Here we are in the Christmas Season! Are you busy planning for this “most wonderful time of the year?” Will your plans include family and community traditions that have been handed down for years? Here in the United States faith groups have the freedom to celebrate their heritage any way they want. Sadly, this was not always so for African Americans.
In the last few posts, we related the fascinating stories of black women in the entertainment industry including television, music, and stage. With special attention for the Holiday Season, I want to turn now to Black traditions. This week we want to give special attention to a very special black woman who has been forgotten or overlooked – Bessie Jones. Bessie lived in the early twentieth century when African Americans were still being stereotyped and were not allowed to take pride in their own traditions.
God blessed Bessie Jones with the gifts of music, singing, and dancing. Bessie said she was “called to teach” the children about their African ancestors. She had the inspirational idea to use games that were widespread among Southern black people as a way to get past religious prohibitions against physical movement and dancing that had existed since the times of slavery. Bessie understood that she could teach people the little-known history of African Americans and slavery through the stories, songs, and dances that she had learned as a child. Bessie used the power of music and dance to reveal to the world the overcoming spirit of African Americans.
Bessie Jones – Black traditions in Music (Feb 8, 1902 – July 17, 1984)
Bessie recognized that she could communicate to a wider world the little-known history of African Americans and slavery through the stories, songs, and dances that she had learned as a child.
The Lord blessed me not to forget these things … and keep them up among people who weren’t studying it. White people know our backgrounds, but they’re going to try to hold it back and keep us back as long as they possibly can.[1]
Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones was born in Smithville, Georgia on February 8, 1902. While she was still an infant her mother moved to her uncle’s farm in a black community. She never knew her biological father. Her mother married James Sampson whom Bessie thought of as her father, calling him “Poppa”.
Bessie only went to school occasionally and quit altogether after fifth grade. She got a job babysitting. At age 10 she became a full-time nursemaid to a white family. She loved children. She felt called to teach them. She recognized the value of using songs, plays, and movement games in socialization and education.
The children, they don’t even know how to play those things now, see. But it’s just good fun games, keeps you out of devilment, keeps you from fighting. I never had fights with children when I was little — didn’t have time to fight, we had to play. When we wasn’t eating or sleeping or working — and so that was it. But now they got time to talk about the grown things.[2]
Bessie also used the games to help the children develop physical and mental strength. Bessie probably inherited some of her talent from her musically gifted mother, Julia. Her stepdad also played many musical instruments. In fact, practically everyone in the family sang or played on home-made banjos or guitars. Bessie learned traditional songs, many over a hundred years old.
Bessie’s grandfather, Jet Sampson played the accordion. He had been enslaved in Africa and then brought to the Western Hemisphere with his five brothers around 1843. He taught Bessie about “the old ways” including slavery. Jet died in 1941 at the age of 105.
Bessie was able to combine all of her musical gifts with the storehouse of knowledge from her family, especially her grandfather and turn it into educational experiences for children that she loved so much for all of her life.
I remember a hundred games, I suppose… We had all kinds of plays…house plays, outdoor plays. Some… have songs … some have just plays… just acts or what not…The parents… would have songs they would sing while they were quilting and we would listen…. And we would have egg crackings and taffy pullings and we would hear all those things —riddleses and stories and different things. That’s why I’m so loaded [with knowledge] . … And then I has a great remembrance of those things.[3]
Bessie’s personal life was mixed with blessings and challenges. She married young; she had a daughter at age 12. Her husband, Cassius Davis also came from a musical family. He later died. Bessie left her daughter, Rosalie, with her mother and went to find work in Georgia. She married her second husband, George Jones, around 1928. They worked in Florida as migrant workers, “following the spring crops north as they ripened, as far as Connecticut. Periodically they visited both George and Cassius’s families in St. Simons and nearby Brunswick.” Bessie had a baby boy in 1935, George L. and in 1937 she gave birth to Joseph.
