Lift Every Voice and Sing

James Weldon Johnson, Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida, had sought to write a poem in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. However, amid the ongoing civil rights movement, Johnson decided to write a poem which was themed around the struggles of African Americans following the Reconstruction era (including the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South). "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first recited by a group of 500 students in 1900. His brother J. Rosamond Johnson would later set the poem to music.[3][4][5]

After the Great Fire of 1901, the Johnsons moved to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway. In the years that followed, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was sung within Black communities; Johnson wrote that "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. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country."[3][6]

A sculpture by Augusta Savage named after the song was exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair, taking the form of a choir of children shaped into a harp. Savage was the only Black woman commissioned for the Fair, and the sculpture (which was retitled "The Harp" by organizers) was also sold as miniature replicas and on postcards during the event. Like other temporary installations, the sculpture was destroyed at the close of the fair.[7][8][9]

In 1923, the male gospel group Manhattan Harmony Four recorded the hymn as "Lift Every Voice and Sing (National Negro Anthem)". It was added to the National Recording Registry in 2016.[20]

In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the hymn is sung by the audience and students at Maya's eighth-grade graduation ceremony, after a white school official dashes the educational aspirations of her classmates.[21]

In 1972, Kim Weston sang the hymn as the opening number for the Wattstax Festival at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. This performance was included in the film Wattstax which was produced by Wolper Films. The musical direction and recording were both overseen by Stax Records engineer Terry Manning.

In 1975, James Brown quoted a lyric from the hymn as part of his performance of the U.S. national anthem before the Muhammad Ali vs. Chuck Wepner boxing match.[6]

In 1990, singer Melba Moore released a modern rendition of the hymn, which she recorded with the assistance of other singers, including R&B artists Stephanie Mills, Freddie Jackson, Anita Baker, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jeffrey Osborne, and Howard Hewett; and gospel artists BeBe & CeCe Winans, Take 6, and The Clark Sisters, after which, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was entered into the Congressional Record by Del. Walter Fauntroy (D-DC).[22] It was also added to the National Recording Registry in 2016.[20]

In 2008, jazz singer Rene Marie was asked to sing the national anthem at a civic event in Denver, Colorado, where she caused a controversy by substituting the words of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" into the song. This arrangement of the words of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" with the melody of "The Star-Spangled Banner" became part of the titular suite on her 2011 CD release, The Voice of My Beautiful Country.[23]

On January 20, 2009, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights movement leader who co-founded and is a former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, used a near-verbatim recitation of the hymn's third stanza to begin his benediction at the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama.[24]

Jon Batiste, bandleader of the late-night talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has occasionally worked "Lift Every Voice and Sing" into the music which is played by his band Stay Human when the program hosts a Black guest; he stated that the hymn "connects us to the history of all the people who we stand on the shoulders of—who have marched and fought and died for the freedoms we enjoy and that we’re trying to improve upon".[6]

The family of Barack Obama, Smokey Robinson, and others singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" in the White House in 2014

On September 24, 2016, the hymn was sung by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves and chorus at the conclusion of the opening ceremonies of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, at which Obama delivered the keynote address.

On October 19, 2017, when white supremacist leader Richard Spencer spoke at the University of Florida, the university's carillon played "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to convey a message of unity.[25]

On April 14, 2018, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was sung by Beyoncé during her headlining performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.[26][27]

In May 2018, the Tabernacle Choir performed "Lift Every Voice and Sing" during an edition of Music & the Spoken Word attended by members of the NAACP, who were in Salt Lake City for a national leadership meeting.[28]

The song was featured as the opening and closing song of The Blues and Its People, a suite by Russell Gunn first performed on February 18, 2023 at Harlem's Apollo Theater to mark the 50th anniversary of Amiri Baraka's book Blues People: Negro Music in White America.[29]

• An omnibus collection of Johnson's poetry at Standard Ebooks
• Free scores by J. Rosamond Johnson at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) – including "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
• 'Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem' at the Wayback Machine (archived March 1, 2009), edited by Julian Bond and Sondra Kathryn Wilson
• NPR's Performance Today page on Black History Month 2003 – includes a link to a RealPlayer version of the song
• ''Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet, transcript of Rev. Lowery's Inauguration Benediction
• Video of singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on YouTube led by Alice Walker and Dr. Rudolph Byrd at Emory University
• Video of Alicia Keys singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on YouTube