Lift Every Voice and Sing!

February 12 is President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I just discovered that February 12 is not a federal holiday, although New Jersey recognizes President Lincoln along with President George Washington on “Presidents’ Day.” 

In 1900 however, in a segregated elementary school in Jacksonville, Florida, the holiday was important. James Weldon Johnson, the principal of the Stanton Elementary School, had written a poem, set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson the year before. Five hundred children gathered to sing what has come to be known as the “Black National Anthem.” It is every bit as patriotic as the Star Spangled Banner, recounting the struggle, the hope and the commitment of freed slaves and their descendants to God and the United States.  

It begins with praise—rejoicing in liberty in this country, in ourselves and all people. Every day is a new beginning, full of faith and hope. Faith and hope in what? Religious folks can hear it religiously—faith, hope, freedom in God. Secular folks can hear it without reference to God—faith, hope, freedom in human striving and possibility:

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
'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.

Then it names honestly the struggles of formerly enslaved peoples. While the specific context is the kidnapping, enslavement and exploitation of people from Africa and their descendants in the United States, struggles for safety and security were (and are) shared by immigrants from many countries and religions in the United States over the years. But it doesn’t end with struggle—the poem recounts victories over struggles and looks to the future “where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.”

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.

Here’s the specifically religious part, acknowledging God’s help in the past and the human temptation to forget, ignore or replace God with various idols. The plea to remain true both to God and to country is an essential corrective to myopic faith or patriotism.

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.

This is a song every American should know and treasure (although it is almost as hard to sing as the Star Spangled Banner!) as an affirmation of the struggles and triumphs of our history. Lift every voice and sing!

(Source: NAACP)