But, she told Vogue magazine, "They understood the feeling it gave them." When Beyoncé sang it at Coachella, she knew the mostly white audience didn't know the history of the black national anthem. The reach of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" continues to expand. "It continues to announce that we see this brighter future, that we believe that something will change. "It allows us to acknowledge all of the brutalities and inhumanities and dispossession that came with enslavement, that came with Jim Crow, that comes still today with disenfranchisement, police brutality, dispossession of education and resources," Shana Redmond says. Joseph Lowery gave the benediction at President Barack Obama's first inauguration, and began by quoting the song's third verse nearly verbatim. In 2009, the entire nation heard its words when Civil Rights leader Rev. Even the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has performed it. It's included in nearly 30 different Christian hymnals, both black and white. The Morgan State University Choir opens every concert with it. The song is now widely performed - at churches, schools, and graduation ceremonies and beyond. "'Lift Every Voice and Sing' became a counterpoint to those types of absences and elisions."Īmerican Anthem 'This Little Light Of Mine' Shines On, A Timeless Tool Of Resistance "The National Anthem, 'The Star Spangled Banner,' was missing something - was missing a radical history of inclusion, was missing an investment in radical visions of the future of equality, of parity," she says. On the other hand, the song that theoretically should link all Americans together, "The Star Spangled Banner," falls short of that goal according to Shana Redmond. We need an anthem that links us all together." "They were saying, 'Well, if we have marched, and we have attained what we hope to be equality, we can't have a black anthem. "There were many African-Americans who were in conflict with that idea," Askew says. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" faded from popularity towards the end of the civil rights movement in favor of songs like "We Shall Overcome." Askew says the song's recognition as a black national anthem is actually one of the reasons it has moved in and out of favor. who wrote to James Weldon Johnson and who said, 'We are singing that song you called the black national anthem.' People in Japan, South America, people around the world, particularly during the '30s and '40s, were singing this song." "Even during days of segregation," Askew says, "there were Southern white churches. But its influence reached well beyond those boundaries, according to Timothy Askew, an English professor at Clark Atlanta University and scholar of the song's history. The song became a rallying cry for black communities, especially in the South. "It spoke to the history of the dark journey of African-Americans," says current NAACP president Derrick Johnson, "and for that matter many Africans in the diaspora struggled through to get to a place of hope." Washington endorsed it, and in 1919, it became the official song of the NAACP. Two key events led to its being named the Negro National Anthem: In 1905, Booker T. Author and activist James Weldon Johnson wrote the words as a poem, which his brother John then set to music. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written at a pivotal time, when Jim Crow was replacing slavery and African-Americans were searching for an identity. The first verse opens with a command to optimism, praise and freedom: "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first performed in 1900, at a segregated school in Jacksonville, Fla., by a group of 500 children celebrating the anniversary of the birth of President Lincoln. "To sing this song is to revive that past - but also to recognize, as the lyrics of the song reveal, that there is a hopeful future that might come of it." "Black communities across the globe continue to be vulnerable in very unique and unsettling ways," Redmond says. Shana Redmond, a professor at UCLA who studies music, race, and politics and author of the book A nthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, says it's a song about transcending difficulties - and those difficulties have never fully receded. So what is it about "Lift Every Voice and Sing" that speaks to a people, so much that it's become known as the "black national anthem"? Life began when i heard Beyonce's Lift Every Voice and Sing #Beychella /MG3RBTEChh- Reese Waters April 16, 2018
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