In 1932 while attending a Pentecostal church, Bessie became a born-again believer. She felt it was time to make some significant changes in her life. She worked as a maid or cook during this time while she an George lived on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Bessie became a founding member of the Harlem Church of God in Christ on St. Simons.
On St. Simons Bessie met the Spiritual Singers of Coastal Georgia. This group was seeking to preserve the ways of their African ancestors. The group was really impressed with Bessie’s “buoyant personality, extensive repertoire, and experienced singing style that they invited her to join their group… one of the only mainlanders to be so honored. Bessie ‘in her turn, felt at home with the Singers’ dignity and with their pride in their African and African-American heritage — the same kind of pride and dignity that had been so carefully taught her by her own parents and grandparents” (Step It Down, xii–xiii). Singer John Davis said of Bessie, “Bessie can’t shout, but she move just fine.”
Bessie went on to make many recordings and even took part in a movie. The famous Alan Lomax wanted to make a movie about the music of the Colonial Williamsburg era. Bessie took part. After the movie was made, many of the black artists hung around for a day of extraordinary music. Bessie was touched deeply by this experience.
Her grandfather had been enslaved in Virginia and had talked about having to eat from a trough and other, worse indignities. In Williamsburg she saw concrete corroboration of her grandparents’ testimony about slavery days. She felt suddenly “called to teach.” In a restaurant one day at a birthday party for a child of one of the film crew she was asked to sing a lullaby:
I had on a dress look like my grandmother used to wear — with those long wide skirts and a whole lot of underskirts. I was delighted to put it on. When I got up … I said I was glad to do it because this is where my grandfather was brought up at, and that gave me a head to speak right there. When I said that, they stopped the beer right there and everything, and I was getting ready to sing to the child but wasn’t nobody saying nothing. Then something told me “You got to tell them everything in your mind.”[4]
Bessie then went to Alan Lomax and asked for his help in preserving the old ways. The result was many recordings of taped interviews. In 1963, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were formally organized as a troupe. They toured all over the country. They participated as staff culture-workers for the Poor People’s March in Washington in 1968, during which they taught their music to thousands of African Americans and poor whites.
The singers participated in such famous places as Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival; at The Ash Grove in Northridge, California; at the Montréal World’s Fair; in an outdoor concert at Central Park (1965); and at successive annual Smithsonian Folk Life Festivals in Washington, D. C. In 1964 they were featured in the Sing for Freedom Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia (organized by Guy Carawan, Dorothy Cotton, Andrew Young, and Bernice and Cordell Reagon and sponsored by the Highlander Folk School, SCLC, and SNCC) along with SNCC Freedom Singers from active civil rights movements in Albany, Selma, Birmingham, and several towns in Mississippi. They were joined by northern folksingers, Len Chandler, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. SNCC Freedom Singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, who later an important historian as well as the well-known leader of Sweet Honey in the Rock, wrote that her meetings with Bessie Jones and the Sea Island Singers changed her life. Jones, who felt strongly about civil rights, was also member of a prayer band that marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Beulah, Mississippi.[5]
Here are some links for you to view more.
1. For more information on her films go here: https://www.media-generation.com/DVD%20PAGES/Bess/master.pdf
2. Her book, Step It Down, available on Amazon and many other places.
I hope you have been blessed as I was with a small taste of African American Heritage as lovingly, blessedly preserved for us by Bessie Jones. Next time we will continue to explore Black Traditions with the story of Kwanza.
[1]Bessie Jones: For the Ancestors, Autobiographical Memories, John Stewart, editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 53.
[2]Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage (1972; reprint, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1987), p. 172.
[3] The quotes are from a wonderful article that I hope you will go to and read. With my left wrist broken, I am typing with one finger. I will summarize Bessie’s life, but I hope you will go here:https://www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/jones-0
[4]Bessie Jones: For the Ancestors, Autobiographical Memories, John Stewart, editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 51.
Black American Women- Part 23
Here we are in the Christmas Season! Are you busy planning for this “most wonderful time of the year?” Will your plans include family and community traditions that have been handed down for years? Here in the United States faith groups have the freedom to celebrate their heritage any way they want. Sadly, this was not always so for African Americans.
In the last few posts, we related the fascinating stories of black women in the entertainment industry including television, music, and stage. With special attention for the Holiday Season, I want to turn now to Black traditions. This week we want to give special attention to a very special black woman who has been forgotten or overlooked – Bessie Jones. Bessie lived in the early twentieth century when African Americans were still being stereotyped and were not allowed to take pride in their own traditions.
God blessed Bessie Jones with the gifts of music, singing, and dancing. Bessie said she was “called to teach” the children about their African ancestors. She had the inspirational idea to use games that were widespread among Southern black people as a way to get past religious prohibitions against physical movement and dancing that had existed since the times of slavery. Bessie understood that she could teach people the little-known history of African Americans and slavery through the stories, songs, and dances that she had learned as a child. Bessie used the power of music and dance to reveal to the world the overcoming spirit of African Americans.
Bessie Jones – Black traditions in Music (Feb 8, 1902 – July 17, 1984)
Bessie recognized that she could communicate to a wider world the little-known history of African Americans and slavery through the stories, songs, and dances that she had learned as a child.
The Lord blessed me not to forget these things … and keep them up among people who weren’t studying it. White people know our backgrounds, but they’re going to try to hold it back and keep us back as long as they possibly can.[1]
Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones was born in Smithville, Georgia on February 8, 1902. While she was still an infant her mother moved to her uncle’s farm in a black community. She never knew her biological father. Her mother married James Sampson whom Bessie thought of as her father, calling him “Poppa”.
Bessie only went to school occasionally and quit altogether after fifth grade. She got a job babysitting. At age 10 she became a full-time nursemaid to a white family. She loved children. She felt called to teach them. She recognized the value of using songs, plays, and movement games in socialization and education.
The children, they don’t even know how to play those things now, see. But it’s just good fun games, keeps you out of devilment, keeps you from fighting. I never had fights with children when I was little — didn’t have time to fight, we had to play. When we wasn’t eating or sleeping or working — and so that was it. But now they got time to talk about the grown things.[2]
Bessie also used the games to help the children develop physical and mental strength. Bessie probably inherited some of her talent from her musically gifted mother, Julia. Her stepdad also played many musical instruments. In fact, practically everyone in the family sang or played on home-made banjos or guitars. Bessie learned traditional songs, many over a hundred years old.
Bessie’s grandfather, Jet Sampson played the accordion. He had been enslaved in Africa and then brought to the Western Hemisphere with his five brothers around 1843. He taught Bessie about “the old ways” including slavery. Jet died in 1941 at the age of 105.
Bessie was able to combine all of her musical gifts with the storehouse of knowledge from her family, especially her grandfather and turn it into educational experiences for children that she loved so much for all of her life.
I remember a hundred games, I suppose… We had all kinds of plays…house plays, outdoor plays. Some… have songs … some have just plays… just acts or what not…The parents… would have songs they would sing while they were quilting and we would listen…. And we would have egg crackings and taffy pullings and we would hear all those things —riddleses and stories and different things. That’s why I’m so loaded [with knowledge] . … And then I has a great remembrance of those things.[3]
Bessie’s personal life was mixed with blessings and challenges. She married young; she had a daughter at age 12. Her husband, Cassius Davis also came from a musical family. He later died. Bessie left her daughter, Rosalie, with her mother and went to find work in Georgia. She married her second husband, George Jones, around 1928. They worked in Florida as migrant workers, “following the spring crops north as they ripened, as far as Connecticut. Periodically they visited both George and Cassius’s families in St. Simons and nearby Brunswick.” Bessie had a baby boy in 1935, George L. and in 1937 she gave birth to Joseph.
In 1932 while attending a Pentecostal church, Bessie became a born-again believer. She felt it was time to make some significant changes in her life. She worked as a maid or cook during this time while she an George lived on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Bessie became a founding member of the Harlem Church of God in Christ on St. Simons.
