Traditional African American melody

JACOB'S LADDER is a traditional African American melody without an identifiable composer. Its form was shaped through oral transmission, so no surviving score can be treated as an autograph or definitive original. Emily Hallowell printed a recognizable version in F major and common time in Calhoun Plantation Songs in 1907. Thomas P. Fenner's 1909 collection placed a related version in E-flat major and 2/2.

The tune's repeated short phrases make it adaptable to leader-and-group exchange, unison singing, improvised harmony, or four-part congregational treatment. Charles D. Tillman's 1909 gospel adaptation added a more explicit quartet call-and-response pattern and a separate refrain. Later arrangements by J. Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson, John W. Work III, R. Nathaniel Dett, and others preserved different rhythmic and harmonic understandings of the spiritual.

William Farley Smith adapted and arranged the setting prepared in 1986 for The United Methodist Hymnal. Smith's version adds rhythmic variation and chromatic harmony and is copyrighted separately. He should be credited as adapter and arranger of that edition, not as composer of the traditional tune. The underlying melody is public domain, but modern harmonizations, choral settings, and recordings may remain protected.