Scandalize My Name

Lyrics

The lyrics below are preserved exactly as documented in nineteenth- and early twentieth-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

"Scandalize My Name" is a spiritual unusual in its subject: it is not about Pharaoh, or the Jordan, or the Day of Judgment, but about an ordinary, painful human experience — being gossiped about and betrayed by people one had treated as friends. To "scandalize my name" is to spread malicious talk, to damage a person's standing in the community. The song was documented among the spirituals collected by James Weldon Johnson and John Wesley Work, and it became a signature piece for the great bass-baritone Paul Robeson.

Cultural Significance

The song turns an eye inward, onto the life of the community itself. Its betrayals are domestic and intimate: "my sister," "my brother," "my preacher" — the very people who should be most trustworthy. Each took the singer's offered "right hand," the gesture of fellowship, and then, "just as soon as ever my back was turned," spread damaging talk.

This candor about conflict within the community is part of what makes the spirituals a complete record of a people's inner life, not merely an idealized one. The enslaved community was bound by solidarity and mutual dependence, but it was also human — subject to jealousy, gossip, and betrayal — and the tradition was honest enough to sing about that too. The wry, almost comic indignation of the refrain ("Do you call that a sister? No, no!") lets the community laugh at a wound it also plainly feels.

There is a deeper resonance, too. For a people whose reputations and relationships were among the few things they could call their own — in a world that denied them nearly everything else — the damage of a "scandalized name" was no small matter. The song defends the dignity of a good name against those who would casually destroy it.

Scholarly Notes

James Weldon Johnson and John Wesley Work documented "Scandalize My Name" among the spirituals treating the community's own moral and social life — a reminder that the tradition addressed the whole range of human experience, including its disappointments.

Paul Robeson's recordings and recital performances made the song internationally known, and his interpretation — by turns wounded, ironic, and defiant — brought out both its humor and its genuine hurt. It has since been performed by Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, and others in the concert-spiritual tradition.

The song stands as evidence against any sentimental flattening of the spirituals: they could be songs of grievance and gentle satire as readily as songs of praise and deliverance.