Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part II of at three part pancocojams series about ring shouts in the United States.
This post presents excerpts from a Wikipedia page and other online sources about historical documentation, recollections, and anecdotal accountings of ring shouts in the 20th century and in the 21st century United States.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/09/historical-documentation-of-ring-shouts.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents excerpts from a Wikipedia page about historical documentation of ring shouts in the 18th Century and 19th century United States.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/09/videos-of-african-american-ring-shouts_01862185101.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. That post showcases YouTube videos of ring shouts and YouTube videos of religious activities that developed from ring shouts.
These videos showcase traditional ring shouts, the Winnsboro Easter Rock, and the custom in some churches of the choir marching around the sanctuary. In the churches that follow this custom, that "march around" occurs during the portion of the church service that is dedicated to the collection/offering (i.e. receiving money from church members and other attendees of the church service).
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/08/two-videos-of-new-jersey-church-choir.html for the pancocojams post entitled "One Jamaican Church Choir March Around & Three Black American Church Choirs March Arounds."
This post presents information about the custom of some Christian church choirs in the United States circling the church sanctuary in a movement that I refer to as "march arounds".
Although this custom can be directly traced to its Jamaican roots (and the Jamaican ancestry of many of those United States churches' pastors and many of the Jamaican ancestry of the members of those churches, I also believe that these choir march arounds are a variant form of 18th and 19th century ring shouts. Furthermore, I believe that the still current custom in some (particularly) Black American Christian churches of people "feeling the Holy Spirit" during the church service and running around the sanctuary is also a variant form of the ring shout.
****
SEVERAL ONLINE SOURCES ABOUT RING SHOUTS IN THE UNITED STATES (20th Century & 21st Century)
These online sources are presented in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
ONLINE SOURCE #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_shout
"The ring shout is a distinctive African American ritual dance originating with enslaved Africans in the southern United States where worshippers move in a counterclockwise circle while hand-clapping, foot-patting and shuffling, stick-beating to foreground the rhythm, and call-and-response singing.[1][2][3] It is an oral tradition passed down in African American families since the era of slavery. Elders and religious leaders pass down songs and shouts to the younger generation. The practice of sacred circle dancing combines spirituals and rhythmic music, reflecting its Christian and African spiritual and cultural importance. Most scholars agree it is a "Black holy dance"[4] that developed in the living quarters of enslaved African practitioners[5] and Black Christian "praise houses"[3] through a fusion of Central and West African spiritual traditions (like counterclockwise circle dances, polyrhythms, and ancestor veneration),[1][3][6] and revivalistic Christian practices[3][4] in either the eighteenth[7][1][6] or nineteenth century.[4] The ring shout is part of the Black musical tradition.[8]
[...]
Oral interviews and ethnographic studies
Shirley Boteler Mock, who is a research fellow and author at the University of
Texas at Austin, conducted a study of Black Seminole communities in Mexico and
Texas and interviewed African American women. Mock's book was published in 2012
and the women interviewed spoke of their ancestors practicing the ring shout in
churches in Brackettville, Texas in the 1930s. The Black Seminole women who
practiced the ring shout combined Gullah Geechee spiritual beliefs of rootwork
(herbalism) and dream reading.[38]
In 2017, the Smithsonian Institution Folkways Recording conducted interviews in Gullah Geechee communities in the Sea Islands of Georgia. The Mcintosh County ring shouters share their ring shout culture and family history. According to the ring shouters, the songs and dances in the ring shout were taught to them by their grandmothers and elders in the community and that their grandmothers learned the ring shout and songs from their elders and grandparents,
The ring shout was believed to have died out by the mid-20th century, but in the 1980s, music folklorists heard of a community of traditional ring shouters near Eulonia, Georgia that had practiced it for generations. African American ring shouters of Bolden or "Briar Patch" perform the ring shout at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church to bring in the New Year during Watch Night.[41]
Continuation
