Singing for Equality

Before the American Civil War, men and women who imagined a multiracial American society (social visionaries) included Protestant hymns and psalms in their speeches and writings. Music affirmed the humanity and equality of Indians and blacks. These visionaries legitimated slave emancipation and validated blacks and Indians as Americans. In contrast to dominant voices of white racial privilege, social visionaries relied upon republication ideals and Arminian Christian beliefs to attack the conflation of whiteness with both citizenship and Christianity; they criticised republican hypocrisy and Christian hypocrisy. Many social visionaries wrote hymns, transcending racial lines and creating a sense of equality among singers and their audience. Singing and reading Protestant hymns encouraged community formation that led to American human rights activism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Cheryl C. Boots teaches humanities, American literature, and American history courses at Boston University. She is choir director and soloist at St. Stephen's United Methodist Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts.