Mrs. Lucie E. Campbell-Williams (1885-1963) was a prolific composer and educator who lived in Memphis, Tennessee. She was a pioneer in the fields of spiritual culture and education., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
March 15, 2013
By PRIDE Newsdesk
During the early 1900s, Mrs. Lucie Campbell Williams was associated with the National Baptist Convention. Mrs. H. Henryne D. White remembers her as a strong resourceful person.
“Mrs. Williams was someone to know during those years,” White said. “She did not only work with the Convention, she was a wonderful musician and lyricist, writing a number of popular gospel songs, like, ‘Something Within.’
“She was also the president of the Negro Education Association. In that position, she became a very strong advocate for African American teachers. It is wonderful to have the opportunity to remember her.”
Lucie Eddie Campbell (Lucie Eddie Campbell-Williams) was born April 3, 1885 in Duck Hill, Mississippi. She was an African American composer of hymns. Born to Burrell and Isabella (Wilkerson) Campbell, she was the youngest of nine children. Following the death of her father, her mother moved to Memphis, Tenn. with her children.
Isabella Campbell wanted her children to receive an education as well as being exposed to the performing arts. Her older sister, Lora, was given piano lessons. Lucie listened attentively and practiced the lessons on her own.
Lucie Campbell was educated in the public schools of Memphis. In 1899, she was graduated from Kortrecht High School (later Booker T. Washington) as valedictorian of her class and was awarded the highest prize for her Latin proficiency. After completing high school, Lucie passed the teachers’ exam and began her teaching career at Carnes Avenue Grammar School.
Later, she earned the baccalaureate degree from Rust College in Holy Springs, Mississippi, and the master’s degree from Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College.
At age 19, Campbell organized a group of Beale Street musicians into the Music Club. Other members later were added to form a 1,000-voice choir that performed at the National Baptist Convention. At the organizational meeting of the National Sunday and Baptist Training Union Congress held in Memphis in 1915, ‘Miss Lucie’ was elected as music director. She penned songs for the Congress and wrote musical pageants exhorting the young to give their lives to Christian service. In addition to writing religious music for the Congress, she also wrote the Congress’ study lessons, as well as other instructional materials.
In 1919, Lucie E. Campbell published her first song, ‘Something Within,’ which was followed by more than 100 others, including: ‘The Lord is My Shepherd,’ ‘Heavenly Sunshine,’ ‘The King’s Highway,’ ‘Touch Me Lord Jesus,’ and ‘He Understands, He’ll Say Well Done.’ Campbell also introduced promising young musicians such as Marian Anderson and J. Robert Bradley to the world.
Miss Lucie’ introduced Marian Anderson to the National Baptist Convention and served as her accompanist. In 1955, Miss Lucie’s loyalty and dedication to the Baptist Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress was recognized when she was named as one of the principal lecturers during the 50th anniversary session held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In 1946, she was named to the National Policy Planning Commission of the National Education Association. She was elected vice president of the American Teachers Association and from 1941 to 1946 she served as president of the Tennessee Teachers Association.
Lucie E. Campbell was an activist for civil justice. She defied the ‘Jim Crow’ streetcar laws when she refused to relinquish her seat in the section reserved for Whites, and as president of the Negro Education Association she struggled with governmental officials to redress the inequities in the pay scale and other benefits for Negro teachers.
On January 14, 1960, Campbell married her lifelong companion, Rev. C. R. Williams. She dedicated her song, ‘They That Wait Upon the Lord,’ to her husband.
The National Sunday School and the Baptist Training Union Congress of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., showed its appreciation to its ‘first lady of music’ when it declared June 20, 1962 ‘Lucie E. Campbell Appreciation Day.’ While preparing to attend the celebration and banquet held in her honor, Campbell-Williams suddenly became gravely ill and was rushed to the hospital.
After a six-month bout with illness, Campbell-Williams died on January 3, 1963, in Nashville. Her body was conveyed to Memphis and funeral services were held on January 7 at the Mount Nebo Baptist Church by pastor Dr. Roy Love.
Negro spirituals give root to American musical identity
Kevin C. Peterson | 11/29/2013, 6 a.m.
Bay State Banner
Negro spirituals evolved within American culture at a time when all seemed lost for the people who invented them.
Treated like work animals, American slaves possessed neither full human status nor citizenship in the country where they toiled. Yet over centuries of oppression, slaves forged a distinct identity from which emerged new aesthetic insights and a musical perspective unique only to blacks in the United States.
The grandeur of the Negro spirituals were in full auditory effect recently at the African Meeting House in Boston, which sits on the northern slope of Beacon Hill — a now tony neighborhood once home to Boston’s black community and a major stop on the Underground Railroad where escaping slaves from the South would arrive with the spirituals and freedom on their minds.
Some mournful and melodic, evoking sad suffering sounds, others upbeat and auspiciously hopeful, the spirituals communicate a wide-range of sacred musical innovation.
Giving witness to the vast hymnody of the spirituals at the African Meeting House were the New England Conservatory’s African American Roots Ensemble and Earth Tones, both highly-polished groups led by the charismatic, Nedelka Prescod.
Each group performed splendidly, giving harmonic interpretive accounts of the plaintive, ultimately optimistic songs that slaves created even in the midst of their human misery.
“Elijah Rock,” was performed to an upbeat, aggressive, mellifluous cadence. The song references the Old Testament prophet of the Talmud whom God favored for his fastidious religious practice. According to scriptures, Elijah raised the dead and foretold the coming of the Messiah — characteristics the American slave admired immensely and so casted his legacy into tonal form.
The 10-minute rendition of “Elijah Rock,” arranged by Jester Hairston, featured dramatic vocal scoring that tested the soprano and tenor ranges of the performers and included repeated, elongated, mesmerizing chants that were intended as part of the original worship song.
“The Negro spiritual literally had to do with the African-American singing a line over and over and over again until folks were in a trance. It was about bringing down a spirit,” said Prescod, a former New York City public school music teacher, who founded both ensembles which comprise students only.
The ensemble’s repertoire also includes precedents to the spirituals such as “works songs” invented on the cotton, rice and tobacco plantations of the deep south and bracing “field hollas,” music that was part complaint but also purposeful affirmation of the slave’s relentless efforts to search out the road to emancipation.
Hall Johnson’s “I’ve Been ‘Buked,” is one of the earliest Negro spirituals written in the post-slavery era. The grandson of a slave, Johnson wrote numerous spirituals that were inspired by songs handed down through oral transmission, usually at the local church. The ensemble’s version of “‘Buked” is contemplative and measured with an intensity that speaks to the slave having faith in the face of incalculable odds.
Tapping into the roots of the spirituals, the groups also recited religious and secular folk songs from such countries as Kenya, Nigeria and regions of South Africa, giving insight to the rhythmic foundations that would later support the music styles of such greats as jazz vocalist Billie Holliday, bluesman Robert Johnson, saxophonist Lester Young and gospel artist Mahalia Jackson.
The event, attended by nearly 100 listeners at the renovated church, was a fitting occasion for the African Meeting House, which, under the direction of Beverly Morgan Welch and Lynn Duval Luse, has been celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the freeing of American slaves.
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