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This chapter examines the artistic legacy of Reverend James Cleveland, an internationally renowned musician whose sonic innovations and institution building efforts contributed to gospel music's dramatic growth in the post–civil rights era. Significant attention is given to his role as founding president of the Gospel Music Workshop of America. Created in 1967, the GMWA provided an institutional space for gospel musicians seeking to advance both their careers and black sacred music. By exploring Cleveland’s work for the GMWA, particularly his proposed gospel college in Soul City, North Carolina, along with his groundbreaking records on Savoy, this chapter underscores how black Christians' struggle for self-determination extended into the music world.

Chapter 7 is a track-by-track description of Peace Be Still, from preparations for the recording and a history of each selection to the arrangements and lyric interpretations. Professor Braxton Shelley provides an understanding of the music theory supporting each track. The chapter also reveals the identities of the album’s musicians and the female soloist on “I Had a Talk with God,” subjects of long-standing speculation. It also resolves the question of whether the recording took place on a Sunday or a Thursday and why it was recorded in a Seventh-day Adventist church in Newark. The narrative profits immensely from recollections by participants in the recording session.

This chapter traces the early career of the Reverend James Cleveland. Born in Chicago in 1931, Cleveland strived aggressively to rise in the gospel music industry. The chapter chronicles his collaborations with the Caravans, the Meditation Singers, and the Voices of Tabernacle. Although Cleveland received national acclaim during his mid-1950s tenure with the Caravans, his work with Detroit’s Voices of Tabernacle church choir, especially its commercially and critically successful 1959 debut album The Love of God, secured his place among the genre’s top commercial talents. Signing with Savoy Records as a solo artist in 1960, Cleveland sought to replicate the musical magic he made with the Voices of Tabernacle by partnering with Roberts and the Angelic Choir.

With First Baptist Church under construction and fears that Trinity Temple could not hold the larger crowd expected to turn out, Roberts secured St. John’s Baptist Church in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, to record volume 4, I Stood on the Banks of Jordan. For all of the popularity of Peace Be Still, it was volume 4 that earned the troupe its first Grammy nomination. This chapter chronicles the grand opening of the First Baptist Church and the impact the recordings had on the lives of Angelic Choir personnel and church membership and visibility. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how the success of the Cleveland-Angelic Choir disks stimulated a live recording frenzy for Savoy and its competitors, a practice that dominates the industry today.

The concluding chapter chronicles the retirement to Stone Mountain, Georgia, of Rev. and Mrs. Lawrence Roberts, made possible by a generous bequest from the estate of their friend, Doris Duke. Lawrence gave Duke singing lessons; for a while, she was a member of the Angelic Choir. The Robertses returned to New Jersey in 2005 for a reunion of the Angelic Choir. The event, which brought together members from more than forty years of music ministry, coincided with an official retiring of the Angelic Choir name at First Baptist. The chapter covers the deaths of James Cleveland and Lawrence Roberts, and features commentary from Angelic Choir members and family on their lasting influence.

Why has Peace Be Still become one of the most influential gospel albums of all time? What does it express, sonically and lyrically, about the circumstances in which the artists lived? Have interpretations of its message by a predominantly African American listening public changed during the six tumultuous decades since its release? The introduction presents these and other questions the book will address. The introduction also summarizes the book’s main argument: that the album, and particularly its title track, does not necessarily contain elements of explicit protest as much as it codes messages of resistance and resilience that have nurtured and sustained African Americans over centuries of discrimination.