The Psalm That Sustained Slaves - Black Church (Psalm 23)

Enslaved African Americans clung to Psalm 23. "I shall not want"—when they were denied everything. "Green pastures"—while working fields that weren't their own. "Valley of the shadow of death"—under threat of the lash, the auction block, the lynching tree. Yet they claimed this psalm as their own. The Shepherd was WITH them when everyone else was against them. The table was prepared in the presence of oppressors. This psalm was survival, was resistance, was hope. It still is.