I grew up in a white suburb of 1970s Birmingham, and we sang Spirituals. Not just every now and again, the Spirituals were like a musical backdrop to my life. We sang them at church, at school, and even while playing, my brother and sister and I could frequently be heard full throating a “This Little Light of Mine” or “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”.
A couple of years ago it hit me that white suburbs in 1970s Birmingham existed as a backlash to the Civil Rights Era, yet, for some reason the music of the Movement rang in the air atop Shades Mountain as easy as the sprawling lawns with their cacophony of dogwood trees. I immediately called my father to ask him his opinion. He had never thought about it before either.
A couple of years ago it hit me that white suburbs in 1970s Birmingham existed as a backlash to the Civil Rights Era, yet, for some reason the music of the Movement rang in the air atop Shades Mountain as easy as the sprawling lawns with their cacophony of dogwood trees. I immediately called my father to ask him his opinion. He had never thought about it before either.
My dad grew up in a West Birmingham suburb in the 1950s. Fairfield was poor, and as such, at the time, was mixed race. Still, when the city council learned that my dad and his brothers were playing baseball with the black kids from down the street, they built a twelve-foot fence around the ball field so that kids couldn’t play there without adult supervision. When he reflected on the music he sang growing up, even as someone who didn’t identify as a singer, he said “sure, we sang Spirituals all the time too.” The music quietly connected everyone in that hotbed of racial tension, even as they couldn't find a way to let their children play together.
Our national discourse includes a significant amount of talk about tribalism, echo chambers, even aggressive rhetoric about legislated separation, yet, when I think about the south and the Spirituals, my heart is lifted. The Spirituals are America’s first unique artistic achievement, and they grew from multiculturalism. As important as Spirituals are to the African American identity thanks to the Civil Rights Era, and the post-Civil War Era when they became the classical music of Black America, they exist because people from many different cultures spent their free time singing together. A new music evolved from that interaction, a music that would shape all American music in time.
People may find ways to wall kids out from playing together, but no one can wall out community. We are woven together into a fabric so tight that attempts to separate us simply cause us to strain against the effort. By contrast, when we sing together, we breathe together, and are lifted, together. When we remember that such beauty and power as is found in the Spirituals can erupt from slavery, one of humanity’s greatest tragedies, we can begin to remember that regardless of the challenges of the day, no matter who is telling us that we can’t be together, and even in the face of profound isolationism, we are and ever will be stronger together.
~David
~David
Vulcan Statue image by Guiseppe Moretti [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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