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century’s great American composers. Not only is the performances in 2022 (fifty-five years from the first per-
music worthwhile, but, more importantly, the process formances).
2
of rehearsing and performing Credo creates an import- Margaret Bonds died unexpectedly of a heart attack in April
ant educational opportunity to grapple with the evils 1972.
3
of racism, the civil rights struggle, and the hope for a John Michael Cooper, Margaret Bonds (Oxford University
better future. Let us all hope that this sense of opti- Press, 2025), xiii.
4
mism—a belief in past wrongs being eventually right- In addition, in March 2025, Oxford University Press added
ed, in silenced voices being heard once more—con- to its “Composers Across Cultures” series with a 368-
tinues to inspire performance of Bonds’s magnificent page publication on the life and works of Margaret
body of work for many years to come. Bonds, authored by John Michael Cooper, Professor of
Music at Southwestern University.
5
Acknowledgment: The editor would like to thank John Michael This is the version of the text Bonds knew and set to music.
6
Cooper for his assistance clarifying biographical details. John Michael Cooper, Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Vari-
ations and Du Bois Credo (Cambridge University Press,
NOTES 2023), 137.
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Cooper, Margaret Bonds.
8
1 The premiere of the version with piano occurred in March Cooper, Margaret Bonds, 135.
9
1967; that of the version with orchestra occurred Cooper, Margaret Bonds.
10 Cooper, Margaret Bonds, 113.
sometime in 1967. The work was published in 2020
11 Cooper, Margaret Bonds, 134.
(fifty-three years from those two premieres), and the
two versions received their first complete posthumous

CHORAL JOURNAL November/December 2025 Volume 66 Number 4 19