Photograph By eli pousson
l
AME Zion Church,
Francisville, Philadelphia
That thing Aretha Franklin once identified as the spirit in the
dark. That thing she’ll describe and insinuate, as only she can,
in the same-named song as a thang whose procreative sexual
potency binds black (w)hole souls in God-fearing fellowship.
‘So howled out for the world to give him a name/ The in-dark
answered with Wind.’
The answer Nat Turner got from the wind in 1831 was the chant
upon the wind, which inspired his coldblooded and bloody
insurrection. It comes to us via the strangest Confession ever
in the history of a brother-man catching the Holy Ghost. It
is also, I believe, one of the great unacknowledged über-sources
of African-American literature, liberation theology and
prophetic political thought.
At one time during his interrogation, Nat’s interlocutor
Thomas Gray asked him, “What do you mean by the Spirit?”
Nat replied:
“The {same} Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days —
which fully confirmed my impression that I was ordained for
some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.”
“And we went down into the water together, in the sight of
many who reviled Us, and were baptized by the Spirit.”
What do you mean by Spirit?
“So howled out for the world to give him a name/The in-dark
answered with Wind.”
004-greg-tate.indd 7
Black people in a time and place where white brothers were
not comfortable with kneeling next to Negroes in the eyes
of the Lord.
Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue
with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and
founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
(ame). By July 29, 1794, they also had a building ready for
worship. The church adopted the slogan “To Seek for Ourselves.”
In recognition of his leadership and preaching, the ame
Church was active in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in
the North and promoted education by starting schools for
black children. Finding that other black congregations in the
region were also seeking independence from white control,
Allen organized a new denomination in 1816 — the African
Methodist Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black
denomination. He was elected its first bishop in 1816. While
he and Jones led different denominations, they continued
to work closely together and with the black community in
Philadelphia.
Besides building their own church, Allen and his congregation
created a book of hymnals in the spirit and style of their
particular musical worship. From musicologist Eileen Southern
we know that the run-up to celebrating modern black music’s
viva le difference was evident in reports by somewhat shocked
19th century observers, who fretted aloud over how Philadelphia’s
free blacks sang when they were ‘gettin’ religion’:
“We have too a growing evil in the practice of singing, in our
places of public and society worship, merry airs, adapted
from old songs, to hymns of our composing, often as miserable
as poetry and senseless as matter...most frequently {these
hymns} are composed and first sung by the illiterate blacks of
the society,” whined Methodist leader John Fanning Watson
in 1819.
BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE
Consciousness considered as a call and response between Being
and Nothingness and Being and Somethingness is also on our
table today.
The first organized African-American church, Richard Allen’s
ame Zion in Philadelphia, was founded by a group of
7
Some time before Delany wrote Dhalgren, the Mississippi
Delta Bluesman Robert Pete Williams already spoke of that
music’s inspiration as a thing carried on the wind to 20th
century plantation laboring musicians like himself. And Sun
Ra already composed my brother the wind. And
mc Biz Markie spoke of charismatic influence as a consequence
to the gullible ‘catching the vapors’.
3/27/11 11:19 AM