8/23/2023 0 Comments Lift every voice and sing choir“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a faith-oriented, inclusive, and pragmatic response to the societal ills Johnson saw around him. 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. White-supremacist ideologies permeated the southern city through Jim and Jane Crow written and unwritten laws. Tourism, however, was disrupted by the Spanish-American War, horrible yellow fever and typhoid outbreaks, and the resulting deaths. 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.Īt the time of the writing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Jacksonville had been a haven for snowbirds. 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. Local Black churches, predominately Methodist and Baptist, were the most influential entity uplifting and preparing Blacks for the oppressive forces of post-Reconstruction racism. Johnson grew up in Jacksonville’s only Colored Methodist Episcopal (now Christian Methodist Episcopal) church, believing that through education and faith Black people could achieve. Washington’s focus on education and emphasis on hope and resilience inspired Johnson. He believed that God was powerful enough to liberate Black people from the evil of racism. Washington was also a devout Christian who integrated his pragmatic approach to faith into his service as an educator and national leader. 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). Like many other Black Americans at the time, James Weldon Johnson was influenced by the message of educator, orator, and public intellectual Booker T. 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. James Weldon Johnson, the songwriter, was born in Jacksonville in 1871 to a Haitian mother from the Bahamas and a father from Richmond. Now known as the “Black national anthem,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was penned in 1900 as a hymn of hope-grounded in the belief that resilient faith would sustain us against oppression. 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. 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.I was in elementary school when I learned the words to all three verses of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”Īs a Black adolescent in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles-made famous by movies such as Boyz n the Hood, Training Day, and Straight Outta Compton-this song had particular meaning to me. 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. 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. Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chast'ning 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. 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. Lift every voice and sing, Till 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.
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