Lift Every Voice and Sing
Song History
James Weldon Johnson and his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote the lyrics and music to Lift Every Voice and Sing
“A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln's birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercise. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.
Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.”
“The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.”
James Weldon Johnson, 1935
Lift Every Voice and Sing has influenced our culture since it was first performed in 1900
It is a continuing source of comfort and strength for those in the ongoing fight for social justice and it is a source of inspiration to the myriad artists who have performed the song. Sung in Black churches everywhere, Lift Every Voice and Sing is a national treasure.