“Lift Every Voice and Sing”

On Wednesday, June 19, 2024, we observed the Juneteenth Holiday.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article about Juneteenth.  The short version is that, at the end of the Civil War, word of the end of the war and of emancipation of enslaved people spread slowly through the US.  The last area to learn of the war’s end and emancipation of enslaved people was Texas where, on June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the American Civil War.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

In 1902, American poet James Weldon Johnson was trying to compose an appropriate message to observe Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  However, 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.

Here is a link to the hymn being sung by the Spelman College Glee Club.  (There may be a 5-second ad at the link.)

Here is the James Weldon Johnson’s poem, which also is the lyrics to the song.

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.

 

When the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is performed, it is traditional to stand.  Please do stand in unity with all who stand for the right.