Griffin Lotson, whose ancestry traces back to enslaved
Africans from Crescent, Georgia, is a slavery ring shout instructor and manager
of the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters. Lotson and the ring shouters travel the
United States and the world teaching people about the history of the ring shout
and its development in enslaved communities.[42] In a 2018 interview Lotson
says this about the rings shout:[43]
In 2019, BBC World Service recorded Gullah Geechee people performing the ring shout in Sierre Leone. Black shouters performed the dance in West Africa to return the tradition back to its spiritual origin.[44]
In 2024, to learn about their culture, which stems from the African traditions of enslaved people on the lower Atlantic coast, Gullah Geechee youth connected with ring shout elders. The Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble (the Rockers), accompanied by youth participants from Winnsboro, Louisiana, traveled to Darien, Georgia, to perform alongside the Gullah Geechee ring shouters. Future generations experienced the ring shout through this cultural exchange. The Mcintosh County ring shouters continue to teach African Americans the history and development of the ring shout at special events.[45]
[…]
Regional variations
Many scholars point to an African origin of the ring shout,
suggesting that enslaved people developed the dance from their traditional
African spiritual practices. According to Hazzard-Donald, "Like dance in
West Africa, the African American Ring Shout was seen as a sacred enactment
performed in a sacred context."[23] Because the earliest accounts of the
African American ring shout "do not locate the sacred circle in a
Christian context," Hazzard-Donald maintained that it was from the
"African sacred circle" that the ring shout was developed by African
Americans. She also stated that this counter-clockwise, sacred circle dance
"appears to have been done universally among African American bondsmen,
and later among freedmen."[23] The ring shout then evolved into various
forms throughout the generations.[50]
Mardi Gras Indians performed the ring shout at Congo Square.
According to the Louisiana Slave Database, which details the
ethnicities and African origins of enslaved people who lived in Louisiana
between 1719 and 1820, 35.4 percent of them belonged to the Bakongo and Ambundu
ethnic groups from West-Central Africa, 10.9 percent were Mandinka, 7.4 percent
were Mina from the Costa da Mina, 7.1 were Wolof from Senegambia, and 5.5 were
Bambara people.[51] Despite their cultural differences, they gathered in Congo
Square on Sundays for worship, with the ring shout "[bringing] them
together, transcending cultural barriers and hastening the creation of a
pan-African cultural mix with numerous points of intersection."[52]
Sharing the space of the Square, the "dusky
dancers" grouped themselves by ethnicity and formed their own circles to
perform the ring shout. "Each circle featured an 'orchestra' of drums,
jawbones, and “a peculiar kind of banjo."[52] Louisiana Voodoo rituals
were integrated into the ring shout.[53] Practitioners of Hoodoo practice the
ring shout to commune with ancestral spirits.[54][55] Ring shouts were
sometimes held in honor of the dead at jazz funerals by the Mardi Gras
Indians.[56] Today, ring shouts in New Orleans are accompanied with musical
bands which later influenced the second line parades.[57][58][59]
During slavery and after emancipation, other African American communities practiced the ring shout during funerals, a tradition that is similar to West African burial rituals in Sierra Leone.[60][61] Harriet Tubman attended a Black funeral in the South Carolina Lowcountry and they performed the ring shout which Tubman called a "spiritual shuffel."[62] In the Sea Islands, Gullah Geechee people create music during the ring shout using wooden sticks and clapping their hands singing Christian spirituals.[63] They also formed a circle and marched around a grave singing and shaking hands.
[…]
The Great Migration of Black people from the Lowcountry to
New York and Chicago influenced culture in Northern African-African
communities. Jazz piano and drumming became part of 1950s Harlem ring shouts,
substituting the broomsticks that men used to rhythmically beat wooden
floors.[65] Authors Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama say this about the
different styles:[50]
“As the dance survived throughout three generations of enslavement, it took on
different forms. There were also several rules established in an effort to keep
the ring shout a part of African American culture. The ring shout could be
danced in two forms— one form was performed in Georgia and South Carolina and
the other in North Carolina and Virginia. The latter type was performed as a
solo dance with onlookers doing verbal call-and-response, whereas the first
form was performed as a group dance. Very early on the rules were established
for the dance. One of the more important rules was the rule against the
dancers’ crossing their legs or feet.”...
