 Yes, I thought I might try to do it before I totally lost my motel. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, one of the great sorrow songs, and one of the songs I often heard my grandmother sing. But before I go any further, I want to let you know I'm dedicating this brief personal journey through African American spirituals to my grandmother, and I also want to thank you for taking the time to join me in this venture, now getting back to sorrow songs. By the time I got to know my grandmother, she was obviously well into her adult life, with all the challenges and frustrations that can bring. So I usually heard sorrow songs from her, and I loved them, and I sing them myself. But I thought there must have been a time when she sang some of the songs that I've sung at camp, or sang in my second grade. We'd love to sing cowboy songs and spirituals in the second grade. And I started imagining her life on the farm in Louisiana. And each of you, or every two of you, should have a sing-along sheet. And I'm looking at song number one, and I'm imagining, by the way, things in different pockets. Now I have the my thing in one pocket and something else in another. So I'm kind of reaching around. At any rate, you know, I thought of the first song here. I could imagine that as maybe one of her first goodnight prayer songs. And so I'd like us to sing it together, to get a feeling of what it might have been in childhood. And I'll get you started here. Another thing I should mention on this sheet, you will see some words in italics. And those are words for me, although I don't mind you singing them. But if I sing them, then you come in after we're honoring the call and response tradition in African-American spirituals. Not necessary, but nice. Here we go. My lord, all night, all... There was a lot of work for the children to do. My grandmother had ten siblings. But they also played hard also. And so I'm looking at this second song, and I'm imagining them dramatizing, get on board little children. That is, linking arms and playing like they're the train, get on board. And I'd like you to join me again. Here we go. Imagine my grandmother's childhood. I thought of another song that they probably had fun dramatizing. That is number four. I'll get you started on that. I want to apologize because we have in this song, heaven and chillin', and I've sung so many different people's arrangements. I'm very inconsistent about the pronunciations I have. So just bear with me. I was happy just to get this typed up. First time I used my Microsoft office. And there's nothing like incentive to get you to learn. And my grandmother loved working in the garden. She loved picking the fruit. She loved hoeing the weeds out of the vegetable gardens. She just liked everything about being outside in the garden. And so for our next song, number five, I imagine my grandmother coming across a fallen flower that's so delicate and beautiful. And she's a little child and she cradles it in wonderment. And so in the second verse where it says he's got the little bits of baby in his hand, I'd like you to say little bits of flower. I'll get us started here. It's such a good join along. I had to eventually leave my grandmother's childhood in my imagination because you know what happens to all of us? We grow into adulthood. And my grandmother got married in her late twenties. And I do recall asking her, because she was very attractive and I know she wanted to get married, what took you so long? And she told me that out in the rural area where she lived there were very few eligible men. So at this point I have to interject with a little history. World War I began in 1914. Now with the onset of that war the migration from Europe started declining. And by 1950 it had the migration to the U.S. I should say. By 1915 it had declined quite dramatically. Now this decline in European immigration resulted in a great increase in available jobs in factories in various parts of the United States. Another bit of history. We are well aware that the U.S. is known for welcoming huddle masses yearning to be free. But it's seldom said that the U.S. has created huddle masses yearning to be free. And nowhere was there a greater concentration of huddle masses yearning to be free than in the southern part of the United States. And when yearning saw opportunity that began not the slow trickle that had always been there but a steady stream to the west, to the north, to the east. It's called the Great Migration. And it's known as one of the greatest internal migrations in the U.S. So between 1915 and 1970 approximately 6 million African-Americans pulled up roots, left everything behind with hopes of finding a better life. Now, my grandmother was one of those. And her husband, unlike my grandmother and many of her siblings, wanted to go deeper into the south for work at lumber mills. You just felt very confident and certain that work would be there. My grandmother was hearing the beckoning call from at least one brother in California, plus she had always, once she realized the kind of environment she was living in, she loved the farm, but she had to become aware of the greater world around her. And as she became aware of the greater world around her she began to bode the south. She would not even go back to the south on vacation. All