Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
It is possibly the world’s best-known gospel song and was designated Oklahoma’s official “state gospel song,” in 2011. First popularized in the early 1870s, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” emerged from the pre-Civil War cotton fields of southeastern Indian Territory. Or did it?
As the story goes, an enslaved man, “Uncle Wallace” Willis, composed the song before the Civil War while working the fields in southeastern Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. “Aunt Minerva,” an enslaved woman who worked by Wallace’s side, has been assumed to be his wife. The two were “rented out” by their enslaver to work at Spencer Academy, a Choctaw boarding school located about ten miles northwest of Fort Towson.
Reverend Alexander Reid, superintendent of the school from 1849 to 1861, heard the pair singing “Swing Low” and other spirituals. In 1871, Reid attended a concert by the Jubilee Singers of Nashville’s Fisk University, and thought the Willis songs better than those the Jubilee Singers were performing. After the performance he passed the songs along to the Fisk group, which introduced them to the world.
Click here for a 1909 recording of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” by a quartet from the Jubilee Singers: https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-128141/
But there is another version of how “Swing Low” came to the Jubilee Singers and ultimately to great fame. And other mysteries linger. Click on the link below to read my article on the subject from the January/February 2015 edition of Oklahoma Today magazine.
Supplying another piece to the puzzle of the photographs missing from the Fisk University library, here’s an excerpt from correspondence with Dr. Toni Anderson, author of the 2009 book, “Tell Them We Are Singing For Jesus”: The Original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Anderson shared the following excerpt from an article in the Fisk News, vol. VII, no. 1, Nov/Dec. 1934. It is an address given by Dr. Georgia Laura White, the daughter of George L. White, at one of Fisk’s Jubilee Day observances. In speaking of those who contributed spirituals to the Jubilee Singers’ repertoire, she states:
“There were many contributors whose names will never be known. I have asked to pay tribute to one which is symbolic of many others. One night after a concert an old man came up and said he enjoyed the concert so much. “But there is one song the people in my section sing that you did not sing and I would like to give it to you,” he said. He gave them the words and hummed and whistled them with Ella Sheppard at the piano and Mr. White with the violin. They took the song and when he had finished they had “Steal Away.” The minister’s name was Rev. Alexander Reid, Presbyterian missionary to the Choctaw Indians. He said he knew of the Negroes stealing away across the river. So I wish to present this picture to Fisk University in honor of those who contributed and are unknown.”
More recently, R.B. Ward, a descendant of Wallace Willis, published an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma clarifying the relationship between Wallace and Minerva Willis. In the Spring 2022 edition of the journal, Ward provides evidence that Wallace and Minerva were actually father and daughter, not husband and wife. Read the article here:
The story of Uncle Wallace and Aunt Minerva has been shared many times over the years, becoming something of a legend. Ward’s insight into the lives of her two ancestors enriches and demystifies an important and fascinating chapter of Oklahoma history.
For a video of R.B. Ward’s presentation on the subject to the Oklahoma Historical Society in 2021, click here: https://youtu.be/_CB-m97WQ3k?si=cRbMGwRVuIUmPGtJ
susan dragoo 