Great Day

Lyrics

The lyrics below are preserved exactly as documented in nineteenth-century primary sources. Dialect, spelling, and phrasing reflect the living tradition of the communities who created and sang these songs. Standardizing the language would erase the historical record. See our editorial standards for more.

Historical Context

"Great Day" is a jubilee shout — a fast, driving song built for movement and collective energy. Its language is martial and triumphant, drawing on the biblical imagery of Zion, the holy city, and on the rebuilding of its walls (Nehemiah, Isaiah), as well as on the "day of jubilee," the Levitical year of release when debts were forgiven and captives freed (Leviticus 25). The song was carried by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, documented in the Fisk repertoire, and later collected by John Wesley Work and James Weldon Johnson.

The "day of jubilee" was among the most potent phrases in the vocabulary of the enslaved. It named a scriptural promise of liberation that could be applied directly to their own condition — a divinely ordained day when captivity would end.

Cultural Significance

The verses of "Great Day" adopt the language of holy war. "We want no cowards in our band... we call for valiant-hearted men" summons the community to courage and commitment, and the singer takes up "breastplate, sword, and shield" to "march out boldly in the field." This is the armor of God described in Ephesians 6, spiritualized weaponry for a spiritual battle — but sung by an enslaved people, the martial imagery carried an unmistakable charge of resistance.

The refrain's forward motion — "the righteous marching" — makes the song itself an act of mobilization. To sing it was to rehearse collective advance, to imagine a people on the move toward a promised triumph. Its confidence is total: God is going to build up Zion's walls. The outcome is not in doubt.

This resonance carried the song forward. "Great Day" and its language of jubilee fed into the freedom songs of the twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement, where the imagery of marching, of a band of the valiant-hearted, and of a coming day of deliverance found new and literal application.

Scholarly Notes

James Weldon Johnson classified songs of this type as "jubilees" — distinct in tempo and spirit from the sorrow songs — and noted their rhythmic drive and their function in generating communal energy and resolve.

John Wesley Work documented the martial strand of the spirituals, in which the imagery of battle, armor, and marching expressed a theology of active struggle rather than passive endurance — a corrective to later stereotypes that cast the spirituals as songs of resignation alone.

The song has remained a favorite of choral and jubilee ensembles, its refrain among the most immediately recognizable and rousing in the tradition.