“And I Come Singing!”

Today I live in the nation’s capital as the group I formed in 1973, Sweet Honey in the Rock, celebrates 25 years. I am aware more than ever that my work as a singer and composer is based in the Southern expression of African-American culture. My sense of being a black cultural Southerner comes from being born in southwest Georgia and from my first work as an activist in Albany, Georgia, during the Civil Rights Movement as a field secretary for SNCC (the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), and more specifically as a member of the SNCC Freedom Singers.

In 1966, I began to work with the late Anne Romaine on a series of festivals where, in concerts and workshops throughout the South, we presented a sort of live, singing anthology of black and white progressive music culture — traditional and contemporary. We sang songs from the struggle against slavery, against strip mining, for labor organizing, and the freedom songs of the Civil Rights Movement.

The performers on these tours were black and white, young and old, and today it is amazing to see local and regional festivals throughout the South where one can experience performance culture from many racial and ethnic groups.

There are still the Country and Bluegrass festivals that are predominantly white, and the gospel conventions that are predominantly African American or white, depending on the racial makeup of the artists. There are also some wonderful new festivals like the Jazz Festival in New Orleans and the bi-annual National Black Arts Festival based in Atlanta. The old Piedmont Festival of Atlanta is now new and diverse in its programming and audiences. This would have been unthinkable before the Civil Rights Movement and before the tours that Anne and I started, and that she continued for more than a quarter of a century.

The cultural power and heritage of the South is real. In offering concerts for justice and struggle against oppression of all kinds, Sweet Honey in return has received some experiences that have the power to transform one’s sense of what history really is in this world.

At our last performance in Savannah, Georgia, the concert was held in the First African Baptist Church. We were led by an elder Deacon to the basement where we were shown holes in the floor in the shape of the cross that were breathing holes where slaves making a dash for freedom could hide. That night, that church was hallowed ground for us as we sang out of a consciousness of standing in a 19th century Underground Railroad Station, the kind of space without which many more would not have made it beyond slavery.

Whenever Sweet Honey goes into a community, our sponsors and hosts tell us what is happening on the local level so that we can know more deeply where we are. Many of the issue facing African Americans in the South are not Southern and are not African American — they are national and international.

One is the changing face of AIDS to include the young and the poor and the heterosexual, as well as the homosexual communities. Our black churches have been much too slow to understand the sacred work of hosting and parenting with those among us who are living and dying from AIDS. African Americans have huge homophobic streaks running through the fabric of our culture. If there is anything that has a chance of forcing us to redress that bigotry, AIDS will.

Another issue is the expansion of the death penalty. The South ranks at the top in viciousness and abuse of human rights in its prison system, with Texas and Alabama vying for top prize in innovations of private prisons, chain gangs and similar abominations. Our people still go to jail the most for the longest times. Those organizations that are engaged in death penalty work are on the cutting edge of challenging access to justice in our society.

It is a great time to be an African-American woman. The South is one of the places where one can find women organizing as women, and sounding out voices on the issues that daily impact our lives. Domestic violence is a public issue for black women; this was not the case when I grew up in southwest Georgia where women were sometimes complimented for the way “she just held her peace through all she had to deal with. . . .” Women are demanding that the quality of our experience be a marker by which our communities are judged.

I feel blessed that more than 30 years ago, when I joined the Civil Rights Movement, I enjoined the rest of my life with a commitment to being a fighter for justice and freedom and the right to live celebrating my existence, and the existence of my people — and I come singing!