We should take care when we consult Jackson's controversial book mentioned above. He tried to disprove the African source theory of the spirituals, saying, "American culture is not as negroid as they [scholars] now believe. They would find that the British-Ameican culture a deeper, stronger, more beautiful and lasting one than they had weened"(p. 294). Against him, Stanley Edger Hyman writes, "Jackson is a Southern white chauvinist who has tricked out with trappings of pseudo-musicology his conviction that the Negro, as inferior human, could not hardly produce a first-rate art like the spirituals" (quoted from D.K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898, p. 407). Which was earlier is, of course, an interesting question, but texual considerations only may lead us to a biased conclusion such as Jackson's. We cannot deny the fact that thanks to the African-American versions most of us came to know the beauty of the spirituals.

~Masato