Give me Jesus (In the morning when I rise)

Give me Jesus (In the morning when I rise). African American spiritual*.  The origins of this spiritual appear to be a confluence of the white hymn tradition and the creativity and experiences of enslaved Africans. Numerous first stanzas appear over the decades with the refrain ‘Give me Jesus’, though the most commonly used initial stanza now begins ‘In the morning when I rise’.  The earliest post-Civil War collection, Slave Songs of the United States* (New York, 1867), edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, contains several slave songs that use the metaphor of ‘morning’. ‘As a rule morning signified to the Negro the time for going to heaven and...