Videos

A short video telling the story of how Anna’s father, James Alexander, learned to read while enslaved to Pierce Mease Butler.

In May of 1926, a member of the staff of the Library of Congress made field recordings of Deaconess Anna Alexander singing 25 hymns. The original cylinder recordings degraded in quality so that her voice is only clear in some fragments. Hear she sings in the two clearest portions of audio which is offered here courtesy of the American Folklife Collection of the Library of Congress