Abstract
When beginning to think about how I wanted to approach the understanding of the Holy Spirit from the perspective of African Americans, the words of an old slave spiritual began to run through my mind. Over and over again, I heard words that spelled out the faith of a people in the process of creation, emerging from a past, hidden and forbidden to them, in Africa, and looking ahead to a new beginning in a strange land overshadowed by the knowledge that they were welcome only for the quality of their labor rather than the value of their lives.