Glide
Negro spirituals
Glide’s mission is to create a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization. For over 42 years, Glide has provided comprehensive health and human services to meet the immediate and long-term needs of homeless, low-income, and marginalized individuals, families, children, and youth. Glide is located in — and primarily serves people from — San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, which has the highest concentration of homelss individuals and the highest percentage of people living below the federal poverty line among all of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. Glide’s core programs include the Daily Free Meals Program; the Walk-In Center; Integrated Case Management; Glide Health Services; the Family, Youth, and Childcare Center; Glide Housing; and the Women’s Center.
In 2014, 2013 and 2012, Glide received a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program to support their Women’s Center’s Healing through Negro Spirituals program, an innovative approach to community advocacy, social justice, and healing especially for African-American women, but also for all women seeking to heal from the effects of oppression, violence, and addiction. Weekly meetings bring women together to learn the history of spirituals and the stories behind individual songs and songwriters. The participants form rituals and practices around the singing of Negro spirituals with the recognition that these songs that once uplifted their ancestors during the history of slavery in America are now being drawn upon as tools to help themselves.