‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
For more than a century, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has held a powerful place in American history. It was written as a poem by NAACP leader, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), and then set to music by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), in 1899. It was first performed in public in the Johnsons’ hometown of Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12, 1900 by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal. The song would become known as the “Negro national anthem,” after Booker T. Washington endorsed it in 1905, and the NAACP adopted it as an official song in 1919.
After writing the Black National Anthem, James Weldon Johnson was appointed United States Consul, first to Venezuela, then Nicaragua, by the Roosevelt administration. After returning to the United States, Johnson became the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the NAACP and a fierce anti-lynching crusader. He coined the term “Red Summer of 1919″ to describe the blood in the streets during race massacres that erupted nationwide after World War I. He eventually went on to serve as chief operating officer of the organization, a position that allowed him to outline and implement foundational strategies that incrementally combatted racism, lynching and segregation and contributed to the eventual death of Jim Crow laws.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written at a pivotal time, when Jim Crow was replacing slavery and African Americans were searching for an identity. Shana Redmond, professor of Musicology and African American Studies at UCLA, says it’s a song about transcending difficulties — and those difficulties have never fully receded. “It allows us to acknowledge all of the brutalities and inhumanities and dispossession that came with enslavement, that came with Jim Crow, that comes still today with disenfranchisement, police brutality, dispossession of education and resources,” Redmond says. “It continues to announce that we see this brighter future, that we believe that something will change.”
Equal parts honoring the painful past and articulating optimism for the future, these lyrics remain as relevant in 2021 as they were over a century ago when they were first penned. An ever-present refrain, this hymn has been a part of my consciousness for all my life but has gained increasing relevance over the past several years as our country has openly grappled with the ongoing struggle for equality and justice. As we continue to celebrate Black History Month – the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson, who selected February to encompass the birthdays of two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping black history, namely Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, whose birthdays are the 12th and the 14th, respectively – I encourage us to take the words of this powerful hymn to heart and “sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us…sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.” We have indeed come such a long way and made tremendous progress, and yet there is still much work to be done. Let us march on until victory is won.