Lift Every Voice and Sing

Uncommon card · No. 174565

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) written in the late 1800s and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1905. Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving to God as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery that evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the "promised land". Premiered in 1900, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was communally sung within Black American communities, while the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a "Negro national anthem" in 1917 (with the term "Black national anthem" similarly used in the present day). It has been featured in 54 different Christian hymnals, and it has also been performed by various African American singers and musicians.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Beth Felice, CC BY-SA 2.0