The traditional text of this spiritual was in two stanzas:

When I was a seeker
I sought both night and day.
I asked the Lord to help me,
And He showed me the way.

He made me a watchman
Upon a city wall,
And if I am a Christian,
I am the least of all.

There seems to be some confusion among hymnologists about the authorship of the present three stanzas. John Wesley Work, Jr. (1872-1925), published it in his Folk songs of the American Negro, 1907, and some say he gave credit for the authorship to his brother, Frederick J. Work, a collaborator on the book. William J. Reynolds says in his book Companion to Baptist Hymnal, 1976, on the basis of his personal friendship with John Wesley Work Ill (1901-1967), that the text now used was written by the father, John W. Work, Jr. We are indebted to Reynolds for the following biographical details:

John W. Work, Jr., was born August 6, 1872, and educated in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating from Fisk University with a B.A. in 1895 and the M.A. in 1898. After teaching Latin and Greek at Fisk for a time, he became chairman of the Latin and History departments in 1906. At a time when the music of the Blacks was considered to be substandard and unacceptable, he was unswerving in his determination to study, preserve, develop, and perform this distinctive heritage of his people. For some 18 years he conducted musical groups and sang the spirituals that had been so much a part of his life. In 1909 he organized the Fisk Jubilee Quartet and directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who had earlier achieved fame while touring the nation and making recordings for Victor and Columbia. He published the book credited to him above and A^lew Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1901. Two years before his death on September 7, 1925, he accepted the presidency of Roger Williams University, Nashville.

John W. Work Ill made the harmonization of this spiritual. The oldest of seven children, he was born June 15, 1901, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and was educated from elementary school through college at Fisk. He continued his study of music at Columbia University, New York, and at Yale University. Following his father’s tradition, he came back to Fisk, where he directed the nationally acclaimed Men’s Glee Club and the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1948-1957), which his father had directed from 1901 to 1916. Besides his skillful and sensitive arrangements of the spirituals, he wrote orchestral and choral works and a choral cycle, Isaac Watts Contemplates the Cross, 1964. Other publications include American Negro Songs and Spirituals 1940, and articles on Negro music and jazz for The Harvard Dictionary of Music. He died at Nashville, May 18, 1967.

George Pullen Jackson, in his book White and Negro Spirituals, calls attention to the similarity of this verse melody to the tune “We’ll March Around Jerusalem,” found in the New York Revivalist, 1868. It also echoes Stephen Foster’s “Oh, Susanna.” The refrain is very much like “Tramp’ Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,” giving credence to the belief Of some that the spirituals, or parts of them, were borrowed from well-known songs popular at the time, John W, Work taught it to his choir for caroling around the campus, and said it was very possible that the music was the creation of his brother, Frederick.

With the exception of the final note of each stanza, the melody of refrain and stanza is in the pentatonic (or five-note) scale, so typical of the medium for folk melodies and spirituals.