Women in Music - Memphis, TN

Introduction
Women in church music have largely functioned through groups interested in improving the church as a whole. Women saw where changes needed to be made and tried to do the best they could to make them. Even with all their efforts, women have subtly remained at the role of organizer and teacher in the church, rather than leader. Women in leadership positions are largely unheard of, especially within the history of the Southern Baptist church. This is because most (but not all) churches do not allow women to have leadership positions. At the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in 1998, women were denied leadership in their families. At the same convention in 2000, they were denied leadership in the church when men were declared, based on Scripture, to be its leaders.

Nevertheless, women’s groups were formed to achieve goals such as organ buying. When there was a need for an organ in the church, women would get together and have bake sales or fundraisers to collect money for the organ. The church would come to benefit from the actions of these women in the church even if their actions were not leadership related.

Wellsprings of Leadership:
Lucie E. Campbell Williams Lillian Hardin Armstrong
Several women have emerged in the history of Memphis church music, becoming influential leaders, like Lucie E. Campbell Williams. She was born on April 30, 1885 (both of Campbell’s parents were ex-slaves) and died on January 3, 1963. Born not too long after the Emancipation Proclamation, she grew up in a society that thought African Americans were less intelligent than whites. Also during this time in history, women were considered less intelligent than men and less capable of creative work. All of these factors set the stage on which Campbell, an African American woman of the lower class, made a great success story out of her life.

Race and Gender Discrimination
While Campbell was alive, there were rifts between Black and White Baptist Churches. Black writers and theologians were not permitted to publish church music. Instead of their ideas being welcomed, they were restricted. Black Baptists were permitted only to design the front and back covers of Sunday school quarterlies. The rest of the book, consisting of the lesson materials on the actual pages, belonged to the White Baptists. This is just one of the experiences with discrimination that Campbell witnessed during her life.

Lucie Campbell faced these prejudices first hand; despite a lifetime of accomplishment her gender and race worked against her. She was a composer of the National Baptist Convention, educator, performer, music director, and spiritual leader. She wrote musicals, hymns, gospel songs, anthems, and arrangements of spirituals, all which brought in an audience from all over the U.S., parts of West Africa, and the Caribbean. Yet in spite of these successes (or quite possibly because of them), she was forbidden to speak from the pulpit at the Central Baptist Church in Memphis. Her speeches were spoken with “with the thunder of sermons” and were considered too powerful to be allowed. Only men were allowed to preach and because of this Campbell could not continue her speeches.

Achievements
Among a list of men, Lucie E. Campbell’s name appears as a member of the Congress for the new National Baptist Convention. The group met in Memphis, TN, in 1916, when Campbell was thirty-three. This meant she held a position in the Baptist Congress as well as a position as Music Director.

Before becoming a Music Director she was known in Memphis for her teaching skills and her contralto singing voice. She earned her A.B. degree from Rust College in 1927 and her M.S. degree from Tennessee State University in 1951. She was patient in her own academic work, taking 39 years to get through her graduate work—finishing at age sixty-six. She became Vice President-at-Large of the National Baptist Convention, President of the National Baptist Choral Society of the National Baptist Women’s Convention, finished fifty-five years of teaching, traveled, and married at the age of seventy-six.

Leading Others to Success: Campbell’s Compassionate Leadership
Her first Gospel hymn (the first gospel hymn to be written by a black woman) was dedicated to Connie M. Rosemond. Even in the beginning of her career she showed attention to others. On a typical night on Beale Street in Memphis, TN, Campbell overheard a group of men making a bet that one of them would be able to convince a blind man in the crowd to sing W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” Rosemond, who was the blind man, refused because he was a Christian and felt “Something Within” him asking him to sing songs of “light.” Based on this man’s words, Campbell wrote her first song, “Something Within.”

Have you that something, that burning desire?
Have you that something that never doth tire?
Oh, if you have it, that Heavenly Fire
Let the world know there is something within.

At the 1919 National Baptist Convention meeting she had Rosemond sing in front of the delegates and he performed beautifully. At the same convention Campbell introduced the famous contralto Marian Anderson and helped her to gain fame. Campbell helped her students by teaching them about topics that needed attention like black history. She was also known for showing great support for her student’s so they would succeed.

