Thorpe includes a concise biography of John Wesley Work, III, third in a line of distinguished choir directors, musicians, and ethnomusicologists whose mission became the collection and preservation of slave songs and spirituals. Work, III became a leading expert on spirituals, while composing over 100 works of his own. Like his father before him, he became director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group founded in 1871 to eventually perform "slave songs" all around the world, and You May Bury Me in the East was written during his years as director.