Over My Head (Negro Spiritual) -- Vibes Week 16

Photo by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, July 1, 2024

So, when the prompt became "Your Roots," I knew I had to go all the way back to the songs I learned from my grandmother, who learned them from her grandmother in the days when her grandmother and her people composed these songs during their cruel enslavement ... despite dealing with crimes against humanity every day, and being told that the god of the people doing it backed it up, and that they were no more than beasts of burden anyhow, Creation itself, and music itself, told them there was a God Who did see them and was granting them freedom of their soul and spirit and their bodies too, some one by one as they escaped -- for many Negro Spirituals are escape guides -- and finally in 1865, the end of chattel slavery entirely. Eventually, God did destroy the society built upon their backs!

I am glad to come back to this song in a time in which political upheaval is growing greater and freedom for everyone not in the original Constitution as free and with civil rights is being threatened ... but God is no respecter of persons, and the soul WILL REMAIN FREE and free to seek its freedom even under that grace that belongs to ALL HUMANITY!