The Gospel Choir

The Gospel Choir
The East Carolina University Gospel Choir. Image Source: ECU Gospel Choir Reunion, ECU Alumni.

By 1978, the year the ECU Gospel Choir was organized, the African American student body had become an increasingly vibrant presence on campus. A newspaper, Ebony Herald, largely devoted to African American news on campus and in the world, had begun publication in 1975. An African American Cultural Center was established and housed in the refurbished Y-Hut (behind the Infirmary), and then subsequently named after one of ECU’s first African American faculty, Ledonia Wright. A Black Arts Festival Week and a Black Awareness Week emerged, only to be soon enveloped by Black History Month. Black professors, including ECU alum Dr. Dennis Chestnut, joined the faculty, and African American undergraduate enrollment reached new highs, with over one thousand black students on campus in 1976. The year before, Ms. Jeri Barnes, a black coed, was chosen Homecoming Queen. And SOULS (Society of United Liberal Students) explored new dimensions of campus life by sponsoring festive fashion shows in the recently completed Mendenhall Student Center. Beginning with Alpha Phi Alpha, the first black fraternity on campus, a number of other fraternities and sororities were organized, providing African American students with new bases for brotherhood and sisterhood at ECU.

The Gospel Choir, first known as the Gospel Ensemble, emerged during the fall of 1978 as part of this exceptionally eventful period in African American history at ECU. Its founding director was Ms. Johnice Johnson, a music major from Goldsboro who later pursued a career in the ministry. By 1980-81, the ensemble had grown from 20 voices to 45, prompting a new name, the ECU Gospel Choir.

In the 1980s, under the leadership of Gregory Horton, the Gospel Choir nearly doubled its membership, approaching and then surpassing 100 voices. In 1982, the choir served as ECU ambassadors through a spring tour – during Spring Break — of Greenville, Fayetteville, and South Carolina. In years to follow, the choir performed in Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Orlando, and any number of smaller venues. The choir pioneered a tradition of fall and spring concerts in Greenville, either on campus or at area churches, and was often featured in campus remembrances of MLK Day, highlighting through its performances, including numbers such as “We Shall Overcome,” the spiritual foundations of Dr. King’s work as a civil rights leader. In 1987, it produced a contemporary gospel album, Land Called Glory, recorded live in Wright Auditorium.

The purpose of the choir has been variously described in sectarian terms as glorifying God, but more generally as an expression of “one main ingredient that is necessary for anyone who wants to excel … LOVE.” The choir has also described itself as “one big family” that in its rehearsals and get togethers comes to “experience the Lord’s blessings because of love and rendering praise unto his name.” However, in the early 1990s, the religious standing of the Gospel Choir became the subject of controversy on campus, especially in the Student Government Association with some SGA representatives claiming that as a religious organization, the Gospel Choir should not be funded. The matter was eventually decided in favor of the Gospel Choir. While still recognizing a spiritual dimension, Gospel Choir members emphasized the importance of its efforts in relation to preserving gospel music as an art form.

Along with live performances and video recordings on YouTube and Facebook, the Gospel Choir has participated in many competitions and received a number of awards. In 1992, it hosted the first ever North Carolina College Music Gospel Festival, bringing to ECU groups representing every major college and university in the state. On September 20, 2012, the choir, at the invitation of U. S. Representative G. K. Butterfield, performed at the Congressional Black Caucus Leadership Weekend in Washington, D. C. District Director of the Office of Congressman Butterfield, Ray Rogers, praised the Gospel Choir as “great ambassadors for the Pirate Nation.”

More recently, due to the pandemic, the ECU Gospel Choir’s membership has atrophied, at least in numbers, but surely as one of the oldest and largest largely African American groups on campus, the choir will continue to thrive as an energetic presence at ECU, in the community, region, and nation, advancing into the twenty-first century a musical genre with profound and deep roots in American musical and spiritual history.

Sources

Additional Related Material

East Carolina University Gospel Choir

A photograph of the East Carolina University Gospel Choir, 1989.

Citation Information

Title: The Gospel Choir, 1978

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 4/12/2021

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