****
ONLINE SOURCE #2
From https://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/the-art-of-the-shout/article_62168c4c-41ff-11ee-ac8a-e70e2be41304.html The Art of the shout
Words by Larry Hobbs | Photos by Derrick Davis and Pricilla
Boudreau Aug 24, 2023
"Centuries of enslavement and unspeakable deprivation in a
foreign world an ocean away from their homeland could not extinguish the
enduring spirit of the African soul.
Through it all, that indomitable essence survived, thrived, and flourished. It went on to imbue profound and indelible influences on the American experience, particularly in music.
Those contributions are present in all musical genres, from the joyous syncopation of jazz, the irresistible rhythm of Delta blues, or the stirring tempo of the bluegrass banjo (an African instrument.) But the very essence of that musical legacy may have been lost to posterity if not for a resolute group from a wooded pocket of rural McIntosh County.
Because of the tightknit Gullah Geechee community of Briar Patch, the ring shout still bears testament to humanity’s unquenchable yearning for freedom. A stick beats a rhythm that is accompanied by foot stomping and handclapping, creating a mesmerizing beat. Dressed in his Sunday best overalls and a straw hat, a songster belts out baritone verses of redemption and deliverance.
Ladies donning heirloom dresses and headscarves respond melodically, shuffling in a counterclockwise movement while pantomiming the song’s narrative.
The origin of this intricate melding of song, rhythm, percussion, and choreography took flight under bondage during enslavement in the Antebellum South. But its roots are firmly planted in Africa.
That McIntosh County group alone nurtured this jubilant practice into the 20th century and up to present times — from the famed singer Bessie Jones of the Sea Island Singers to the contemporary McIntosh County Shouters.
The McIntosh County Shouters have performed on stage from
Washington, D.C., to Boulder, Colo., and were recently featured in the Civil
War-era independent film, Freedom’s Path. The Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters
splintered off from the original group; it also has performed to national
acclaim on stage and in film.
Participants dedicate themselves to maintaining the spiritual elements that crossed the Atlantic in the hearts of their forebears.
“I can definitely say that the ring shout has always stirred something special in me,” says Brenton Jordan, 36, a stick man for the McIntosh County Shouters.
The contemporary incarnation of the ring shout serves as a
direct link to long-established cultural traditions, says Griffin Lotson of the
Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters.
“We keep it raw, trying to give it to you like you were on
the plantation back in the day,” Lotson says. “We stand on the shoulders of the
generation that we learned from. They stood on the generation before that, and
the generation before that.”
This stretch of Coastal Georgia is steeped in Gullah Geechee culture, defining a proud people who established self-sustaining communities along coastal Georgia following emancipation.
The ring shout is integral to that heritage.
Its incorporation of these most basic elements was born of necessity during enslavement. But it would be a disservice to describe the overall result as simple. The rhythm produced is complex and multifaceted, while the songster’s call and the shouters’ response teems with underlying meanings.
Accompanied by the songster, the stick man and a clapper, the shouters vigorously shuffle in a counterclockwise movement that is not quite a dance. They are careful not cross their feet or lift them, as their adopted Christianity forbade it. Deep body bends, swaying arms and movements by these ladies portray story lines such as that of an eagle’s liberating wings in “Move, Daniel.”
“You can’t just say, ‘We’re putting together a group, and we have a shout,’” explains Brenton, who received the United States Artists’ 2023 Beresford Award. “No, you don’t. If you’re not allowing yourself to rise, crack and fall, if your feet are not doing what the stick says to do, then you’re not doing it.”
Brenton learned the tradition at his grandmother’s knee in the Briar Patch community. In addition to mastering the complex beats of the stick man, Brenton’s considerable singing chops are occasionally featured on songs like “Blow, Gabriel.”
