Concertized versions of African American sacred songs have historically fused Western, classical musical traditions with black expressive culture rooted in oral tradition practice. In her discussion of the role of choral singing in the Black schools of her youth in Georgia, historian and composer-performer, Bernice Johnson Reagon, explains how these songs were taught by (mostly) Black women to prepare students for a life outside of their communities. Historically composed and “learned…while they were being sung,” Reagon asserts that African American sacred songs were space-making agents, born out of acts of community care, that communicated the desires of Black people as they faced extraordinary circumstances in their everyday lives. Teaching concertized versions in public schools thus facilitated intergenerational knowledge transfer through the presentation of spirituals as tools for survival.In this paper, I engage a critical archival inquiry to explore key transformations of the African American sacred song tradition through the lens of black geographies, critical cultural studies and black study. I follow Reagon in positioning these songs as archive, tracing their origins from camp meetings in the 1800s, through concertized versions performed by Jubilee Singers at the end of the 19th century, to their present-day inclusion in standardized music curriculum in the United States. In doing so, I situate the history of teaching and learning African American sacred music culture in public schools within an anti-oppressive pedagogical framework that highlights the ways in which Black educators historically innovated music education to serve the changing needs and desires of their communities.I end with a reflection of my own experiences at the predominantly African American primary school of my youth in 1980s, St. Louis, Missouri. There, we sang Freedom Songs in service of social protest and as vehicles for improvised musical expression. As a young, White vocalist at community music events, I was taught by my teachers that if the voice is present, so too are the people. Finally, I propose looking to past contributions of educators to enrich discussions on reforming music education in North America since many community practices, and the educators who facilitated them, remain marginalized in the study of how music is formally learned and taught.