The 1960s Gospel Hit That Defined a Genre and an Era
Recorded in the Wake of the Birmingham Bombing, the Faith-Fueled Power of ‘Peace Be Still’ Endures Today
“Peace Be Still,” a six-minute-long hymn, swept gospel radio in 1963.
Recorded just four days after the devastating bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, it became an instant classic, selling nearly a million copies to an overwhelmingly Black audience over the next decade.
Inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2004, “Peace Be Still”—the title track on a collaboration between the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, and the “King …