“If you grew up in Briar Patch, you were exposed to it at an early age,” says Brenton, who also pursues African dance. “There was always a spiritual pull to it. My grandmother did it and my great-grandmother did it. For me being a lover of music and a lover of African dance culture, it was as though I were unconsciously drawn to it.”
Polytheistic West Africa tribal practices, as well as north African Islamic practices, infused with Christian expression for the enslaved. The term “shout” may refer to the “Afro-Arabic term “saut,” sometimes pronounced “shout,” meaning a fervent dance around the Kabaa in Mecca,” Rosenbaum writes.
West African spiritual influences are evident in the shouters’ counterclockwise movements. These represented the sun’s movements in the African sky, following cycles of birth, life, death, and afterlife.
[...]
Lydia Parish of St. Simons Island promoted the shout and its attendant African musical traditions in the early 20th Century. The daughter of abolitionists with a love of African American music, she persuaded practitioners Bessie Jones and Joe Armstrong to form the Sea Island Singers. With help from black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner and folklorist Alan Lomax, their music reached national audiences at Carnegie Hall and in music festivals from Newport to the Smithsonian.
Writes historian Melissa Cooper: “Lydia Parrish began a
relentless quest to prove that the slave songs she collected and the ring shout
performances she observed were definitive evidence of African survivals in
America.”
Meanwhile, the good folks of Briar Patch continued without fanfare to answer the inner calling of the ring shout. This most commonly occurred at the Bolden Home Lodge or after church services at the Mount Cavalry Baptist Church. A longstanding tradition there included marathon New Year’s Eve sessions during Watch Night. This longstanding African American tradition celebrates the enactment of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 during the Civil War.
Around 1980, former Sea Island Singers Frankie and Doug Quimby were pleasantly surprised to learn of these ring shout traditionalists in McIntosh County.
Writes Rosenbaum: “With the help of folklorists Fred Fussell and George Mitchell, the Quimbys located the shouters of Bolden (Briar Patch), who were persuaded to form a group that would present the traditional practice … all the elements of this presumed extinct tradition were presented conscientiously, much as the elements had been reported by 19th century observers.”
The subsequent Smithsonian Folkways recording, The McIntosh County Shouters: Slave Songs from The Coast of Georgia, put the ring shout on the national map. It led to the aforementioned performances on stage and screen for the McIntosh County Shouters, and the formation of the Gullah Geechee Shouters.
[…]
In the present day, professor YaTande Whitney Hunter asserts that "groups that sustain the Ring Shout as 'authentic' to the Gullah-Geechee culture are mostly Christian based in their religious affiliation".[80] According to Johnson, "The continued observance of the ring shout ritual throughout the slave community, especially among those 'converted' to Christianity, demonstrates beyond question the tenacious power and influence of the slaves' African cultural inheritance."...
****
ONLINE SOURCE #3
From https://www.facebook.com/groups/2413757252123955/posts/3527450157421320/
Black History Stories,Admin, August 6, 2026
The Evolution of the Ring Shout Tradition in African
American Culture
…”It was New Year's Eve of 1980, in a cinder-block church
standing in a field of live oaks off Highway 99, about fifty miles south of
Savannah. The visitors had driven down to see a thing the books said no longer
existed.
They were told to sit in the back and stay out of the way,
and when the preaching finished the benches went back against the walls. A ring
formed on the cleared floor, a man laid a stick into the boards where a drum
should have been, and the singing started.
What the visitors noticed first was so small they almost did
not bother writing it down.
Nobody's feet crossed.
The shuffle went counterclockwise, the foot barely leaving
the wood. Not one person in that ring let one foot pass over the other, because
that was not a style choice but a rule.
Ask the shouters of Bolden why and they will tell you plain.
Crossing your feet would make it dancing, and dancing is a sin.
That is the reason they give, and it is a true one. Now hear
how the rule got taught.
