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Slave Songs of the United States, title page Michael Row the Boat Ashore Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. Slave Songs of the United States was a collection of African American music consisting of 136 songs. Published in 1867, it was the first, and most influential, [1] [2] collection of spirituals to be published.
Lucy McKim Garrison (October 30, 1842 – May 11, 1877) was an American song collector and co-editor of Slave Songs of the United States, together with William Francis Allen and Charles Pickard Ware. [1] [2]
A year later, a version was published in Slave Songs of the United States (compiled by abolitionists William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Charles Pickard Ware). [7] The editors, who positioned the song "in a place of honor" as the first entry in the book, [ 2 ] noted that the song could be found from South Carolina down to Florida ...
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave and abolitionist author. In his 19th-century autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), Douglass gives examples of how the songs sung by slaves had multiple meanings. His examples are sometimes quoted to support the claim of coded slave songs.
William Francis Allen (September 5, 1830 – December 9, 1889) was an American classical scholar and an editor of the first book of American slave songs, Slave Songs of the United States. Allen was born in Northborough, Massachusetts in 1830, the son of Joseph Allen. He graduated Harvard College in 1851; later he traveled and studied in Europe.
The use of songs as a narrative and a tool to convey an important message continued into the 20th century with Black Americans using their voices to help their fight for freedom and equality.
African-American slaves created a distinctive type of music that played an important role in the era of enslavement. Slave songs, commonly known as work songs, were used to combat the hardships of the physical labor. Work songs were also used to communicate with other slaves without the slave owner hearing.
Earliest known form of the song, from Slave Songs of the United States. The earliest known version of the song, titled "The Good Old Way," was published in Slave Songs of the United States in 1867. [1] The song (#104) was contributed to that book by George H. Allan of Nashville, Tennessee, who may also have been the transcriber.