Surratt House Museum to tell Black history through song and stories

[RJNorton]

Article here.

[brtmchl]

I think that is an amazing learning experience. You do great things Laurie. The people in that community are lucky to have such a wonderfully run museum. with a staff that cares about the community so much, to offer so many new and interesting experiences.

[L Verge]

Surratt House just hosted one of the best programs it has ever had. As noted in the above article, we had an ensemble of nine singers in period costume using minimal side effects performing as The Jubilee Singers. They told the story of the road to freedom from slavery to abolitionist work to the creation of U.S. Colored Troops, and finally the word reaching them that Lee had surrendered. This was done mainly by song, but there were also readings from Frederick Douglass' writings and diaries of those who knew how to read and write.

There was no great, operatic performance; but their voices harmonized so beautifully together and their facial expressions and mannerisms were so genuine that they soon had the audience joining in.

And speaking of audience: Our small meeting room can seat 84 comfortably. We filled every seat and had standing room and floor seating for 91 people for the first performance. We had guessed right several weeks ago that this was going to be a popular event, so we arranged for the singers to do two shows -- one at 4 pm and a second at 5:30. We had about fifty people who were turned away from the first performance. However, we had two of our guides remain in costume after giving regular tours from noon to 4 pm. We offered our visitors a free, one-hour tour of the museum if they wanted to stay for the second show. We had over fifty for that second performance.

As I watched, it brought back many childhood memories -- and the realization that I knew the words and tunes to over half of the songs that they sang! I have never studied the spirituals and folk tunes of black Americans. It dawned on me that I was raised during segregation in Maryland; I went through twelve years of public education and four years of college work without ever having a black student in any classroom -- and yet, I knew most of their songs. They were taught to me and to my classmates through elementary and high school music classes by white teachers. We learned them, enjoyed them, and I obviously remembered them sixty years later.

I was also raised in a small, Southern Maryland village where my uncle ran the general merchandise store (and talked baseball to anyone who would listen). His customers were both black and white, and it was perfectly natural for me to see his customers on almost a daily basis. And, most of them were friends with my parents. There was a colored church (and yes, that was the proper terminology then) right up the road, and they had tent revivals each year where many of these old songs rang out across the fields.

The new buzz words in the corporate and political worlds today are "cultural diversity." We are taking classes on the subject within the government agency that I work for. Today, as I sang and clapped in rhythm with The Jubilee Voices, I wanted to shout to modern society that we learned the true meaning of cultural diversity years ago through music, dance, art, and history -- and friends from both sides of the color chart.

[L Verge]

Just had to add to this that we have many phone calls yesterday and today raving about this performance. They are but one ensemble of a much larger organization called the Washington Revels. I'm already figuring out programs for which we can utilize them in the future!