The old sisters who ran that ring were daughters of London
and Amy Jenkins, born into slavery and freed in their own lifetimes. If a child
came into the circle and did it wrong, one of those women would put out a hand
and pop him straight out of it.
You could stand at the wall and watch until you learned. You
could not come back in until your feet were right.
Hold that picture for a second. A grandmother in a country
church, born to people who had been somebody's property, physically removing a
child from a circle for letting one foot cross the other.
She was not being fussy about a dance step. She was teaching
him how to carry a thing that people had once been whipped for keeping.
The counterclockwise turn, the one voice calling and the
many coming in underneath it, the way the whole body keeps the time, all of it
came across the water. The ring itself is African.
Lawrence McKiver, who led that ring for most of a century,
said it about as plainly as it can be said. He said every bit of it is an
African act.
The rule about the feet is not African. That one came from
white missionaries who preached that dancing was sin, and it got welded onto
the old thing by people running a very careful piece of arithmetic.
They surrendered the single motion that would have gotten
the whole practice called dancing. Everything else they kept.
[…]
McKiver used to tell about what that did to the houses. A
house in that country sat up on rocks, and when a room full of people got the
shout going properly, the building would work itself off its piers.
The next morning the neighbors came back, lifted the house,
and set it down on the sills again. Then that night they did it a second time.
Lawrence McKiver was born in Bolden in April of 1915. His
mother was Charlotte Evans, daughter of London and Amy Jenkins.
Two pairs of hands stood between him and people who had
learned those songs while it was still against the law.
Of the old people who taught him, he said they were
"doing something to keep their mind off the past tense." He said it
was their happiness.
When folklorists finally found Bolden in 1980, McKiver was
the one who stood up to lead. The group took a name, the McIntosh County
Shouters, and carried the thing to Wolf Trap, then to Lincoln Center.
In 1993 the National Endowment for the Arts gave them a
National Heritage Fellowship. He was still leading the ring in his
mid-eighties.
He died on March 25, 2013, at ninety-seven, in a nursing
home on St. Simons Island. A cousin named Carletha Sullivan confirmed it to the
papers.
The shouters of Bolden live within walking distance of one
another, on land they own. It is the same ground their great-grandparents were
owned on.
Nobody there is in danger now. No one is going to be whipped
over the shape a foot makes on a floor.
They still do not cross them.
Freddie Palmer took the lead songster's place after McKiver
went. The songs live now in a small number of throats, and that number has
never once gone up on its own.
It took a legislature, a militia, and a hundred and
twenty-five years of law to take the drum away. Finishing the job would take
nothing at all now, just one Watch Night that comes and goes with nobody in the
room.
Every Watch Night so far, the benches have gone back against
the wall in that cinder-block church and somebody has stepped onto the floor
without crossing their feet. No law requires that, and nothing guarantees the
next one.”
****
ONLINE SOURCE #4
[This is the complete reprint of this article.]
From https://www.independent.com/2011/05/24/santa-barbara-ring-shout-gears-up-d-c/ "Santa Barbara Ring Shout Gears Up for D.C. "
Historically Rich Group Gets Invited to Perform at
Smithsonian
By L.D. Porter, Tue May 24, 2011
"Sometimes passion and responsibility go hand in hand. That’s
certainly true for Frances Moore, the leader of the Santa Barbara Ring Shout
Project, which is dedicated to preserving the oldest African-American
performance tradition in North America, the ring shout.
Often considered a form of dance, ring shout was once a religious ritual, first practiced by slaves in the Southern states. Written observations of ring shout first appeared in the mid-19th century, but by the early 20th century, the tradition was assumed to have died out. Fortunately, it came to light that slave descendants living in the coastal region of Georgia and South Carolina (known as the Gullah people) had maintained this important cultural practice. Currently, several well-known ring shout groups actively perform in the area.