On St. Simons Bessie met the Spiritual Singers of Coastal Georgia. This group was seeking to preserve the ways of their African ancestors. The group was really impressed with Bessie’s “buoyant personality, extensive repertoire, and experienced singing style that they invited her to join their group… one of the only mainlanders to be so honored. Bessie ‘in her turn, felt at home with the Singers’ dignity and with their pride in their African and African-American heritage — the same kind of pride and dignity that had been so carefully taught her by her own parents and grandparents” (Step It Down, xii–xiii). Singer John Davis said of Bessie, “Bessie can’t shout, but she move just fine.”
Bessie went on to make many recordings and even took part in a movie. The famous Alan Lomax wanted to make a movie about the music of the Colonial Williamsburg era. Bessie took part. After the movie was made, many of the black artists hung around for a day of extraordinary music. Bessie was touched deeply by this experience.
Her grandfather had been enslaved in Virginia and had talked about having to eat from a trough and other, worse indignities. In Williamsburg she saw concrete corroboration of her grandparents’ testimony about slavery days. She felt suddenly “called to teach.” In a restaurant one day at a birthday party for a child of one of the film crew she was asked to sing a lullaby:
I had on a dress look like my grandmother used to wear — with those long wide skirts and a whole lot of underskirts. I was delighted to put it on. When I got up … I said I was glad to do it because this is where my grandfather was brought up at, and that gave me a head to speak right there. When I said that, they stopped the beer right there and everything, and I was getting ready to sing to the child but wasn’t nobody saying nothing. Then something told me “You got to tell them everything in your mind.”[4]
Bessie then went to Alan Lomax and asked for his help in preserving the old ways. The result was many recordings of taped interviews. In 1963, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were formally organized as a troupe. They toured all over the country. They participated as staff culture-workers for the Poor People’s March in Washington in 1968, during which they taught their music to thousands of African Americans and poor whites.
The singers participated in such famous places as Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival; at The Ash Grove in Northridge, California; at the Montréal World’s Fair; in an outdoor concert at Central Park (1965); and at successive annual Smithsonian Folk Life Festivals in Washington, D. C. In 1964 they were featured in the Sing for Freedom Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia (organized by Guy Carawan, Dorothy Cotton, Andrew Young, and Bernice and Cordell Reagon and sponsored by the Highlander Folk School, SCLC, and SNCC) along with SNCC Freedom Singers from active civil rights movements in Albany, Selma, Birmingham, and several towns in Mississippi. They were joined by northern folksingers, Len Chandler, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. SNCC Freedom Singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, who later an important historian as well as the well-known leader of Sweet Honey in the Rock, wrote that her meetings with Bessie Jones and the Sea Island Singers changed her life. Jones, who felt strongly about civil rights, was also member of a prayer band that marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Beulah, Mississippi.[5]
Here are some links for you to view more.
1. For more information on her films go here: https://www.media-generation.com/DVD%20PAGES/Bess/master.pdf
2. Her book, Step It Down, available on Amazon and many other places.
3. A Performance on You Tube “Death in the Morning” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ouixlhXDfE&t=25s
4. Playing with children interview. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLv2ffdYH4E
I hope you have been blessed as I was with a small taste of African American Heritage as lovingly, blessedly preserved for us by Bessie Jones. Next time we will continue to explore Black Traditions with the story of Kwanza.
[1] Bessie Jones: For the Ancestors, Autobiographical Memories, John Stewart, editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 53.
[2] Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage (1972; reprint, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1987), p. 172.
[3] The quotes are from a wonderful article that I hope you will go to and read. With my left wrist broken, I am typing with one finger. I will summarize Bessie’s life, but I hope you will go here: https://www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/jones-0
[4] Bessie Jones: For the Ancestors, Autobiographical Memories, John Stewart, editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), p. 51.
[5] All of this and more from the article. https://www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/friends/jones-0
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