At first glance, the songs sung by African-American slaves in the Antebellum South seem almost childish with their sing-song rhythms and simple lyrics. The repetitive nature of the songs and their limited range of subject matter make it easy to assume that they have no deeper meaning or lasting value, but to do so would be to make a grave mistake. Most slaves were illiterate and deeply distrustful of their masters’ interpretation of the Bible, choosing instead to translate their faith into religious songs called spirituals (Raboteau). The songs were influenced by the fact that their creators were not native speakers of English, and this lack of fluency may also have led to misinterpretations of the Biblical source text (Lawrence-McIntyre).