Songs
Campbell was a songwriter in the gospel-hymn genre whose lyrics were profound and deep. Here is a partial list of her gospel hymns:

Touch Me, Lord Jesus
Is He Yours?
Something Within
No Body Else But Jesus
The Lord Is My Shepherd
He Understands, He’ll Say “Well done”
Going Up The King’s Highway
Heavenly Sunshine
Just To Behold His Face
In The Upper Room With Jesus
Looking to Jesus
My Lord And I
Jesus Gave Me Water
When I Get Home

Changes Over Time
There have been many changes in the role of women in the church over time. Well into the 1900s, women were thought of as inferior and their role remained subservient to that of the men in the church. In the last half of the 20th century women made substantial progress in influencing the church. An equal number of men and women now sing in church choirs. There are also many female music directors and female writers of church music; however they are still not nearly as prevalent as men in this area. Women are also teachers, fund-raisers, and organizers of events in the church.

It is undeniable that women’s roles in churches of Memphis have changed over time. Women have been allowed to take on more roles in all aspects of the church, from everything from teaching to directing choirs. These changes in the church were due to the changing role of women in society. As women achieved more positions in the workforce, this translated into women obtaining more positions and roles in the church. Men as a whole no longer saw women as inferior and meant to serve the men, but now accepted that women were capable of and going to play an important role in churches across many religions.

Not Enough Change?
While there are some women hymn writers today, there are not nearly enough and it is still greatly dominated by men. According to many, the greatness of a hymn writer can be measured by taking a few things into consideration: the quantity of hymns written, the number of hymns accepted for publication, the number of hymnals and songbooks containing the writer's hymns, the frequency the writer's texts are sung in worship, the diversity of denominational publications, and influence of the writer on the work and style of other writers. Many of these aspects pose a problem to women writers. While lessened, there is still sexism in the church today. So while women may write many hymns, they will have a harder time getting a large number of them published into many different hymnals and in a large array of denominational publications because males are still dominant in this area and are in the positions to decide.

Very few women have the same power and responsibilities as do the men in the church. Many women feel that there are “insufficient roles for women in church leadership.” They are active in the church but they still do not have the dominant roles that the males do. Many denominations do not ordain women as clergy, nor do they encourage women toward liturgical, musical, or lay leadership within the congregation. But many churches maintain that while women do not have the roles of leaders of the church, they still play a vital role and are, indeed, the foundation of the church. Women are the organizers, fundraisers, and teachers, and without them, the church could not operate and be successful. It is clear that women in Memphis churches do have positions of authority and influence, but often with gender-derived limitations.

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Women in COGIC Lillian Hardin Armstrong
In the Christian church, there has long been a tendency to marginalize and subordinate women. Until recently, they have been excluded from positions within the clergy. However, one denomination in which women have played an integral part is the Pentecostal church. In the African American community, these female leaders were vital to the development of a sense of self- worth and pride in a society where they were disenfranchised. The work that they did extended outside of the sacred realm and into the greater reaches of the African American community.

In her book Saints in Exile, author Cheryl Sanders writes:

"As has been demonstrated in the case of the West Middlesex camp meeting, women ministers and leaders played a formative role in the Holiness movement during the early twentieth century. The Holiness movement had attracted significant numbers of blacks, beginning in the late nineteenth century, and the first black congregation in the Church of God was founded and pastured by a woman named Jane Williams in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886."

This trend towards admitting women to positions in the clergy has persisted within the Pentecostal church. In the Holiness denominations in particular (Church of God, Free Methodist Church, Salvation Army, and the Wesleyan Church), women comprise 25 percent of the clergy versus 7 percent in thirty- nine other denominations that currently ordain women. Both men and women in these particular denominations were historically downtrodden, so there was less of a tendency towards gender discrimination.

Worship services at the Pentecostal churches in Memphis are somewhat improvisatory. Everything seems unscripted, and the worship service is very dynamic. Everyone engages in the music, and members of the congregation are encouraged to shout praises. The preachers and worship leaders can be women, and the choir seems fairly balanced in terms of gender.

Sanders explains that worship services in the Sanctified church consist of visually striking performances by women. She writes, “These uniformed attendants [deaconesses, ushers, attendants, and nurses] almost invariably wear white, a color that signifies purity and consecration.”

The musical sphere in the Pentecostal church is shared by both men and women, but there are components of the church that cater specifically to women. Memphis COGIC churches have a women’s choir that is run by Dr. Bettye R. Nelson, which promotes unity among the women of the Church. They performed at the 57th International Women’s Convention in Orlando in the summer of 2008.

The choir is a subsidiary of the Women’s Department of COGIC. It recognizes the role that women play in the progress of the African American community, and thus serves to encourage women to pursue leadership roles and solidarity regardless of historical misogyny. Music is powerful, and it is one of many vital components that empowers the women of COGIC. If the women of COGIC are able to coalesce through music among other things, they can engage in the broader struggles that African Americans face as a community.

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			Introduction Women in church music have largely functioned through groups interested in improving the church as a whole. Women saw where changes needed to be made and tried to do the best they could to make them. Even with all their efforts, women have subtly remained at the role of organizer and teacher in the church, rather than leader. Women in leadership positions are largely unheard of, especially within the history of the Southern Baptist church. This is because most (but not all) churches do not allow women to have leadership positions. At the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in 1998, women were denied leadership in their families. At the same convention in 2000, they were denied leadership in the church when men were declared, based on Scripture, to be its leaders. Nevertheless, women’s groups were formed to achieve goals such as organ buying. When there was a need for an organ in the church, women would get together and have bake sales or fundraisers to collect money for the organ. The church would come to benefit from the actions of these women in the church even if their actions were not leadership related. Wellsprings of Leadership: Lucie E. Campbell Williams Several women have emerged in the history of Memphis church music, becoming influential leaders, like Lucie E. Campbell Williams. She was born on April 30, 1885 (both of Campbell’s parents were ex-slaves) and died on January 3, 1963. Born not too long after the Emancipation Proclamation, she grew up in a society that thought African Americans were less intelligent than whites. Also during this time in history, women were considered less intelligent than men and less capable of creative work. All of these factors set the stage on which Campbell, an African American woman of the lower class, made a great success story out of her life. Race and Gender Discrimination While Campbell was alive, there were rifts between Black and White Baptist Churches. Black writers and theologians were not permitted to publish church music. Instead of their ideas being welcomed, they were restricted. Black Baptists were permitted only to design the front and back covers of Sunday school quarterlies. The rest of the book, consisting of the lesson materials on the actual pages, belonged to the White Baptists. This is just one of the experiences with discrimination that Campbell witnessed during her life. Lucie Campbell faced these prejudices first hand; despite a lifetime of accomplishment her gender and race worked against her. She was a composer of the National Baptist Convention, educator, performer, music director, and spiritual leader. She wrote musicals, hymns, gospel songs, anthems, and arrangements of spirituals, all which brought in an audience from all over the U.S., parts of West Africa, and the Caribbean. Yet in spite of these successes (or quite possibly because of them), she was forbidden to speak from the pulpit at the Central Baptist Church in Memphis. Her speeches were spoken with “with the thunder of sermons” and were considered too powerful to be allowed. Only men were allowed to preach and because of this Campbell could not continue her speeches. Achievements Among a list of men, Lucie E. Campbell’s name appears as a member of the Congress for the new National Baptist Convention. The group met in Memphis, TN, in 1916, when Campbell was thirty-three. This meant she held a position in the Baptist Congress as well as a position as Music Director. Before becoming a Music Director she was known in Memphis for her teaching skills and her contralto singing voice. She earned her A.B. degree from Rust College in 1927 and her M.S. degree from Tennessee State University in 1951. She was patient in her own academic work, taking 39 years to get through her graduate work—finishing at age sixty-six. She became Vice President-at-Large of the National Baptist Convention, President of the National Baptist Choral Society of the National Baptist Women’s Convention, finished fifty-five years of teaching, traveled, and married at the age of seventy-six. Leading Others to Success: Campbell’s Compassionate Leadership Her first Gospel hymn (the first gospel hymn to be written by a black woman) was dedicated to Connie M. Rosemond. Even in the beginning of her career she showed attention to others. On a typical night on Beale Street in Memphis, TN, Campbell overheard a group of men making a bet that one of them would be able to convince a blind man in the crowd to sing W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” Rosemond, who was the blind man, refused because he was a Christian and felt “Something Within” him asking him to sing songs of “light.” Based on this man’s words, Campbell wrote her first song, “Something Within.” Have you that something, that burning desire? Have you that something that never doth tire? Oh, if you have it, that Heavenly Fire Let the world know there is something within. At the 1919 National Baptist Convention meeting she had Rosemond sing in front of the delegates and he performed beautifully. At the same convention Campbell introduced the famous contralto Marian Anderson and helped her to gain fame. Campbell helped her students by teaching them about topics that needed attention like black history. She was also known for showing great support for her student’s so they would succeed. Songs Campbell was a songwriter in the gospel-hymn genre whose lyrics were profound and deep. Here is a partial list of her gospel hymns: Touch Me, Lord Jesus Is He Yours? Something Within No Body Else But Jesus The Lord Is My Shepherd He Understands, He’ll Say “Well done” Going Up The King’s Highway Heavenly Sunshine Just To Behold His Face In The Upper Room With Jesus Looking to Jesus My Lord And I Jesus Gave Me Water When I Get Home Changes Over Time There have been many changes in the role of women in the church over time. Well into the 1900s, women were thought of as inferior and their role remained subservient to that of the men in the church. In the last half of the 20th century women made substantial progress in influencing the church. An equal number of men and women now sing in church choirs. There are also many female music directors and female writers of church music; however they are still not nearly as prevalent as men in this area. Women are also teachers, fund-raisers, and organizers of events in the church. It is undeniable that women’s roles in churches of Memphis have changed over time. Women have been allowed to take on more roles in all aspects of the church, from everything from teaching to directing choirs. These changes in the church were due to the changing role of women in society. As women achieved more positions in the workforce, this translated into women obtaining more positions and roles in the church. Men as a whole no longer saw women as inferior and meant to serve the men, but now accepted that women were capable of and going to play an important role in churches across many religions. Not Enough Change? While there are some women hymn writers today, there are not nearly enough and it is still greatly dominated by men. According to many, the greatness of a hymn writer can be measured by taking a few things into consideration: the quantity of hymns written, the number of hymns accepted for publication, the number of hymnals and songbooks containing the writer's hymns, the frequency the writer's texts are sung in worship, the diversity of denominational publications, and influence of the writer on the work and style of other writers. Many of these aspects pose a problem to women writers. While lessened, there is still sexism in the church today. So while women may write many hymns, they will have a harder time getting a large number of them published into many different hymnals and in a large array of denominational publications because males are still dominant in this area and are in the positions to decide. Very few women have the same power and responsibilities as do the men in the church. Many women feel that there are “insufficient roles for women in church leadership.” They are active in the church but they still do not have the dominant roles that the males do. Many denominations do not ordain women as clergy, nor do they encourage women toward liturgical, musical, or lay leadership within the congregation. But many churches maintain that while women do not have the roles of leaders of the church, they still play a vital role and are, indeed, the foundation of the church. Women are the organizers, fundraisers, and teachers, and without them, the church could not operate and be successful. It is clear that women in Memphis churches do have positions of authority and influence, but often with gender-derived limitations. back to top Women in COGIC In the Christian church, there has long been a tendency to marginalize and subordinate women. Until recently, they have been excluded from positions within the clergy. However, one denomination in which women have played an integral part is the Pentecostal church. In the African American community, these female leaders were vital to the development of a sense of self- worth and pride in a society where they were disenfranchised. The work that they did extended outside of the sacred realm and into the greater reaches of the African American community. In her book Saints in Exile, author Cheryl Sanders writes: "As has been demonstrated in the case of the West Middlesex camp meeting, women ministers and leaders played a formative role in the Holiness movement during the early twentieth century. The Holiness movement had attracted significant numbers of blacks, beginning in the late nineteenth century, and the first black congregation in the Church of God was founded and pastured by a woman named Jane Williams in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886." This trend towards admitting women to positions in the clergy has persisted within the Pentecostal church. In the Holiness denominations in particular (Church of God, Free Methodist Church, Salvation Army, and the Wesleyan Church), women comprise 25 percent of the clergy versus 7 percent in thirty- nine other denominations that currently ordain women. Both men and women in these particular denominations were historically downtrodden, so there was less of a tendency towards gender discrimination. Worship services at the Pentecostal churches in Memphis are somewhat improvisatory. Everything seems unscripted, and the worship service is very dynamic. Everyone engages in the music, and members of the congregation are encouraged to shout praises. The preachers and worship leaders can be women, and the choir seems fairly balanced in terms of gender. Sanders explains that worship services in the Sanctified church consist of visually striking performances by women. She writes, “These uniformed attendants [deaconesses, ushers, attendants, and nurses] almost invariably wear white, a color that signifies purity and consecration.” The musical sphere in the Pentecostal church is shared by both men and women, but there are components of the church that cater specifically to women. Memphis COGIC churches have a women’s choir that is run by Dr. Bettye R. Nelson, which promotes unity among the women of the Church. They performed at the 57th International Women’s Convention in Orlando in the summer of 2008. The choir is a subsidiary of the Women’s Department of COGIC. It recognizes the role that women play in the progress of the African American community, and thus serves to encourage women to pursue leadership roles and solidarity regardless of historical misogyny. Music is powerful, and it is one of many vital components that empowers the women of COGIC. If the women of COGIC are able to coalesce through music among other things, they can engage in the broader struggles that African Americans face as a community. back to top


	• Introduction • Lucie E. Campbell Williams • Women in COGIC • Summary