The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #38269   Message #3428899
Posted By: Haruo
31-Oct-12 - 11:51 AM
Thread Name: Afro-American Hymnal
Subject: RE: Afro-American Hymnal
Ran across my 1942 Army Navy Hymnal yesterday, so if anybody wants something looked up in it, I'm the guy. I've begun adding it to the Hymnary.org database, which only had the DNAH first-lines list. For a hymnal its day it's indeed got a great section of Spirituals (though oddly neither of the best known Christmas ones (Rise up, Shepherd and Got tell it on the Mountain) nor the most "liturgically apt" one (Let us break bread together). But then those you can find in many other hymnals today, whereas some of these are harder to come by:

I have a mother over yonder
Don't you want to go to heaven
Goodbye, mourner, I'm going home
My Lord, what a mourning (when the stars begin to fall)
In-a this-a band we have sweet music
I've got a robe (crown, shoes, harp, song)
Listen to the lambs (all a-crying)
It's me, it's me O Lord standing in the need of prayer
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus
Great day! Great day, the righteous marching
O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn
And I couldn't hear nobody pray
Lord, I want to be a Christian
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Swing low, sweet chariot
When Israel was in Egypt's land (Let my people go)
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen

Generally I'm not in favor of segregation, but it sure made it easier for me to locate the spirituals in that hymnal! ;-)