Amazing Grace: The slave trade links of the ‘most beloved’ song in the US

Amazing Grace: The slave trade links of the ‘most beloved’ song in the US Alamy Amazing Grace might be the ultimate song of redemption, steeped in two centuries of black history, but its writer had also been a slave ship captain. "It's electrifying," says James Walvin, author of the new book Amazing Grace: The Cultural History of the Beloved Hymn. According to Walvin, Amazing Grace was "just another hymn to support a particular sermon". Amazing Grace's third verse speaks to "people who have been oppressed and hope for something better" – James Walvin Amazing Grace was so popular with slaves that some verses appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, merged with one from another English hymn, Jerusalem, My Happy Home. Alamy Recorded in 1972 at a LA Baptist Church, with the Southern California Community Choir, Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace album sold over two million copies in the US However it was performed, Amazing Grace was a spiritual tonic in troubled times: a song of limitless emotional utility.