![]() Washington endorsed it, and in 1919, it became the official song of the NAACP. Two key events led to its being named the Negro National Anthem: In 1905, Booker T. Author and activist James Weldon Johnson wrote the words as a poem, which his brother John then set to music. ![]() "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written at a pivotal time, when Jim Crow was replacing slavery and African-Americans were searching for an identity. The first verse opens with a command to optimism, praise and freedom: "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first performed in 1900, at a segregated school in Jacksonville, Fla., by a group of 500 children celebrating the anniversary of the birth of President Lincoln. "To sing this song is to revive that past - but also to recognize, as the lyrics of the song reveal, that there is a hopeful future that might come of it." "Black communities across the globe continue to be vulnerable in very unique and unsettling ways," Redmond says. Shana Redmond, a professor at UCLA who studies music, race, and politics and author of the book A nthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, says it's a song about transcending difficulties - and those difficulties have never fully receded. So what is it about "Lift Every Voice and Sing" that speaks to a people, so much that it's become known as the "black national anthem"? ![]() Life began when i heard Beyonce's Lift Every Voice and Sing #Beychella /MG3RBTEChh- Reese Waters April 16, 2018 ![]()
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