Instead, folks, let’s lift every voice - until victory is won. Worse, it is used to fan the flames of cultural xenophobia, as if interracial relations have to be a zero-sum game, in which no race can advance itself without some other race losing. Like the other culture war battlefronts over Confederate statues and the teaching of Black history to our children, the “Black national anthem” dust-up is a contest for power. Yet the MAGA culture warriors insist on making a simple gesture of outreach sound like something sinister, threatening and even racist. I have always sung it and heard it the way my schoolteacher grandmother taught it, not just as a vehicle for us to sing the blues about our suffering and victimization as a people, but as a rallying cry to our resilience and determination. There’s more, but these opening verses are most often sung at churches, schools and other public gatherings in my lifelong African American experience. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us įacing the rising sun of our new day begun Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us Written in 1900 as a poem by Johnson, a onetime NAACP leader, it was set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson, according to NAACP historians: I, too, believe in “one nation under God,” but we don’t get there by fanning the flames of fear and paranoia purely for political exploitation.īut let’s clarify this much: As much as the song is often called the “Black national anthem,” as I, too, have done on occasion, the Super Bowl announcers quite properly referred to it by its formal title, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The official campaign Twitter account for Arizona’s defeated Republican nominee for governor, Kari Lake, let us know that “Our girl is against the idea of a ‘black National Anthem’ for the same reason she’s against a ‘white National Anthem.’ She subscribes to the idea of ‘one Nation, under God.’ “įine. Well, the purpose of “the black one” has something to do with the value of knowing and understanding American history, but that’s a topic that unfortunately has become fashionable for some conservatives to ignore. What’s the purpose of a black one? Super Bowl Sunday should UNITE America, not divide it by race. “The National Anthem is for EVERY American. “There is only ONE National Anthem in the United States of America,” tweeted rising 20-year-old Black conservative commentator-activist CJ Pearson. Would they just as soon remain asleep? Dream on. Really? I am somewhat amused by the MAGA right’s embrace of “woke” as an insult word for liberals. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she tweeted “Chris Stapleton just sang the most beautiful national anthem at the Super Bowl.” But not when she added, “we could have gone without the rest of the wokeness.” Thou who hast by Thy might, Led us into the light.Similarly, I was in rare agreement with Georgia Rep. Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way Till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. We have come, treading our path thro' the blood of the slaughtered. We have come over a way that with tears has been watered Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us įacing the rising sun of our new day begun,įelt in the days when hope unborn had died Ĭome to the place for which our fathers signed? What is the origin of the Black national anthem James Weldon Johnson wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing as a poem, and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, set the poem to music in 1899. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us What is the Black national anthem The Black national anthem is Lift Every Voice and Sing, sometimes stylized as Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. At every school we started the school the same way, the Lord's Prayer the National Anthem and the Negro National Anthem (also known as "Lift Evry Voice and Sing".) I went to a small school in Hawkins, Texas, a two-room school in Muleshoe Texas and a black high school in Amarillo, Texas. Apparently, Texas school's implemented the Supreme Court 1954 required - with "all deliberate speed". Prof Randall's Note: I went to segregated schools up until the time I graduated from high school in 1966.
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