Ithaca College

The Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers (DCJS) will celebrate the art of African American sacred music known as Negro Spirituals on Sunday, Dec.11, at 3 p.m. in Ford Hall in the Whalen Center School of Music.

DCJS has more than 80 members of different ages (18 to 78), heritages and backgrounds, including almost 20 Ithaca College voice students who perform many of the solos and IC faculty, including artistic director Baruch Whitehead. The mission of DCJS is to preserve the Negro Spiritual and use its themes of sorrow, despair and hope to promote racial healing and social justice.

“In the post-election aftermath, many people are expressing fear, hopelessness, and helplessness. These spirituals have a unique ability to convey perseverance and hope and to pull people together to gather strength to get through difficult times,” says Baruch Whitehead, associate professor of music education at Ithaca College, and founder and artistic director of the DCJS.

The group, which is slated to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., this Mothers Day (May 14), is named in honor of civil rights pioneer Dorothy Cotton, an Ithaca resident who worked in Dr. Martin’ Luther King, Jr.’s inner circle as education director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s. In 2007 the U.S. Congress officially designated African American spirituals a “national treasure."

The concert is free, with a suggested donation of $20.