Lift every voice and sing till earth and Heaven ring!  Ring with the harmonies of liberty.  Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies!  Let it resound loud as the rolling sea!

These were the words penned by the great orator, James Weldon Johnson, in honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1900.  True, the emancipation proclamation stated that "all men are created equal and endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  However, at the turn of the twentieth century, in what was supposedly Post-Slavery America, we find the African American still in pursuit of the validity of said rights.  Nonetheless, the cathartic expressions through music, religion and cultural practices continued to develop and flourish, despite the not-so-new social and political confines imposed by White Supremist.

It was from an oppressed people that a manifestation of rhythm, body movement, and song transcended the vicissitudes of the slave experience, allowing them to access a spiritual realm of survival amid a tormenting reality. Now, as freed members of society, the vast genres of African American music became America's contribution to Nationalism, within the framework of an utterly failed attempt at Reconstruction.

With the church being at center of the black community, the religious fervor of hymns and gospel songs became the catalyst in which the African American community sustained themselves through a theology of "somehow". - Something that keeps you when you have no idea that you're being kept.  Within the secular genres, we will find work songs, ragtime, and the blues, from victims of an ill-fated system of peonage, to become essential elements in the birth of a new genre.  Jazz is said to be the first among African American genres untainted by the chains and shackles of slavery.   It is through this genre that African Americans claimed an identity all their own.

In this unit, we will explore emerging genres of the African American experience while identifying specific tropes or fusions across the sacred and secular genres of the early 20^th century. - From Spirituals to Hymns and Gospel music….  And from the Blues and Ragtime to Jazz.