"Lift Every Voice and Sing" — often called "The Negro National Hymn", "The Negro National Anthem", "The Black National Anthem", or "The African-American National Anthem"— is a song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900.
Famous quotes containing the words lift every voice, lift, voice and/or sing:
“Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring,
ring with the harmonies of liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”
—James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)
“I pray every single second of my life; not on my knees, but with my work. My prayer is to lift woman to equality with man. Work and worship are one with me. I can not imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him “great.””
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)