Lift Every Voice and Sing

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900) is a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, one of the architects of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson composed the poem to be shared at a school celebration of the birthday of US President Abraham Lincoln, whose emancipation of enslaved Black Americans during and after the Civil War made him an important cultural figure for the Harlem Renaissance movement. When J. Rosamond Johnson, Johnson’s brother, composed music to accompany the poem, the poem assumed a life beyond that performance, eventually becoming an anthem and a hymn.

Johnson wrote several important creative and critical works, but “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has served as a touchstone during every phase of the Black freedom struggle. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” appears in varied settings. Students at many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) sing the song alongside or in place of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Pop star Beyoncé Knowles-Carter included the song in her 2018 Coachella performance, during which she sought to bring the HBCU experience to a wider audience. Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph sang it ahead of the 2023 Super Bowl in acknowledgement of Black History Month and player activism. The appearance of the poem in so many contexts is a testimony to its enduring relevance.

Content Warning: This guide includes a variety of descriptors for the descendants of people of the African diaspora who were enslaved in the United States. This guide uses the term “Black Americans.” The terms “Negro” and/or “colored” are preserved in direct quotes, titles of works, and the formal name for the civil rights organization known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In popular culture, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is known as either the “Negro National Anthem” or the “Black National Anthem.” The more formal title “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is used throughout this guide.

Poet Biography

James Weldon Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, to parents who emigrated from the Bahamas. Johnson attended the Stanton Preparatory School, where he received a thorough education in both American and British literature and music. Johnson did his undergraduate and graduate work at Clark Atlanta University (then Atlanta University), in Georgia, graduating with a master’s degree in 1904.

Like many Black Americans of the period, Johnson left the American South for New York City to pursue greater opportunities for advancement. After writing Broadway music in collaboration with his brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson, Johnson began his literary career in 1912 with the anonymous publication of Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man, a novel in which the protagonist passes for white to escape the limits imposed on him by segregation and racism. Johnson republished the novel under his own name in 1925, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, a flourishing of Black art and literature in 1920s New York City. Johnson was also a civil rights activist who worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to organize the Silent Protest Parade in 1917, a mass protest that spurred the civil rights movement of the first three decades of the 20th century. Johnson served as the executive secretary of the NAACP, a role in which he drove up membership numbers.

Johnson edited or co-edited anthologies that made the Harlem Renaissance a bonified cultural and literary movement, including The Book of Negro American Poetry (1922), The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925), and The Second Book of American Negro Spirituals (1926). His introduction to The Book of Negro American Poetry is one of the clearest statements of the importance of Black art to the Black freedom struggle. In 1927, Johnson published God’s Trombones, a poetry collection that relies on the Black sermon tradition to tell stories about the Black American culture of the period.

Beyond his writing, Johnson had careers as a teacher, lawyer, journalist, professor, and US Ambassador to Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Azores. Johnson died in a car accident in 1938.

Poem Text

Lift every voice and sing,

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

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,

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,

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.

Johnson, James Weldon. “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” 1900. American Academy of Poets.

Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker exhorts Black Americans to sing a song about the joy that comes in having true freedom. That song should be loud enough to reach God’s ears and overpower the sound of the sea. Black Americans learned this freedom song during their enslavement. There is much to sing about right now, and a still better future is coming soon. Black Americans need to persevere, and they will gain true freedom.

In the second stanza, the speaker reminds the audience of just how difficult the past was. Black Americans came to the United States as enslaved people, but even then, they endured because they wanted freedom. The freedom Black Americans have at present is the fulfillment of the dreams of those ancestors. Black culture and Black people are still here because of their ancestors, who sweated, bled, cried their own tears, and died, all in hope for a better future for their descendants.

In the third stanza, the speaker acknowledges that Black people still weep and still suffer; however, since God has brought them this far, there is every hope that He will continue to do so. Black people should take heart and stick to the path toward even greater freedom, no matter how difficult or uncertain the future looks. Through Christianity, Black people must avoid the temptations of worldly life, which may take them off the path to freedom and self-knowledge. Black Americans must affirm that they are Christian believers and patriots who are committed to pursuing liberty in the United States.