![]() ![]() “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” would come to be known as the “Black national anthem.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, within 20 years, adopted the hymn as its official song. Not too long after, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was being sung at churches, graduation ceremonies, civic organization meetings, pageants and school assemblies. “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,” Johnson said in 1935. The following year, the song was first performed at Johnson’s school by a group of 500 children. Redmond.īeginning with the powerful line: “Lift ev’ry voice and sing,” Johnson handed over the lyrics to his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, who put the words to music. ![]() “I could not keep back the tears, and made no effort to do so,” Johnson recounted in the book “Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora” by Shana L. He wept as he wrote the words that captured the suffering his ancestors had endured. At the end of the day, Johnson decided to center his poem on Black struggle and defiance. “My thoughts began buzzing round a central idea of writing a poem about Lincoln but I couldn’t net them,” he wrote in his autobiography, Along This Way. In 1899, amid segregation and a Jim Crow reign of terror, James Weldon Johnson, a young poet, lawyer and school principal from Jacksonville, Fla., was asked to speak at an event commemorating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |