William H. Johnson
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, c.1944, Oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1983.95.52, © William H. Johnson / Smithsonian American Art Museum; Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Commentary by Victoria Emily Jones
In the African American imagination, Elijah’s ascent has long represented the hope of freedom, of being whisked up and away out of suffering and oppression. One of the most famous African American spirituals is Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and it was the direct inspiration for William H. Johnson’s painting of the same name.
The refrain goes, ‘Swing low, sweet chariot, / Coming for to carry me home’. And the verses include the words: ‘I looked over Jordan and what did I see? … A band of angels coming after me’; ‘If you get there before I do … tell all my friends I’m coming too’.
Like most spirituals, the language is coded. In one sense, the song is a plea for death, with ‘home’ meaning heaven, the promised land, just ‘over Jordan’. In another sense, ‘home’ could signify an earthly place outside the bounds of slavery, a place of relative safety and liberation and reunion with family—such as the northern US or Canada, over the Ohio River. A clandestine ‘chariot’ was in operation in the early to mid-nineteenth century, run by Harriet Tubman and a network of others (a ‘band of angels’), who transported escaped slaves up to freedom.
In Johnson’s visual translation, a two-wheeled horse-drawn car sweeps down from the upper left, fiery orange and red and filled with stars. Eleven angels in brightly coloured dresses and anklet socks hover above, one of them waving hello to the aged man on the opposite side of the river, who runs to catch his ride. His arms are stretched wide, ready to embrace his new home. Joy awaits him across the river, which the yellow flowers seem to anticipate. God’s presence, the sun’s orb, glows intensely, the same deep orange as the chariot’s exterior. That’s the glory into which the man is heading.
References
Johnson, James Weldon, and J. Rosamond Johnson. 2002 [1925–26]. The Books of American Negro Spirituals, new edn. (Boston: Da Capo)
Powell, Richard J. 1991. Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson (New York: Norton)
