I'm curious as to where Lomax got his attribution. He did not get it from the Sacred Harp. When it comes to scholarly accuracy I'll take the The Hymnal 1982 Companion that Masato quoted from first. The scholarship there is much more recent than that for the White Spirituals notes. "White Spirituals" notes reproduces notes from the earlier LP & has some really bad inaccuracies; for example, it uses the wrong Shape note illustration on p. 3.

It would be interesting to see what it says in the notes to Rounder's re-release of the White Spirituals material on: Southern Journey, V. 9: Harp of a Thousand Strings -- All Day Singing From the Sacred Harp, track 5.