The lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and James Weldon Johnson on its creation • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

By James Weldon Johnson

Reprinted by Poetry Foundation.

A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, planned to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and a chorus of five hundred colored school children taught and sang the song.

Shortly afterward, my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song fell into obscurity. But the schoolchildren of Jacksonville continued to sing it; they went to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years, it was being sung throughout the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is widely sung.

The lines of this song bring me elation, almost agony, every time I hear them sung by black children.

Raise every voice and sing

Until earth and heaven resound,

Resonate with the harmonies of freedom;

Let our joy rise

High as the listening sky,

Let it echo loudly like the surging sea.

Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

In the face of the rising sun our new day begins,

Let us keep marching until victory is won.

Rocky the path we took,

Bitter is the rod of punishment,

Felt like unborn hope died.

But with a steady beat,

Don’t our tired feet

Have you come to the place our fathers longed for?

We have travelled a path watered with tears,

We have come and made our way through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out of the dark past,

So far we are finally

Where the white glow of our bright star falls.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

You who have brought us so far;

You, who through your power

Led us into the light,

We pray that you will keep us on the right path forever.

So that our feet do not stray from the places, our God, where we have met you,

So that our hearts are not drunk with the wine of the world and we do not forget you.

In the shadow of your hand,

May we endure forever.

Faithful to our God,

Loyal to our homeland.

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He distinguished himself equally as a man of letters and a civil rights activist in the early decades of the 20th century. Johnson was a talented poet and novelist, publishing among other works “God’s Trombones” and “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” His groundbreaking studies of black poetry, music, and theater in the 1920s introduced many white Americans to the rich creative spirit of African Americans, known until then primarily through the distortions of the minstrel show and dialect poetry. As chairman of the NAACP in the 1920s, Johnson led civil rights campaigns to remove the legal, political, and social barriers that hindered black success. (Via Poetry Foundation.)

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