Lift Every Voice And Sing

Artist

The Johnson Brothers

Album

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Genre

Spirituals

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" began as a poem written by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), then principal of Stanton High School in Jacksonville, Florida, the state's first public high school for African Americans. Originally conceived to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday, Johnson instead shaped the poem around the struggles of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era, and it was first recited by 500 schoolchildren in 1900. His brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), later set the poem to music, completing the musical setting in 1905. The hymn spread organically through Black communities, carried by the Jacksonville schoolchildren who first sang it and later taught it to others. Within two decades it was being sung across the South and beyond. In 1919, the NAACP dubbed it the "Negro national anthem" for its power in voicing liberation and affirmation for African American people, and it is widely known today as the Black national anthem. Blending thanksgiving, perseverance, and hope with imagery evoking the Exodus, the hymn has appeared in dozens of Christian hymnals and remains a fixture of civic and cultural life. It was performed at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, by Beyoncé at Coachella in 2018, and at Super Bowl pregame ceremonies for six consecutive years. Words: James Weldon Johnson (1900). Music: J. Rosamond Johnson (1905).