“Go Down, Moses” (Circa 1850)
While the civil rights activists of the 1960s/1970s movement and rappers today often compare the plight of African Americans to the condition of pre-Civil War slavery, the people who lived during that period of slavery compared their situation with a much older story: the Israelites in captivity in Egypt. The spiritual songs by African Americans in the 1800s paved the way for much of the American music that followed it, especially in its direct influence on gospel and blues music. But often, the songs, which contained religious lyrical allusions to Biblical scenes such as the Jordan River and Egypt, were also used as code by Harriet Tubman and others on the Underground Railroad.
Sarah H. Bradford recorded Tubman, herself known to many as Moses, saying, “If I sing: Moses go down in Egypt / Till ole Pharo’ let me go…den dey don’t come out, for dere’s danger in de way.” [sic] “Go Down, Moses”, preserved for us by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who published it in 1872, and the Tuskegee Institute Singers, who recorded it in 1914, thunders through history as a reminder that freedom often must be demanded, as the song roars, “Let my people go.”
– Chris Thiessen
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