All posts by Robert Darden

I am an associate professor of Journalism at Baylor University. My passion -- and research agenda -- is in black gospel music. I am currently researching a book on the influence of black sacred music on the Civil Rights Movement. My previous books include "People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music."
Black Gospel Music

Chapter heading

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I love putting great quotes at the beginning of each chapter of a book… something to set the mood or illuminate a certain theme. It is something I started many years ago and I’m always on the look-out for something special that relates to the current project. I found this in Robert Browning’s poem “Parleyings with Charles Avison”:

“There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.”

I don’t know where it’ll go in Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, but it’ll go somewhere!

Black Gospel Music

Something I found when I was looking for something else …

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This a quote from the desert fathers that opens a Mary Oliver book of poetry called “Thirst”:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can, I stay my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?”

Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”

Black Gospel Music

W.E.B. Du Bois: We Return Fighting

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I try to go through a couple of books each evening as part of my research, putting a sticky note on anything interesting, then copying those pages and returning the books the next day. (Thank God for Inter Library Loan!)

Last night I read John Dittmer’s Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi.  While much has been written on the better-known Freedom Fighters in the Delta, it was the local tenet farmers who suffered most of the violence and endured most of the terror. Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s bore little resemblence to a democracy — for poor black OR poor white.

And yet W.E.B. Du Bois was fighting for Civil Rights decades before Birmingham and Selma and Danbury and Albany — without the slightest protection from the federal government (which, admittedly, wasn’t much in the ’50s or ’60s, either!).

That’s why when Dittmer includes this quote by Du Bois it is so startling:

“We return from the slavery of the uniform which the world’s madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civilian garb … We sing:  This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land. It lynches … It disfranchises its own citizens … It encourages ignorance … It steals from us … It insults us … We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.” — W.E.B. Du Bois, Crisis, 19 (May 1919), 13-14.

Thank you, John Dittmer, for reminding me that this war is not yet won.

Black Gospel Music

Nothing But Love in God’s Water

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My past few years have been consumed with research on another book (currently titled “Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement”). I’m not sure yet, but it may be my final non-fiction book. Twenty-five books is enough any idiot.

I don’t know when I’ll be finished. But then, I never really know on each new book. All of my spare time — weekends, nights, “vacations” — have been spent, for the most part, in pursuit of knowledge related to this project. I’ve read literally hundreds of books and magazine and newspaper articles. I’ve so far interviewed more than 60 gospel artists, Freedom Riders, pastors, announcers, marchers from the height of the Civil Rights era. Mary and I have traveled to Birmingham (twice) and Chicago for research and in-person interviews, and we have more travels yet ahead.

We’ve made a lot of new friends. I’ve also come to have a new appreciation for some new heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, but also the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Dorothy Love Coates, and Rep. John Lewis (who graciously agreed to an interview).

I’ve also immersed myself in the heroes of the past — W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Nina Simone and so many others. I want to talk about DuBois in particular in the days ahead.

New friends, old friends who come alive, friends we haven’t yet met. “Nothing But Love in God’s Water” has already been invaluable to me, regardless if the book sells modestly or not at all.

Teaching, Writing

Why We Gather … and sometimes link

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“Will they explore a wider, more creative space through social interaction or through outside command? Though the answer should be obvious, consider the case of the heart surgeons from five hospitals in New England who spent 1999 observing each other’s practices and talking about their work. The result was a stunning 24 percent decline in mortality rates in bypass surgery, the equivalent of 74 saved lives, a result they could never have obtained through the traditional continuing education regimen of listening to lectures, reading articles, or even logging into artificial ‘knowledge management’ systems … as one biologist quips, ‘I link, therefore I am.'”

Thomas Petzinger, The New Pioneers (1999) … from the chapter titled, “Nobody’s as Smart as Everybody.”

Black Gospel Music

Black Gospel Music Restoration Project

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Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time and effort to track us down. If you’ve got questions about this project, or if you think you might have black gospel 78s, LPs, 45s, or cassettes to loan or donate, I’d love to hear from you. BTW, if it is something you can use, we will happily cover all of your mailing, handling and insurance expenses!

Please e-mail me at Robert_Darden@baylor.edu.