The Historical Significance of African American Spirituals

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When one thinks of African American spirituals, images of a church service with a choir singing in beautiful harmony swaying in rhythm to the music usually ensue. Spirituals are far more significant than hymns sung by Christians in a church setting, as we shall soon see.
Spirituals are religious folk songs that were created and sung by enslaved African Americans to express the emotions and thoughts of a people in bondage. More importantly, they are detailed, accurate historical documents that give us great insight into the lives of African American slaves. Slavery was legal in the United States from 1650 until the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. During this period, slaves were torn from their homeland of Africa and were forced to live in North America. As such, they were forced to adopt the language and the religion of Christianity by their masters, while giving up customs and traditions from home (Small).
Slaves were required by their masters to attend church. The slaves soon realized that many of the biblical stories they learned about in church paralleled their own...

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