Robert Sonkin Alabama and New Jersey collection
By: collected by Robert Sonkin
Contributors: Colley, Nathaniel Sextus, 1918-; United States. Farm Security Administration; Archive of Folk Song (U.S.)
Published: 1937
Language: eng
Number of pages: 64
Subjects: African American farmers; Traditional medicine; African American gospel singers; Sharecropping; Interviews; Slave narratives; Jubilee singers; Spirituals (Songs); Religious life and customs; Gospel music; United States. Farm Security Administration; Music; Blues (Music); Social life and customs; English Hymns; United States; Texts; African American families; Field recordings; Ethnomusicological collections; English Folk songs; Folklore; African American school children; Social conditions; African Americans
Other titles: Robert Sonkin Gee's Bend collection,; Gee's Bend collection,; Voices from the days of slavery.
Description: Collection comprises sound recordings, recording logs, and transcripts of song texts, correspondence (1938), field notes, reports, and ethnographic information from a field recording trip made by Robert Sonkin to Shell Pile, near Port Norris, New Jersey, and from there to Gee's Bend and other locations in Alabama in June-July 1941. Sonkin's field notes describe the African-American community of Shell Pile, named for the oyster shucking industry established there. Sonkin recorded African-American quartets performing gospel music in Shell Pile, N.J. June 25, 1941. However, most sound recordings in this collection were made in various locations in Gee's Bend, Alabama, and document African-American prayer meetings, sermons, gospel music, spirituals, hymns, jubilee quartet singing, blues, school children singing, recitations, as well as conversations. These include discussions about health and home remedies, about the Gee's Bend school, and about the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Gee's Bend project. Narratives by two former slaves, Isom Moseley and Alice Gaston, were recorded in Gee's Bend on July 21, 1941. Sonkin also recorded gospel quartet music in Bessemer, Alabama; interviews in Camden, Alabama; hymns in Rehoboth and Greensboro, Alabama; conversation in Palmerdale, Alabama; and blues in Selma, Alabama. There are typescript copies of research materials about Gee's Bend, Alabama, (1937-1939 and undated) including a paper, "An exploratory study of the customs, attitudes and folkways of the people in the community of Gee's Bend," by Nathaniel S. Colley of the Tuskegee Institute. Other reports in the collection on farm production, the construction of new housing and barns, home economics, and community health were issued by government agencies including the Farm Security Administration, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, which administered the Gee's Bend Project.
Notes: Instantaneous recordings made on Presto aluminum-base lacquer discs in Shell Pile, N.J. (2 discs); and in Bessemer, Camden, Gee's Bend, Greensboro, Palmerdale, Rehoboth, and Selma, Alabama (62 discs) from June 25 to around July 22, 1941.

Robert Sonkin Alabama and New Jersey Collection (AFC 1941/018), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Sound recordings of interviews with Alice Gaston and Isom Moseley from this collection are available online as part of the National Digital Library American Memory presentation, "Voices From the Days of Slavery."

Duplication of the collection materials may be governed by copyright and other restrictions.

Robert Sonkin; Donation; 1941.

Arthur Rothstein, "Gee's Bend, between Selma and Mobile, Ala. Feb.-Apr. 1937," Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LOT 1616 (M)

Marion Post Wolcott, "Gee's Bend, between Selma and Mobile, Ala. May 1939." Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LOT 1617 (M)

Bibliographic information for titles in this collection is found in the online resource, Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog from the American Folklife Center:  Search for audio titles in the Robert Sonkin Alabama and New Jersey Collection.