"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written by African American poet James Weldon Johnson, and put to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, at the very beginning of the 20th Century. In 1919 the NAACP called it the “the Black national anthem.” It reflects the struggle of enslaved Africans and also the power of liberation and affirmation in the African American community.
The Penn Central Conference Virtual choir offers it as an Anthem for Black History month.
My Journey with James Weldon Johnson – by Julie Holm
When I first learned “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” in the 90s in my UCC Church in Annandale, VA, I loved it. James Weldon’s beautiful poetry moved me, and as a part of a church that had been born out of protest to segregation in Virginia in the 1950s, I loved knowing and hearing, as well as participating in “The Black National Anthem.” And even in the 90s, I was involved in Anti-racist work, and it felt good to sing this very special song.
My feelings and my thoughts about the hymn changed when I went to Divinity School. I went to Howard University, and this hymn was naturally in frequent rotation, for school events, for any national holiday, any time black identity was part of the message, which was often. Singing it in the Thurman chapel, surrounded by African American faces, my soul and mind spent more time reflecting on the deep meaning of the words. As I read and understood more about the legacy of slavery, both on my fellow students and on myself, I found, for a while, it impossible to sing the second verse. The hopes unborn haunted me, and I needed to deal with my own identification, as a white person, with slavery. I retreated briefly into the protection afforded by my poor German, Irish and Italian immigrant ancestors, who had never owned slaves, before owning the fact that people who looked like me had essentially created a long, protracted genocide against the ancestors of the people around me, people I had come to love, and that indeed loud echoes of that genocide sounded around their lives today. And, more importantly, that I benefited from it each and every day of my life.
It took a couple of years, but eventually I arrived a peace with singing Lift Every Voice and sing in chapel. It did call for every voice, and as I sang words that did not, indeed, pertain to my ancestry or my life, I tried to point to the beloved faces around me, the Adinkra symbols, the rich legacy of the Black Church. This is not my story, my singing professed, but I walk with and stand with these people every moment I can. I learned to embrace the uneasiness as part of being who I am, and to experience it as part of the song.
The song took on new meaning for me as I moved to Pennsylvania. Why, I asked God, did you call me to ministry through Howard University, then place me in a setting with no people of color? Part of the answer came the first summer, when as a part of a Vacation Bible School program I taught spirituals, and discovered that the children I was teaching had no knowledge of the history of slavery. So quietly and as age appropriate as possible (we served children down to 5 years old) I told them about it. The next year we sang World songs, including two from Africa, and I taught them a little about Africa. When Martin Luther King Sunday came, we listened to the sermons of Dr. King. During Black History Month, I told stories in my sermons about African Americans, lifting up people like Mary McLeod Bethune and Fannie Lou Hamer. Eventually we did a church exchange (where instead of the pastor switching pulpits the whole congregation goes to church one Sunday at another church) with a local AME church.
SURJ, an organization I have been involved with, lifts up the concept that white people in this relationship with black people need to educate themselves. I realized at least part of my job was to educate, to open the heart and soul. And to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