of her siblings migrated out of the south and they brought their parents with them. So I had the pleasure of a great grandmother until I was about nine years old. So you combine the beckoning call of a sibling with a yearning to get out of the hellhole of the south, plus my grandmother had a strong desire for more education. She had had nine years of it, but she wanted her children to have all the educational opportunities they could get. So with that combination of factors, my grandmother married less than two years with a little infant in her arms, took off on the Union Pacific to come west. By the way, there were three major geographical routes out. There was the eastern route, and I can't tell you that train's name, but it was headed to places like New York. And then there was a central route going into the Midwest to places like Chicago. People in Louisiana and Texas, for the most part, headed toward California. And the Union Pacific would stop at L.A. and Oakland and various places along the West Coast. Well, after making this very heroic move, many of the migrants had to face a certain kind of reality. They had fled racial terrorism and racial apartheid in the south, but they found that the north was only slightly better. And that brings me back to spirituals, believe it or not. I'm looking at some faces saying a song. By that time, by the way, my grandmother migrated in 1920. And by that time, the spirituals were undergoing musical changes of all types. But they became good old standbys for people who had to adjust to a reality that wasn't as glittering as they had hoped. So some of these old sorrow songs and some of them I call wailing wall songs held people in good stead. They were like a pillar to lean on as they dealt with realities. If we try that over in songs, it's simply referring, you can assume in other songs, it's referring to Africa. Other songs refer to where they grew up and sometimes it's a reference to the Underground Railroad. You just can't be sure. One of the what I call comfort food going home songs is On Your Sheet at number seven. And this song has maintained popularity with young and old. I'll get us started here going home. I have to say she was around, she said it, it didn't take anybody by surprise, she didn't say I need to go home or anything like that. She'd scratch her head and say, I think the good Lord has forgotten me. She had outlived all her siblings and she had been somewhere in the middle. She had outlived all her friends. She had had to have a leg removed because of a clogged artery which slowed her down. She'd been a hard working, moving around person and now she felt, well, this is it. Even though we felt she had a heart to carry her to 110. Now, although a somber person, my grandmother did have a sense of humor and I often tapped into it. So, about the third time she said in my presence, I think the good Lord has forgotten me. I began to sing an old spiritual that I had learned in camp and that's number eight on your sheet and it did provoke a smile from her. I started preparing, you know, I can't stay here forever. I said, oh yes you can, I said. But I was very sympathetic with her situation and one evening when she was 106 and a half years old, she closed her eyes. She closed her mouth and never opened them again. She never again spoke to anyone. She took no water, no nutrients. I knew what she was doing. I wouldn't let them force feed her in any way. And nine days later, with the same dogged determination that brought her in that first great migration, she went into her second great migration. It took a lot of will to do what she did. But she bypassed all the doctors, all the bosses. I'm going. Now, her story isn't quite over. One thing I didn't mention was when she journeyed to the west in search of a better educational opportunities for her children. She had something specific in mind. She had heard of a city called heaven, but in this case it was called the University of California Berkeley. She wanted to make Berkeley her home. And believe it or not, here's a single mom working her whatever's offered as a domestic help, saving money. And she did buy a home in Berkeley. And Berkeley was my first home. And so I have planned a third great migration for her. She's had two great migrations, this third great migration. I want her not to only to have resided in Berkeley, but I want her to be at UCB. And in a few years she will be there seated at the table and she will be passing the baton along because her name and my mother's name will be on a scholarship for needy students. And the third great migration is the great migration into higher education. Now the soundtrack I had hoped to use at this point at the conclusion of the program was a grandiose, very majestic spiritual ride on King Jesus. It ride on King Jesus, no man can a hinder me. Well, my grandmother had that kind of dogged determination. But I decided for this group it would be better to have a song that we can all sing together. And it also underpins her life into ten minutes after nine. I really appreciated your being here and enjoyed your harmonize. This young man is going to beat rhythm the way he did before because that's what I wanted to perform to her. This is a little passage music. Oh, that sounds good. We ought to get together. Okay folks.