The current year, 1944, is the centennial of the Sacred Harp. Its significance is being recognized at every singing convention big and little. Singers are looking backward over the historic years, looking roundabout and trying to assess the present state of their beloved institution, looking forward and wondering about the Sacred Harp's destiny during the second hundred years of its life.
In looking backward the singers are gladly paying a tribute of gratitude and honor to B. F. White and his disciples who brought the Sacred Harp into being and to those later venerable men and women who fostered it after White ceased his earthly labors. The descendants of the founder are planning for this summer a big centennial celebration to be held on or near the spot in western Georgia where the Sacred Harp was first used in convention. The descendants and friends of the late Seaborn and Thomas Denson are to hold a singing festival lasting the entire week preceding and including the fourth Sunday in September at Double Springs, Winston County, Alabama. The high point in the week's festivities will be the unveiling of a granite memorial on the courthouse square in Double Springs bearing the following inscription:
To the Memory of the Brothers
| SEABORN M. DENSON | and | THOMAS J. DENSON |
| (1854-1936) | (1863-1935) |
who devoted their lives and gifts to composing
and teaching American religious folk music, as
embodied in the Sacred Harp, in most of the
southern states but notably in Alabama
THIS STONE IS PLACED
in the midst of their field of labor by the loving
hands of their families, pupils of their singing
schools, and legions of singers and friends in the
summer of the year 1944
THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE SACRED HARP,
while
"Uncle Seab" and "Uncle Tom" sing on—
"Way over in the promised land."
