Monday Music: Lift Every Voice and Sing

Today is Juneteenth. In commemoration of this day, let us take some time to listen to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by James Weldon Johnson.  

 “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900. As he tells it: 

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 exercises. 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 away 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 an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children. (1) 

Celebrating Juneteenth

June 19th, 1865 was the day that Union General Gordon Granger and his troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to take control of the state and to officially enforce the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in the United States. General Granger publically read General Orders No. 3 which declared, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

It was two months after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but it June 19th came to be noted as the day that freedom came for slaves throughout the country. Thus “Juneteenth” came to be remembered as the day to celebrate freedom for slaves. It was in December of that year that the ratifying of the 13th Amendment made the abolition of slavery official.

While Juneteenth was celebrated by African American communities through the years, it was not until 1979 that Texas became the first state to make it an official holiday. (2)

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(1) Quote from The Poetry Foundation at   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/46549

(2) See “What is Juneteenth at Ask History, http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-is-juneteenth

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Faith and Experience

“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears…”

Our life experiences will shape how we understand our faith. Back in 2008 when the Rev. Joseph Lowery began the benediction at the first presidential inauguration of Barack Obama he opened with the words, “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears…” he was quoting from a hymn. The hymn was “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” by James Weldon Johnson. That hymn, first performed in 1900 during a ceremony commemorating Lincoln’s birthday, became known as “The Negro National Anthem.” It was moving to see the white-haired gentleman pray those words which seemed to reflect his experience and that of so many others. Here is the hymn in its entirety. The third verse is the one used in Rev. Lowery’s prayer.  

Lift Every Voice and Sing

By James Weldon Johnson

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.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught 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 chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for 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 bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast 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 Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.