US Friends host concert of spirituals
'The collaboration was organised to mark Black History Month and raise funds for Burlington Meeting’s Conference Center.'
US Friends marked the historical ties between Quakers and black freedom seekers last week with a concert of spirituals.
Burlington Meeting co-sponsored ‘Deep River: a Musical Tribute to the Negro Spiritual’ with the Essence of Harmony Choral Society. The collaboration was organised to mark Black History Month and raise funds for Burlington Meeting’s Conference Center. The site was laid down in 1991, but opened as a Quaker conference centre again in 1994.
Cherisse Bonefont, founder of the choral group, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she started the choir, which has white and black members, ‘to showcase these songs that are so important to our nation’s history… The more I studied these spirituals and the meaning behind them, I began thinking about what our ancestors had to go through during this time of enslavement and how these songs carried them through.’
In 1688, Quakers in Germantown wrote the first public petition protesting slavery from a religious institution. William Allison, a Quaker abolitionist who hid black freedom seekers, is buried in the cemetery. Peter Hill, the only black clockmaker of the time, is also buried there, as is Ockanickon, a Native American chief who befriended Quakers.
Founded in 1677, it is the second oldest Quaker settlement in the US, after Salem, New Jersey.
