Musical Practices of Early Black Americans

Samuel Mordecai, Richmond in Bygone Day (Richmond, 1856), 297.

no

free?

voice

voice

tobacco factory

working in a factory

sacred music

Richmond, Virginia

It is now a tobacco factory, and its original dimensions are trebled, if not quadrupled in size. A host of blacks now work there in twisting tobacco where the sacred Host was formerly elevated by the priest. A solution of liquorice has taken the place of holy water; but possibly the establishment may be employed in the manufacture of "Christian's Comfort," a commodity already mentioned. Here also fine psalmody may be heard, as of yore, and the organ loft is still occupied by a choir, but one whose music ceases on Sabbaths and Holy days.

Mordecai writes how there is a tobacco factory that a lot of Black Americans work at. The tobacco factory was once a church. He can often hear its workers singing psalms.