Born in Jacksonville, Florida, James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) graduated from Atlanta University in 1894. In 1897, he passed the Florida bar exam, and for the next forty years, he served in various public capacities as an educator, a diplomat, a civil rights activist, and a writer. In the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him United States consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua, and from 1916 to 1929, he served as executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing
Johnson wrote the following poem during his tenure as principal of the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, and it was first performed in 1900 as part of a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. A year later, his brother, Rosamond, set it to music. It gained enormous popularity and became known as the “Negro National Anthem.”
Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
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High as the list’ning 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,
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Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod.
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
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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,
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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;
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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;
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Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
(1900)