Swing Low

Midi version of the bar of music.

Du Bois uses the song as an elegy for Crummell, who died in 1898. Missionaries in Africa supposedly heard this same song sung with the lyrics in a native language at funerals. Home was meant as Africa, the Africa to which the slaves believed they would return upon their deaths, where Crummell had expatriated (Sundquist, To Wake the Nations, 518-21.

• Audio recording of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" by Fisk University Jubilee Singers.
• "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" lyrics from Jubilee songs: as sung by the Jubilee Singers, of Fisk University, (Nashville, Tenn.) under the auspices of the American Missionary Association(New York: Biglow & Main Date: [1872]). This is probably the edition Du Bois used.
• "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" — sheet music from Hampton and its Students. By Two of its Teachers, Mrs. M. F. Armstrong and Helen W. Ludlow. With Fifty Cabin and Plantation Songs , Arranged by Thomas P. Fenner(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1874) Electronic Edition.
• Unknown artist humming "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" from africanamericanspirituals.com (wav file should load in background).
• 12: "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Paul Robeson, RealAudio version (excerpt from Amazon.com).

[Return to Chapter 12] [Main Page]