Book Description

Fight On brings together three dynamic elements to tell the story of the African American Spirituals tradition: fifty-nine paintings from a series by Aaron F. Henderson, the lyrics of fifty-six spiritual songs, and narrative writings by scholars of art and culture, and Henderson himself. The elements come together to make this more than an art book, a lyric book, autobiography or cultural commentary. Fight On is a celebratory document of African American culture, giving evidence to how Black people in a nation that grew rich and powerful on the strength of their unpaid labor survived and liberated themselves.Two things have been a consistent in the life of Aaron F. Henderson: making art and listening to spirituals-at home, in church, and later in college. He has also always valued history, the scholarly work required to write it, and recognizes its power expressed in different ways, including music. Fight On reveals how music has served as medicine, spiritual sustenance and a means of communication for Black people in general, and himself in particular. He studies great African American thinkers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois who in The Souls of Black Folk called spirituals sorrow songs that "articulate messages of the slave to the world," messages of suffering, despair, freedom, faith, hope, and the power of the spirit. Henderson references Frederick Douglass who wrote about the double meanings in their words and how every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The paintings in Fight On show us the spirit of Harriet Tubman who used the spirituals as a signal of her arrival to facilitate the escape of others by way of the Underground Railroad. The songs kept people working in the fields, on the railroads and marching during the civil rights movement. The songs are the foundation of Black music, i.e., blues, jazz, R&B, gospel, Rock & Roll, rap, and hip hop. Du Bois said it this way "by fateful chance the Negro folksong---the rhythmic cry of the slave---stands today not simply as the sole American music.