O Freedom, O Freedom Freedom over me And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord, And be free. I first heard that poignant spiritual (author unknown) in the 1960s,…
Hymn stories: ‘There is a balm in Gilead’
There is a balm in Gilead, To make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead, To heal the sin-sick soul. Healing is a word saturating our culture from the media promoting products to heal or relieve a myriad…
Is there a balm in singing the spirituals, and if so, who should sing them?
In the heart of the Bloomfield neighborhood in Macon, Ga., our Baptist church and school served as the place where 300 white people came every Sunday for church and throughout the week for school. On Sunday, we had a bus…