From slave plantations through the twentieth- century civil rights movement and beyond, African American spirituals draw from a combination of ancient biblical narratives retold through oral traditions, folk religion, and institutionalized Christianity. Over the course of centuries, these songs have become features in other music genres, literature, and symbols of freedom from the drudgery of the human condition. Although the songs were derived from the African Diaspora in America as a means of using individual and collective voices for survival, elements of these sacred songs have transcended their origins and entered popular culture. The songs in the passage excerpted here were recorded during the Civil War and published in 1869 with commentary by the white abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson as a chapter titled “Negro Spirituals” in his book Army Life in a Black Regiment.