Mary Don't You Weep

"Mary Don't You Weep" (alternately titled "O Mary Don't You Weep", "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep, Don't You Mourn", or variations thereof) is a Spiritual that originates from before the American Civil War.^[1] As such, scholars sometimes refer to it as a "slave song", "a label that describes their origins among the enslaved", and it contains "coded messages of hope and resistance".^[2] It is considered one of the most important Negro spirituals.^[1] It is listed as number 11823 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

The song tells the Biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead.^[1] Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming Pharaoh's army got drown-ded!, and to God's rainbow covenant to Noah after the Great Flood.^[1] With liberation thus one of its themes, the song again became popular during the Civil Rights Movement.^[1] Additionally, a song that explicitly chronicles the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, "If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus", written by Charles Neblett of The Freedom Singers, was sung to this tune and became one of the most well-known songs of that movement.^[3]

In 2015 The Swan Silvertones's version of the song was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the song's "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy".^[4]