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LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING
also known as "The Negro National Anthem"
by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) and then set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) in 1899.
Weldon wrote the poem to celebrate Lincoln's birthday and was proud of John's musical interpretation.
First performance on February 12, 1900.   The NCAAP adopted the song in 1919 as "The Negro National Anthem."

           
James Weldon Johnson                     John Rosamond Johnson

Notes: My brother, Bill, and I lived in Alabama and Oklahoma until we were 10.   We always lived with whites and blacks.   And our Mother took us back and forth to villages of tar paper shacks with dirt floors.   We also lived next to cotton fields and a state penitentiary whose inmates worked those fields under the watchful eyes of guards on horseback.   The smell of the cotton seed oil factory was heavy next to our grade school.   My Dad had been stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, Gunter Air Force Base, and Maxwell Air Force base during those 10 years.   We also lived briefly in Tampa, Florida and Puerto Rico.   After listening to Stephen Foster for years, the stirring music you are hearing is one for all people.   A brief word should be said for the NAACP at this point.   Many people are not aware that they have championed causes for whites as well as blacks.   When the ACLU won't listen to a case involving discrimination against a white, sometimes the NAACP has taken up the cause. End of Notes.

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 has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has 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.