Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift Every Voice and Sing

James Weldon Johnson, J. Rosamond Johnson







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 faith that the dark past has tought 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 day that hope unborn had died

Yet with a steady beat

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place on 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 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 the hand

May we forever stand 

True to our God

True to our native land

































As part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on
February 12, 1900, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first publicly performed by
500 school children at the Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida. The
school principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote the words and
Johnson’s broth3r Rosamond set them to music. The children continued to sing
the song, popularizing it for generations to come. 



Later, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People 

(NAACP) adopted the song as the Black National Anthem.



In calling for earth and heaven to “ring with the
harmonies of Liberty,” the 

lyrics spoke out subtly against racism and Jim Crow
laws—and especially the huge number of lynching’s accompanying the rise of the
Klan at the turn of the century.



By the 1920s, copies of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” could
be found in Black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals.
The  

words to the poem/song and another poem by
Johnson can be read on the  

Civil Rights Movement Veterans website.



Learn about the history of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
in  

May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem  

(UNC Press, 2018) by Imani Perry.