Swing Low, sweet Chariot.

Historical Overview

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was composed by Wallis Willis. Willis was a slave for the Choctaw Indians in the old Indian Territory. He was inspired by the Red River which reminded him of the Jordan River and of the Prophet Elijah being taken to heaven by a chariot.[1]

After the Civil War Alexander Reid, a minister at a Choctaw boarding school heard Willis singing the songs and transcribed the words and melodies. He sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Fisk University in Nashville was in dire straits at the turn of the 1870s. The buildings that the school had used since opening in 1866 were in need of major repair, teachers were severly underpaid and the food supply for students was dwindling. In an attempt to raise necessary funds, a group of student singers, under the direction of treasurer and music instructor George L. White, came together to perform during a benefit concert tour of the Midwest. Although they started the tour on October 8, 1871 with only $1 of institution money, they returned seven months later with $20,000 -- enough to pay the school's debts and purchase Fort Gillen, the site of the current university.

Traveling to England in April 1873, the group raised more than $50,000 in the little more than a year. In the first seven years that they were together, the Fisk Jubilee Singers raised more than $150,000 for the university.[2]