Learn About Slavery and Protest Songs

Slavery in America inspired many protest songs, many of which are spiritual. Learn more in this short video.

Hi, next on our list is slavery. The motivation here is rather simple. People were slaves and I would like to be able to say that I am talking about Pharaohs the slaves in the Egypt, but no unfortunately I am talking about African-Americans who were slaves until the 20th Century. Yes, people you didn't mishear, you didn't hear me misspeak. Obviously, we heard a lot about the segregation laws further on, but I mean it's really ridiculous. I mean until the civil war, we almost forget that like what the civil war was about and then within America which is supposed to be the 'Land of the Free' that they really were classifying people as people and sub-people, like sub-human, sub-power which is really rather horrific and obviously lead to some riot. The types of protest songs that we would associate with slavery are mostly spiritual, for example the song, 'Go Down Moses'. 'Go Down Moses' is a song that really encapsulates the era and it was sung a ton by slaves, 'Go Down Moses'. Here is what's really interesting about the song. It tells the story of Moses leaving the slaves in Egypt and the course of the song is, let my people go, which we all identify with Moses or at the very least we identify it with Charlton Heston playing Moses in the Ten Commandments going, let my people go, and in this song 'Go Down Moses'. Another song I find is really interesting was 'Follow the Drinking' Gourd' and why I find that really cool is that this is another sort of song that came out of the era and that type of song that came out of the era which is a song that's actually transmitting a secret message. This one particular song 'Follow the Drinking' Gourd' actually told slaves through the song how to find the underground railway to Canada, which is just really unbelievable. So people were really singing it at that time for two different reasons. One was spirituals to keep their morals and their hopes alive while they were slaves, and number two was for a really much more useful purpose which was how do we get out of slavery and okay this is how we got out of slavery and we can really talk about it openly, but within the music we can talk about it. We can sing to each other and we can sing to our children and by doing so we can tell them how to be free one day.