Lift Every Voice and Sing!
 
   

 

 

James Weldon Johnson

J. Rosamond Johnson by piano

    

 

Words by James Weldon Johnson 
Music by John Rosamond Johnson

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening 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 till 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, till 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 hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast 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.

 

 The Story Behind the Song

The year was 1900 and Johnson was a  principal in Jacksonville, Fla. He was asked to speak at an Abraham Lincoln birthday celebration, but instead of speaking he decided to write a poem. With time running short, plans changed again and James asked his brother, music teacher J. Rosamond Johnson, to help him write a song.

James Johnson recalled that near the end of the first stanza, when the following two lines came to him, "the spirit of the poem had taken hold of me."

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

The brothers sent the song to their New York publisher and thought little more about it. But the public found it hard to forget. Children in the South and eventually throughout the United States continued to sing it. "The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children," James Johnson wrote in 1935.

And it became a popular selection for church choirs -- a tradition that continues today.

James Johnson went on to write a novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. He also composed poetry and, with Rosamond, turned out over 200 songs for the stage. James also was appointed U.S. consul to Venezuela and later Nicaragua. In 1920, he became executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP adopted "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as its official song.

Music 

Black History