Every time I feel the Spirit

Every time I feel the Spirit. African American spiritual*. While not as commonly sung as ‘Go tell it on the mountain’* or ‘Let us break bread together on our knees’*, this spiritual still has a significant presence in many hymnals. Its roots may be found in the antebellum South. One often-cited report indicates that Abraham Lincoln heard a group of escaped slaves led by ‘Aunt Mary’ Dines singing this spiritual, among others, during one of his visits to the ‘contraband’ camp at Seventh Street in Washington, DC (contraband camps were areas where escaped enslaved persons lived). The description notes that Lincoln sang with the group as they were singing for him, although not all accounts...