“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery which evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the “promised land.”
After its first recitation in 1900, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was communally sung within Black communities, while the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a “Negro national anthem” in 1917. It has been featured in 42 different Christian hymnals, and it has also been sung and played by various African American singers and musicians.
History
James Weldon Johnson, who was in 1900, the principal of the segregated Edwin M. Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, had sought to write a poem in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. However, amid the ongoing civil rights movement; Johnson decided to write a poem which was themed around the struggles of African Americans following the Reconstruction era (including the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South). “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first RECITED by a group of 500 students in 1900. His brother J. Rosamond Johnson would later set the poem to music.
After the Great Fire of 1901, the Johnsons moved to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway. In the years that followed, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung within Black communities; Johnson wrote that “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 over the South and in some other parts of the country.”
Recognition
In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) dubbed “Lift Every Voice and Sing” the “Negro national anthem”, for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African American people. James Weldon Johnson would be appointed to serve as the NAACP’s first executive secretary the following year. It has also been referred to as “the Black national anthem”.
Sources:
The Historical Memory Recovery Channel 