92 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR
But the idea of blacks and whites worshiping together was opposed in many
other places. Where more than a handful of blacks joined a white religious
society, they were often assigned segregated seating. Black Christians in
both North and South most typically worshiped in all-black congrega-
tions. The fi rst of these were formed in the South in the 1770s and 1780s
under Baptist preachers. In the North, blacks began in the 1790s and
early 1800s to establish separate congregations, chiefl y under Meth-
odist sponsorship. The founding in 1816 of the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church in Philadelphia established a clear racial
division in American Protestantism that persists today.
In 1801 the Reverend Richard Allen, one of the AME Church’s
founders, published a hymnal for Bethel Church in Philadelphia, the
fi rst such book assembled by a black author for a black congregation.
It followed the format of metrical psalters such as the Bay Psalm Book:
pocket-sized, devoted to multi-stanza poetry, and without music. Among
the more than fi ve dozen items Allen chose for his hymnal are familiar favor-
ites by the British hymn writer Isaac Watts and others. But the hymnal also
includes more than twenty texts that cannot be traced to any previous author,
suggesting that Allen wrote some or all of them himself.
A few of these texts are printed with refrains: repeating lines at the end of
each stanza or verse. Here, the refrains are two-line sections whose text may or
may not relate to the subject of the hymn. Because a refrain is normally sung to
the same words and music each time it appears, like a chorus but shorter and
less independent, it can be learned quickly by ear; refrains are sometimes sung
even by those who do not sing the verses. The alternating of a changing four-line
verse with an unchanging two-line refrain suggests some kind of interaction.
Perhaps a group might respond to a leader; or one group, bookless and singing
refrains only, might respond to another group equipped with books and singing
both verses and refrains. In any case, Allen’s hymnal put into writing the oral
practice of responsorial hymn singing.
Another practice cultivated by mixed groups of literate and nonliterate blacks
was that of lining out. No doubt learned from the example of white congrega-
tions (see chapter 1), lining out was another type of responsorial hymn singing.
The practice probably changed somewhat in its adoption by black churches. The
Old Way of singing was marked by the loose coordination of voices singing more
or less the same melody. In a present-day reconstruction of the Bethel Church’s
congregational singing as it might have sounded in Richard Allen’s day, the tex-
ture of the Old Way of singing is conceived as heterophony, in which multiple
voices simultaneously vary a melody, so much so that a vague harmony emerges.
As sung by a choir of church elders and historians from the Smithsonian Institu-
tion, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” (LG 4.2), a hymn by Isaac Watts from Allen’s
hymnal, conveys a sense of communal religious fervor.Holiday Music in the North
Holiday celebrations gave African Americans another chance to make music of
their own. In some colonies, blacks were given a break from their work sched-
ules during local spring elections, and they staged secular festivals paralleling
those of white society. A white observer in Newport, Rhode Island, caught theK Reverend Richard Allen
(1760–1831), an ex-slave,
compiled A Collection of
Spiritual Songs and Hymns,
the fi rst such book prepared
for a black congregation in
America.LG 4.2172028_04_086-105_r2_vs.indd 92 23/01/13 10:07 AM