My hope is that people who are not in the African American community will embrace the lyrics, and understand the deep place of sorrow and yet hope that the lyrics of this song represent for black people in America.’ Rev Markel Hutchins, when speaking about the song in July 2020, said that: ‘in a lot of ways, where “The Star-Spangled Banner” leaves off in terms of expressing the existence and the personhoods of African Americans, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” picks right up and really tells a more accurate and complete story of the experiences of black people in America. The song resurged in the Black Power movement, and, in 1972, at the radical and beautiful Wattstax concert, rev Jesse Jackson announced that ‘sister Kim Weston’ would sing ‘the Black National Anthem’. James Weldon Johnson was an active organiser in the NAACP, in 1917 organising a silent protest parade of more than 10,000 African Americans down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to protest the still-frequent lynchings of Black people in the South.ĭr Imani Perry describes the way in which the song was used as part of a massive educational project that grew the black children of early 20th century America into the adults who would have the confidence and skills to lead the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.ĭuring the direct action campaigns of this time, shorter songs more suited to this context became the ‘anthems’ of that time, such as ‘We Shall Overcome’, but Martin Luther King Jr still cited various lines from ‘Lift Up Your Voice and Sing’ in some of his sermons. It wasn’t written or taught to be an ‘anthem’, but those children went home and kept singing it, teaching it to their families and friends and the song just kept on being sung, passing through communities.īy 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had adopted and labelled ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ as ‘the Negro National Anthem’. The following year, James’ brother John Rosamond Johnson set the poem to music and so the choir of 500 children sang it. ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ began its life in 1899 when the school principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote a poem to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. In 2020, the song has been sung on countless Black Lives Matter (BLM) marches, on global stages such as the Coachella music festival (Beyoncé, 2018) and in sports stadiums and at graduations across the USA. ![]() Follow Starting to Look Up on WordPress.One hundred and twenty years ago, 500 African-American schoolchildren sang ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ for the first time in a segregated school in Florida.Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us įacing the rising sun of our new day begun,įelt in the days when hope unborn had died Ĭome to the place for which our fathers sighed? Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, But as this celebration of freedom arrives, and as I reflect on these lyrics, among many options I choose to raise my voice in song and join the chorus. ![]() Independence Day arrives tomorrow in this strange and conflicted land, and I confess that my heart is pretty strange and conflicted right now, too. It was conceived by those who dreamed of freedom. Maybe that is why this particular song resonates on such a powerful level. I have learned firsthand that it is possible to grow up both poor and privileged, and the concept of freedom means something far different to someone who did not grow up privileged. The song has been performed by so many artists, but I still think the version I first heard is one of the best-probably because it touched my heart so deeply. It instantly became my favorite patriotic hymn. I first heard the song when the group Acapella included it in their “America” album in 1992. His brother later set the poem to music and with time it became known as the Black National Anthem. ![]() The multi-talented James Weldon Johnson wrote the poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in 1900 to commemorate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
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