Lift Every Voice and Sing - History

History

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 by 500 school children at the segregated Stanton School. Its principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was later set to music by Johnson's brother John in 1905. Singing this song quickly became a way for African Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and hope for the future. In the calling for earth and heaven to "ring with the harmonies of Liberty," they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws—and especially the huge number of lynchings accompanying the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the turn of the century. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem." By the 1920s, copies of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" could be found in black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals.

In 1939, Augusta Savage received a commission from the World's Fair and created a 16-foot plaster sculpture called Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing. Savage did not have any funds for a bronze cast, or even to move and store it, and it was destroyed by bulldozers at the close of the fair.

During and after the American Civil Rights Movement, the song experienced a rebirth, and by the 1970s was often sung immediately after "The Star Spangled Banner" at public events and performances across the United States where the event had a significant African-American population.

In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the song is sung by the audience and students at Maya's eighth grade graduation, after a white school official dashes the educational aspirations of her class.

In 1990, singer Melba Moore released a modern rendition of the song, which she recorded along with others including R&B artists Anita Baker, Stephanie Mills, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jeffrey Osborne, and Howard Hewett; and gospel artists BeBe & CeCe Winans, Take 6, and The Clark Sisters. In 2010 the poem was set to hip hop music as part of the innovative poetry album Poetry Classics To Funky Beats which was Produced by producer and artist Jimmy Spice Curry. Partly because of the success of this recording, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" was entered into the Congressional Record by Del. Walter Fauntroy (D-DC), as the official African American National Hymn.

In 2008, jazz singer Rene Marie was asked to perform the national anthem "National Anthem" at a civic event in Denver, Colorado, where she caused a controversy by substituting the words of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" in the song. This arrangement of the words of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" with the melody of "The Star Spangled Banner" became part of the titular suite on her 2011 CD release, "The Voice of My Beautiful Country".

Other notable recorded contemporary versions include those by Women of the Calabash (The Kwanzaa Album), Winard Harper (Faith album), and Linda Tillery, Leontyne Price, and the Cultural Heritage Choir (Front Porch Music album).

On January 20, 2009, the Rev. Joseph Lowery (former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) used a near-verbatim recitation of the song's third stanza to begin his benediction at the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama.