"SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT"

 “SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT”

I have been thinking a lot about Fulton County DA Fani Willis lately, especially after her fiery testimony on Thursday as the white Trump team tried to taint her and get her dismissed from the Trump election interference case.  She had an unforced error in her love life, but the attempt to discredit her seems to be going nowhere legally.  Unless new evidence pops up, I don’t see the judge disqualifying her because there are no legal grounds to do so.  Still, she’s been buked, and she’s been scorned as a Black woman taking on white men and white supremacy, and it is nothing new.  I want to share the story of another woman who had to fight for her life in the midst of white supremacy. 

    Ella Sheppard was born into slavery in 1851 on Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage plantation in Tennessee and was a direct descendant of Jackson’s brother.  Her enslaved father worked outside the plantation and saved enough money to buy freedom for himself and his family.  His owner, however, would only allow him to buy his freedom, which he did.  Ella’s mother went into great despair and decided to take her own life and that of her daughter.  As Ella’s mother stood on the banks of the Cumberland River getting ready to jump in, she heard a loud voice cry out:

“Don’t do it, Honey! Don’t you see God’s chariot a-comin’ down from Heaven? Let the chariot of the Lord swing low. This child is gonna stand before kings and queens! The Lord would have need of that child.”  The voice came from an elderly Black woman who was also enslaved, and she gently talked the mom out of suicide.  Ella’s father would soon buy Ella’s freedom, but the owner would not allow the freedom of the mother, whom he later sold down South to Mississippi.

Ella’s father decided to get out of the South and moved to Cincinnati, where Ella showed a stunning aptitude for music.  She studied with a white music teacher, who made Ella come in the back door, and Ella could only come at night to receive the lessons.  Her father died of cholera in 1866, and Ella supported the family by working as a maid, singing in public, and teaching music.  After the Civil War ended, she moved back to the Nashville area to teach people freed from slavery.  Recognizing that she needed to hone her teaching skills, she enrolled at Fisk in Nashville.  

At Fisk, she met George White, treasurer of Fisk and music teacher there.  He was tremendously impressed with her and hired her on as an assistant teacher of music at Fisk, which meant she became the first Black faculty at Fisk.  At this time, however, Fisk was desperately in need of funding, and George White decided to form a choir who would tour country to raise money for Fisk.  Ella Sheppard would be his assistant and main organizer.  They recruited other Fisk students, all of whom had previously lived as slaves, and they named themselves the “Fisk Jubilee Singers,” using the Jubilee concept found in Leviticus 25.  They began to tour in 1871, and in their first concerts with white audiences, they sang classical European songs, with a few spirituals thrown in.  They noticed that when they sang spirituals, the audience went wild and gave much more generously.  So, Ella Sheppard chose “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as their initial spiritual, fashioned from the testimony of the elderly Black woman who had saved her life.  She taught the other singers to sing the spirituals, and they became a hit. While they continued to use classical European music, spirituals became their standard singing in the concerts.  

Their touring accomplished at least three things.  They saved Fisk University – donations poured in.  And second, their skill and their humanity stunned white people, who thought that they were inferior as Black people.  Third, they rescued the spirituals as a music and art form – no longer considered the music of inferior people, but rather music which enabled people to survive the horror of slavery. They had to endure all kinds of terrible treatment at the hands of white supremacy, but they prevailed.  As the white supremacist movement grew stronger and more dangerous, the women members often stayed home.  The original group disbanded in 1878, and Ella got married to Rev. George Washington Moore.

Ella also searched for  her mother in Mississippi, as many Black folk did after the Civil War (see Leonard Pitts’ fine novel “Freeman” for the story on these kinds of searches).  Ella brought her mother back to Nashville, where Ella taught many Fisk students and others until her death in 1914.  The Fisk Jubilee Singers were re-started in 1879, and they have been singing ever since – the first HBCU choir in history!