African American Spiritual Historical Resources

1. Introduction

2. The Sound of the Spirituals in Their Original Context

3. The First Tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers

4. Countering the images of black-face minstrelsy

5. The Fisk Jubilee Singers sing for the world

6. The Popularity of Early Recordings of the Fisk Jubilee Quartet

7. Performance Characteristics of the Early Recordings

8. Musical and Social Upheaval in the Jazz Age

9. Harry T. Burleigh and the Solo Spiritual

10. Hall Johnson and the Emergence of Larger Mixed Professional Vocal Ensembles

11. Dawson and the Emergence of Large Mixed Choirs in the Historical Black Colleges

12. The Spiritual as Freedom Song

13. Performing the Spirituals Today

W.E.B.DuBois on the Spiritual, from "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903)

The Underground Railroad in Bucks County

Lourin Plant Article on Racial Barriers in Classical Vocal Music

Additional Links

The Underground Railroad in Bucks County

We offer the following reading material about the underground railroad here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We hope you enjoy this bit of local history.

An online book about the underground railroad written by Edward H. Magill in 1898. Click the image below to read the book free on Google Books:

The following article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1993:

Slaves In Flight Had Friends In Pennsylvania Bucks County Provided Sanctuary
For Many Underground Railroad Fugitives.

by Shaun Stanert, Inquirer Correspondent - February 1993

The following article apeared in The Intelligencer, April 2011:

From the archives: Underground Railroad

by Rayna Polsky, Intelligencer librarian - April 2011

Related to historic Buckingham AME Church:

http://www.davidhanauer.com/buckscounty/buckingham/