[oldvirginian]

“We should be boasting about ONE thing: Negro spirituals.”

At the start of the civil war it was illegal to teach a slave to read. General Thomas “Stone wall” Jackson broke that law every day.
His reasoning was very simple.
He wanted each and every one to be able to read the bible for themselves.
Until the day he died he helped raise money to buy bibles for slaves in Virginia.

[Salvavida]

Indeed, but I was not arguing off the virtues of one man. Negro spirituals resulted from the widespread effort to convert the blacks from African Traditional Religion (same tenants as Native American Spiritualism), to Christ.

Living with blacks made it impossible to ignore their humanity, thus, their inherent worth being made after the image of God.

The tragedy of holding to the Old World theology that the blacks were descendants of Cain (Gen 4) was their downfall. Lazy theology.