Colored Sacred Harp, The

The Colored Sacred Harp (Ozark, Alabama, 1934; Montgomery, Alabama, 2004) is a collection of 77 shape-note pieces. It was the result of the work of Judge Jackson (1883-1958) and members of a committee appointed by the Dale County Colored Musical Institute and the Alabama and Florida Union State Convention. Sacred Harp singing had started with the publication of B. F. White* and Elisha J. King*’s The Sacred Harp (Philadelphia, 1844).  Since the 1870s, African Americans had held singing conventions in southeastern Alabama, and by the 1930s they were using a particular version of The Sacred Harp published in 1902 by Wilson Marion Cooper (1850-1916), in Dothan, Alabama.  Like the 1844 Sacred...