Gospel Hymnody and the Holiness Music of Mary Lena Lewis Tate is an outgrowth of the chance crossing of two disparate institutions established in Tuskegee, Macon County, Alabama, The Tuskegee Institute of Religion and Sacred Music and the Tuskegee Human & Civil Rights Multicultural Center.  In 2009, the Multicultural Center was awarded a grant to participate in a joint project entitled "New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music".   Dr. Meharry Lewis was invited to lecture on Tate's holiness music as a contribution to American Roots Music. The Music and Religion Institute's course entitled "Hymnody" served as the basis for the resulting lecture/presentation and this book.

    Mary Lena Lewis Tate (1871-1930) was a gifted spiritual ballads writer (called simply, "Song Ballads").  The songs were sung in churches, on the radio, and even sold.   Like her sermons, Tate sought in her songs to bring her listeners into direct contact with the Bible.  Her consistent referencing of Scripture in the text of her gospel-song compositions is a unique contribution to the field of hymnody and gospel music.  For example, in her composition "If You Don't Want to Get In Trouble" (verse lines 41 and 42), she states,

     "Read Revelation twenty-one and eight, It assigns all liars to the lake"

This unique tactic renders Tate's songs truly "gospel" in that it brings the gospel (book, chapter, and verse) to the hearer in song.  Of course, not all of her compositions employ this book-chapter-verse tactic.  However, a sure sign that the composition during her lifetime is indeed Tate's, is the presence of this tactic.