Not all the songs I looked for came up when I put in "Negro spiritual" in the search box at the Library of Congress American Memory site. I had to use other keywords: jubilee song, slave song, darkey song, etc. On the other hand, most of the "plantation songs" and "negro songs" are not African-American in origin; they are minstrel-type songs. Though Erskine Peters' Lyrics of the Afro-American Spiritual is a good guide, it includes "Amazing Grace" (by John Newton) and "Stand By Me" (by Tindley). The Treasury of Negro Spirituals by H.A.C. Chambers also contains modern spiritual-like compositions. I know some "spiritual" CDs with "Oh Dem Golden Slippers" or "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" included in them. Moreover, in the gospel world, many spirituals or spiritual-derived songs are sung without being called spirituals, perhaps because spirituals are usually defined by their origins and gospels are often defined by their performances. Indexing can be difficult. At the outset, we have to decide which ones (or which versions) are spirituals and which are not, no matter what they may have been called.

Masato