We Shall Walk Through The Valley: A Song History

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“We Shall Walk Through the Valley” is an African American spiritual built on the valley of the shadow of death in Psalm 23, and modern hymnals credit it to African American tradition rather than to a known writer.[1] Its earliest known printing may be in Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867), the collection edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison, where it appears as No. 95, “We will march thro’ the valley,” among the songs from Virginia and credited to Allen’s initials.[2] The hymnologist C. Michael Hawn finds that the melody printed there already follows much the same contour as the one sung today, with some added ornament.[1] Under its present title it was printed as No. 74 in J. B. T. Marsh’s The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with Their Songs (London, 1876), the history and songbook of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.[3] Hawn describes that Fisk setting as a plainer, hymn-like arrangement for four voices, closer to the modern tune, with the refrain in the wording still used.[1]

A quiet river valley at evening with trees on both banks, cattle drinking in the stream and blue hills in the distance.

Robert S. Duncanson, Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream, oil on canvas, 1871. A river valley painted in 1871 by Robert S. Duncanson, shown for the valley of the spiritual's title; the painting has no connection to the song.

The song moved into African American song collections of the early twentieth century, among them Gospel Pearls (1921), Edward Boatner’s Spirituals Triumphant Old and New (1927) and John Wesley Work III’s American Negro Songs and Spirituals (1940), and Hawn observes that with these books the verses took on a steadier order, though the chorus did not change.[1] The New National Baptist Hymnal of 1977 credited the words and the music (Hawn thinks the arranging was meant) to an A. L. Hatter, a person about whom Hawn could find no information.[1] A 1970 arrangement by William Appling later carried it into Mennonite, Covenant and other denominational hymnals, and Hawn lists choral settings by Moses Hogan, Undine Smith Moore and others.[1] Hymnary.org lists the text as anonymous, and Voices Together (2020) prints it as an African American spiritual, indexed among songs for funerals, hope and peace.[4]

Lead Belly recorded it for Moses Asch around October 1943, as part of a medley of spirituals on one side of the album Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly, and the discography of his Asch sessions in the same notes lists him recording it again around February 1947.[5] Unlike “We Shall Overcome,” it did not become a public anthem of the 1960s civil rights movement, though Hawn believes it consoled sufferers in that decade much as it had consoled earlier generations.[1] Larry Conger sets it in DAD tuning in American Spirituals, a 29-page tab book of spirituals from Fingers Of Steel that comes with an MP3 recording of each song.[6]

Our book that contains the song "We Shall Walk Through The Valley"

Sources

  1. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: We Shall Walk Through the Valley in Peace".
  2. Internet Archive (Smithsonian Libraries): "Slave Songs of the United States" (1867).
  3. Internet Archive (Getty Research Institute): "The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with Their Songs" (1876).
  4. Hymnary.org: "We Shall Walk Through the Valley".
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection" (liner notes).
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
  7. Image: Robert S. Duncanson, Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream, oil on canvas, 1871. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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