslaved in the rural South, who worked the plantations, who served in the houses, who bore children only to have them taken and sold away. The spirituals, sung in secret, sung to the stories of the children of Israel who were enslaved in Egypt and led out to the Promised Land, to a land of freedom beyond the river. These are the songs that provided temporary relief and permanent hope. The songs that provided inspiration, hope and social coherence during the Civil Rights Movement era of the 1950s and 1960s were largely drawn from the deep canon of African American spirituals. These songs...