"Wade in the Water" (Roud 5439) is an African American jubilee song, a spiritual—in reference to a genre of music "created and first sung by African Americans in slavery." The lyrics to "Wade in the Water" were first co-published in 1901 in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers by Frederick J. Work and his brother, John Wesley Work Jr., an educator at the historically black college... Wikipedia