The term “shout” refers to the movement of ring shout participants, who take short shuffling steps in a counterclockwise direction as a “sticker” or “stick man” beats the rhythm with a wooden stick. Singers stand to the side of the circle, clapping and singing in a call-and-response pattern. (The clapping and beating of time with the stick apparently once stood in for drums, which were often banned by slave owners fearful of uprisings.) Historians have traced the ring shout’s likely origin to West Africa, where burial ceremonies were often performed in ring formation, with mourners moving in a counterclockwise direction around the grave.
For Moore, participating in ring shouts harkens back to her childhood in Forest Home, Alabama, where the call-and-response songs she heard in church fascinated her. “I just remember holding still, observing every word, watching every movement of their bodies,” she recalled recently. “I did not know back then that they were doing a part of ring shout; it didn’t have a name. I just saw the people in my church clapping and stomping and singing in a call-and-response way.”
The Santa Barbara Ring Shout Project was founded by Moore and Mark Ravitz in 2007. The group is multicultural and currently has eight active members (the youngest of whom is only 4 years old). Singing songs composed by Moore, the group has performed in Santa Barbara at the Solstice Parade, the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, and the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance’s annual festival. It is the only group of its kind on the West Coast. In recognition of this fact, the Santa Barbara Ring Shout Project has been invited to participate in a giant ring shout at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum this summer. The event is expected to be the largest ring shout ever assembled. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Moore noted, adding that she hopes First Lady Michelle Obama, who has Gullah ties, will be in attendance. (The group will perform this Friday at Trinity Episcopal Church to help raise funds for the trip.)
Moore is deeply committed to carrying on the ring shout
tradition and maintaining the continued existence of the Santa Barbara Ring
Shout Project. She points out that “the purpose is to educate, to come together
as a community. I want us to continue to educate, celebrate, and pass it along
to the next generation. Ring shout transcends age, race, and gender, and the
energy in the circle transcends worldly things.”
-snip-
Santa Barbara is a city in the state of California (USA).
Moore’s first name isn’t given in this article.
****
ONLINE SOURCE #5
[This is a complete article reprint about "Easter Rock", a variant form of the United States ring shout.]
From https://64parishes.org/entry/winnsboro-easter-rock "Winnsboro Easter Rock"
Held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, this women-led
vigil includes counterclockwise percussive foot movement and call-and-response
singing.
by Susan Roach [No publishing date is given for this article. However, it features a photograph of the 2019 Easter Rock observation. This article was retrieved on September 12, 2026]
"Easter Rock, a rare tradition apparently originating in
pre–Civil War years in northeast Louisiana plantation Black Baptist churches,
continues today in Winnsboro. Held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, this
women-led Easter Eve vigil ritual has roots in both West African traditions and
Christian beliefs. Based on the tradition’s characteristics, which include
counterclockwise rhythmic percussive foot movement accompanied by
call-and-response singing, scholars Joyce Jackson and Janet Sturman suggest that
Easter Rock grew out of African American religious ring shout and rock
traditions. Thanks to practitioner Hattie Addison Burkhalter, who received a
2021 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship for her
preservation efforts, the Winnsboro Easter Rock in Franklin Parish is the only
group known to continue to practice the tradition.
History of Easter Rock in Winnsboro
Scholar H. F. Gregory writes that Easter Rock once ranged down the Mississippi floodplain in the northeast Louisiana Delta from East Carroll Parish to Concordia Parish. At the 1993 Delta Folklife Field School, Gregory provided history on the disappearing tradition, prompting participant Anne Staten to search for it. Through her cousin, R. B. Kelly, Staten found it and arranged for researchers to attend the service led by Hattie Addison Burkhalter at the Original True Light Baptist Church in Winnsboro. Burkhalter had learned the tradition from her mother, Ellen Addison, who passed it along when her declining health prohibited her participation. Burkhalter stepped up with support from her extended family and friends, especially her daughter, Laketa “PK” Addison, and her late husband, Booker T. Burkhalter, who died in 2018 at age 104.
