“For more than a century, Lift Every Voice and Sing has held a place in American history. The hymn is known as the Black National Anthem, but it is more than that! It is a history lesson, a rallying cry, a pledge of unity, and as people gather to fight for equality and justice, it is an ever-present refrain…”
Faith Karini and AJ Willingham, CNN, September 10, 2020.
Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Brief History
LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING was written by James Weldon Johnson who was born in 1871 and died in 1938. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, the musical composer, was born in 1873 and died in 1954. Both were born in Jacksonville, Florida and are credited with gifting America with this faith-based song.
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Equally impressive, these strong Johnson men were very talented Civil rights leaders and served their communities in a number of capacities. Introducing America to Lift Every Voice and Sing was just one of their many contributions. They were political and religious activists, writers, educators, and musically inclined. James Weldon wrote these lyrics at the end of the 1800s and his brother, a talented musician, set the lyrics to music.
The first performance of Lift Every Voice and Sing was on February 12, 1900, for an Abraham Lincoln birthday celebration. A choir group of 500 young school children from the Johnsons' hometown, Jacksonville, Florida, did the honors.
Johnson noted in some of his papers the agony and trauma he experienced while writing these lyrics. The reckoning with the pain and suffering of his people struggling in an unjust and racist society was overwhelming. Yet, through faith, hope, love and tears for his determined people and a belief that America would eventually keep her promises, he penned these words found in the three stanzas of Lift Every Voice and Sing.
Also, Johnson later shared his feelings of reward for seemingly a job well done after the presentations in this manner: “Shortly afterwards, my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York and the song passed out of our minds”, he writes. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years, it was being sung all over the South and in some other parts of the country…The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them being sung by Negro children.”
In 1919, the NAACP proclaimed this cherished song as the Negro National Anthem. (This was a full 12 years before the Star-Spangled Banner was adopted as the national anthem under President Herbert Hoover). It became a part of the African American worship tradition and was included in white church hymnals as well. It was a very loving faith-based song recognizing the Black struggle and painful history, but it showed courage, hope, resilience, and perseverance as well.
It has become a “pillar of African American culture” and is relevant today.
