Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern Recording Trip
As part of its American Memory digital archive, the Library of Congress presents The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip, which it describes as: "a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. Beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939, John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center), and his wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax, recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers. These recordings represent a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs."
Of interest to scholars and students of African-American religious history are such items as:
- Recordings of the religious oratory of Rev. Mose Platt of Taylor, Texas and Reverend J. R. Gipson or Merryvile, Louisiana, among others.
- Recordings made of the congregations of Johnson Place Baptist Church in Livingston, Alabama and New Zion Baptist Church in Clemson, South Carolina, among others.
- Religious and secular music from inmates in the Goree Prison Farm in Huntsville, Texas, featuring Hattie Ellis and other women who were broadcast on the radio as the "Goree Girls."
- Photographs of black churches taken during other field trips made by the Lomaxes.
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