Since Easter Rock in Winnsboro is not affiliated with a particular church, practitioners must seek available venues with wooden floors to amplify their footsteps for their rock. By 2010 the Original True Light Baptist Church building had another denomination in it and needed significant repairs, so Burkhalter secured alternative locations, including the American Legion Hall, a community center, a new church, and the Princess Theater. With repairs completed on the renamed Original True Light Church of God in Christ in 2015, Easter Rock returned and continued there despite the losses of Burkhalter’s mother and husband, until COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings prohibited the ritual in 2020 and 2021. During these years the church building further deteriorated, so the 2022 and 2023 rocks were held in different modern church buildings on concrete slabs with wood platforms for the pulpit area so that the rockers’ percussive footsteps had some amplification.
The Ritual Pattern
The ritual pattern of the Winnsboro Easter Rock remains similar to rocks documented in Concordia Parish in the 1940s, except the service now runs 7–10 p.m. instead of all night. Whenever possible, church pews are reoriented. In older plantation churches, pews are not attached to wood floors, so they can be turned toward the center aisle, where a long table is covered with a white cloth—the rock’s focal point—representing the sepulcher of Christ. The service opens with a devotional, consisting of an a cappella congregational hymn—often a call-and-response Dr. Watts song—followed by a scripture reading, an inspired prayer, and congregational hymns. A mistress of ceremonies presides over the program and provides spirit-filled messages and support for music performers, including a variety of vocal solos and groups, usually unaccompanied. The heartfelt musical performances heighten the emotions in preparation for the symbol-laden Easter Rock.
Reading the paper program, the mistress of ceremonies announces that the “rockers are in charge.” As a member of the rock sings the opening lines of another Dr. Watts hymn, lights are dimmed, and women dressed in white gather at the door. The women echo biblical stories of the wise and foolish virgins and the women who visited Christ’s tomb. In earlier days the women wore white Sunday attire; today the women wear white skirts, shirts, and tennis shoes. Sometimes young men in white shirts and black slacks may participate in the rock ritual itself; they might also sing solos in the song service or offer prayers. The rockers’ white attire sets them apart and symbolizes purity, innocence, and death.
The women, bearing lighted oil lamps, march slowly into the dimly lit sanctuary and encircle the table, singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” at a funereal tempo. The song reflects their joining Christ in his death as they approach the sepulcher: “Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.” According to Burkhalter and Addison, the lamps represent the twelve tribes of Israel. After the first circle around the table, each woman is given one of twelve cakes, representing the twelve disciples, along with containers of red punch to place on the table. Burkhalter says cake and punch symbolize the body and blood of Christ. Then the leader takes the banner—a four-foot pole topped with a flat disk covered with white material and multi-colored crepe paper streamers. Echoing banners carried in West African funeral processions, the banner symbolizes Christ’s cross or Moses’s staff.
The rockers circle the table counterclockwise and move into a call-and-response spiritual, “O, David,” telling the story of David’s overcoming Goliath with a rock. The lines of the song are called out by a caller, often Emma Hagan, and the rockers respond with the refrain, “O, David.”
The rockers’ shuffle steps echo the rhythms of African drums on the wood floor while they sing “The Lord’s Prayer” until exhausted. The singing procession is joyous because, as Burkhalter says, participants celebrate Christ’s resurrection by “rockin’ to a risen savior.” Addison credits the “rock” practice to the biblical prophet: “Elijah rocked to the coming of the Lord.” The side-to-side movement of the rockers and the banner is called “rocking.” Addison insists rocking is not dancing: “Move your foot from one side to another, but you ain’t supposed to cross your legs. . . . They say you’re dancing when you cross your legs.”
While the rockers rest, more singers perform, and an offering is taken. Then the rockers resume, and finally members of the congregation may join them. The rock always closes with the rockers chanting, “I think I’ll go on home back to my Father’s house” as they exit. The service closes with remarks and prayer, followed by rockers serving the symbolic cakes and punch to the congregation in an exultant reunion atmosphere."
****
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