Wings Over Jordan Choir

The Wings Over Jordan Choir was an African-American a cappella spiritual choir founded and based in Cleveland, Ohio. The choir is also known for a weekly religious radio series, Wings Over Jordan, which was created to showcase the group.

Debuting over Cleveland radio station WGAR in 1937 as The Negro Hour, the radio program was broadcast on the Columbia Broadcasting System from 1938 to 1947 and the Mutual Broadcasting System through 1949. Wings Over Jordan broke the color barrier as the first radio program produced and hosted by African-Americans to be nationally broadcast over a network. The program was the first of its kind which was easily accessible to audiences in the Deep South, featuring distinguished black church and civic leaders, scholars and artists as guest speakers. One of the highest-rated religious radio programs in the United States, it also had an international shortwave audience on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Voice of America (VOA), and Armed Forces Radio. The program has been credited with WGAR and CBS receiving inaugural Peabody Awards in 1941.

Founded in Cleveland by Baptist minister Glynn Thomas Settle (1894–1967), the choir performed concerts throughout the country during its height (often defying Jim Crow laws) and toured with the USO in support of the American war effort during World War II and the Korean War. Billed as one of the world's greatest Negro choirs, the Wings Over Jordan Choir is regarded as a forerunner of the civil rights movement and a driving force in the development of choral music helping to both preserve by introducing traditional spirituals to a mainstream audience. Other versions of the group began to emerge during the 1950s, and a Cleveland-based tribute choir of the same name name has performed since 1988.