Martin Luther King Jr. had a deep respect for music as an instrument of change ... people were promised but didn't receive when the Civil War ended. And he touches on the root cause of those ...

Enslaved Africans seeking to reconnect with their lost cultural traditions brought African concepts to instruments in the American musical mainstream, creating popular new American music genres ...

Describing the African-American influence on American music in all of its glory an d variety is an intimidating—if not impossible—task. African American influences are so fundamental to American music ...

In the audio clip below, the bass singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson sings "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", one of the best known examples of African American music from this time.

It’s not only black history, it’s American history, it’s everybody’s history,”Tim Hodge, an African-American historian based ...

Describing the African-American influence on American music in all of its glory an d variety is an intimidating—if not impossible—task. African American influences are so fundamental to American music ...