{"id":271,"date":"2023-08-01T09:31:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T09:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/01\/continuing-with-its-steady-beat-lift-every-voice-and-sing-marches-on\/"},"modified":"2023-08-01T09:31:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T09:31:12","slug":"continuing-with-its-steady-beat-lift-every-voice-and-sing-marches-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/01\/continuing-with-its-steady-beat-lift-every-voice-and-sing-marches-on\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Continuing with its Steady Beat, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Marches On’"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I was in elementary school when I learned the words to all three verses of \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a Black adolescent in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles\u2014made famous by movies such as Boyz n the Hood<\/em>, Training Day<\/em>, and Straight Outta Compton<\/em>\u2014this song had particular meaning to me. It was sung with pride at church and social events during Black History Month, an annual commemoration that Black lives, Black accomplishments, and Black achievements matter.<\/p>\n

Now known as the \u201cBlack national anthem,\u201d \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d was penned in 1900 as a hymn of hope\u2014grounded in the belief that resilient faith would sustain us against oppression.<\/p>\n

James Weldon Johnson, the songwriter, was born in Jacksonville in 1871 to a Haitian mother from the Bahamas and a father from Richmond. The Johnsons had moved to the coastal Florida city, which stood out as a place in the South where Black people had access to education (though segregated) and economic opportunity.<\/p>\n

Like many other Black Americans at the time, James Weldon Johnson was influenced by the message of educator, orator, and public intellectual Booker T. Washington. Born into slavery in 1856, Washington advocated for Black liberation through economic and educational achievement, serving for decades as the first leader of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University).<\/p>\n

Washington was also a devout Christian who integrated his pragmatic approach to faith into his service as an educator and national leader. He believed that God was powerful enough to liberate Black people from the evil of racism. Washington\u2019s focus on education and emphasis on hope and resilience inspired Johnson.<\/p>\n

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\"James<\/p>\n

James Weldon Johnson (center) with composers Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

After attending Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), Johnson returned home to serve as principal of his middle school alma mater. For a celebration of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s birthday in 1900, the young educator penned \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing,\u201d which 500 middle schoolers sang in tribute to Booker T. Washington. Johnson\u2019s prose was set to music by his younger brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, a New England Conservatory\u2013trained composer.<\/p>\n

Both at church and at home, James Weldon Johnson developed the foundational theological and practical faith that came through in his three-stanza hymn. With lines such as \u201cSing 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,\u201d the song evokes the struggle of Black Americans, our sights on victory, and our prayer that God would continue to lead us.<\/p>\n

Johnson grew up in Jacksonville\u2019s only Colored Methodist Episcopal (now Christian Methodist Episcopal) church, believing that through education and faith Black people could achieve. Local Black churches, predominately Methodist and Baptist, were the most influential entity uplifting and preparing Blacks for the oppressive forces of post-Reconstruction racism.<\/p>\n

The churches supported and, in some cases, created educational institutions; economic development and volunteer organizations to provide mutual aid; cultural gatherings; and, in the case of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, insurance policies. Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church, where the Johnsons attended, was one of the largest congregations and one of the most actively engaged, with a focus on self-determination, self-awareness, and pride.<\/p>\n

At the time of the writing of \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing,\u201d Jacksonville had been a haven for snowbirds. Tourism, however, was disrupted by the Spanish-American War, horrible yellow fever and typhoid outbreaks, and the resulting deaths. White-supremacist ideologies permeated the southern city through Jim and Jane Crow written and unwritten laws. Although there was a small Black middle class of ministers, teachers, and small-business owners (like barbers, tailors, cobblers, and grocers), Black people as a whole were not thriving socially, economically, and certainly not politically.<\/p>\n

\u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d is a faith-oriented, inclusive, and pragmatic response to the societal ills Johnson saw around him. Faced with white supremacy, nationalism, and the proliferation of colonialism, he put to words a theology sung out from the mouths of children, a calling to \u201clift every voice and sing\u201d and \u201cmarch on \u2019til victory is won.\u201d<\/p>\n

The melody is as complex as the lyric. The Johnson brothers were intentional about not sugarcoating the urgency or the seriousness of preparing young people for the days ahead. The difficulty of tune and text made it worthy of committing to memory and thus internalizing the message and the vision of hope.<\/p>\n


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