Lift Every Voice-100-Plus Years Old

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 thru 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 has 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 meet 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.

Words: James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Music: J. Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954)

The Writers
The Text
The Music
Performance
Suggestions for Use
Bibliography

The Writers

February 12, 2000, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the composition and first performance of the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing " by brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson. The date is no accident, since the hymn's first performance was in Jacksonville, Florida (February 12, 1900) in a children's musical celebration of the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809).

James Weldon Johnson and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, were born in Jacksonville, Florida. They were active in musical and educational endeavors in their hometown. James Weldon studied law; and in 1897 he became the first African American admitted to the Florida bar. He served under two American presidents: Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft, as consul in Venezuela (1906-09) and then Nicaragua (1909-12). He later became Field Secretary (1916-20) and Executive Secretary (1920-30) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1930 James Weldon became professor of creative literature at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

J. Rosamond taught music in the Jacksonville public schools, eventually becoming music supervisor for that city's "colored" schools. He was also a Baptist church organist and choir director and taught music at the Baptist Academy in Jacksonville. It was during one of these school musical programs that "Lift Every Voice" received its first performance.

In 1901 the brothers went to New York and became active in vaudeville, producing a string of successful songs and musicals prior to World War I. They collaborated on and published more than two hundred songs for the Broadway musical theatre, as well as two books of American Negro Spirituals in 1925 and 1926. In addition to his collaborations with his brother, James Weldon was a prolific author and poet, and his works include two volumes, Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) and God's Trombones (1927). James Weldon was an important figure in the

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is regarded by many African Americans as a "national anthem" because of its profound association with the struggle for equality and civil rights in the United States. It is taught at an early age in homes, schools, and churches; and it is often sung at civic, cultural, and patriotic gatherings. The hymn is being included in an increasing number of denominational and independent hymnals and songbooks, including The United Methodist Hymnal (number 519) and Songs of Zion (Abingdon Press, 1981, number 32.) It is worth remembering that the 1921 copyright date of the Edward B. Marks Music Co., which is included in many of these hymnals, has expired; and the hymn is now in the public domain. Arrangements of the hymn, however, such as the one by Verolga Nix in Songs of Zion (number 210) are still protected by copyright.

The Text
Meter. The United Methodist Hymnal assigns the meter for this hymn as Irregular. That is true only in the sense that it may be in a meter unique to this hymn; that is, a non-standard meter. It actually falls into the pattern of 12.10.12.10.14.14.12.10, a design that yields a rather standard and simple AABA form.

Form. The text is through-composed, without repetitions or refrain. The rhyme scheme of the metrical pattern is abcbddee.

Content and Mood. There are three stanzas presented in a very intentional order. It would be a great injustice to eliminate any of the stanzas. Stanza one is a call to freedom and rejoicing -- if not born out of the actual experience of African Americans, then out of their joy of faith and the promise of hope they have in being faithful people of God. Stanza two turns more serious, even somber, in its biographical depiction of slavery, with the unpleasant and graphic description of the "bitter chastening rod," a time when "hope unborn had died," "a way that with tears has been watered," and the "path thru the blood of the slaughtered." Stanza three, although a prayer, is also a lament. Even the Psalmist rarely achieves such a sense of desolation and suffering.

The mood, then, moves from celebration through a gloomy description of circumstances into an intense expression of longing for God to remain ever present. God is there even in the "weary years" and "silent tears." It is a prayer for God to "keep us forever in the path," not the path of suffering and oppression, but the path of God's grace, mercy, promise, and love. It is a prayer that, no matter how harsh our circumstances, no matter how much we suffer, we remain in God's embrace.

This spirit of ultimate optimism, even in the face of such suffering, is further reflected in the last two phrases of each stanza. As the mood of the stanzas becomes increasingly dark and increasingly intense, each stanza concludes with a positive affirmation of trust and hope.

It is significant that there is not even one appearance in this hymn of a singular pronoun -- all are plural. The hymn is a shared expression of an entire people with common sufferings, common strivings, and common hopes. And this accounts for the importance of this hymn to African Americans of all faiths and for its being regarded as a national anthem.

The Music
If the music is divorced from the text, one can easily imagine it serving as festive music for a marching band at a football game's half-time show. The recurring patterns of triplets and dotted notes, the rise and fall of the melodic line, the harmonic cadences, the emotional peaks on the melodic high points, the melodic nature of the bass line, and the effective use of melodic chromaticism and secondary harmonic chords -- all make for a highly varied musical treatment that does not lose its sense of unity. Melody, rhythm, harmony, and musical form all work together to bring out the meaning and emotional impact of the text. In the B section (the 14.14 meter phrases), where the text becomes its darkest and most intense, the music takes on a lowered chromatic quality and drops to its lowest pitch level, a wonderfully expressive device.

Performance
It would be a tragically uninformed performance of this hymn to have the congregation begin at a joyously crisp tempo appropriate to the first stanza and then maintain it throughout all three stanzas. To do this text justice and to bring some sense of identity between non-African American congregations singing it and the actual experience of those who consider it to be a national anthem, each stanza should be sung slower, softer, more reflectively than the one preceding. The intensity and darkness of the B section's text must be brought out by being careful not to rush through those two groups of nine successive eighth note triplets. Many musicians will see that rhythmic pattern and immediately think"FASTER!" In fact, they should be sung slower and more deliberately, giving the singers or listeners a chance to experience the emotional impact. The positive affirmation of the text in the final A section; that is, the last two phrases of each stanza, should be sung in a spirit of joyful confidence and hopeful expectation, a certain contrast to the two preceding phrases of the B section.

Suggestions for Use
Sing this hymn in worship on a Sunday in February, and celebrate its one hundredth anniversary. Inform the congregation of its history and relationship to the experience of African Americans, making use of a bulletin insert, a brief announcement before the hymn is sung, or perhaps as the subject of a sermon. It is both a biography and an expression of a race of people. Besides being a magnificent sacred hymn, it is an important historical document. It should be taught to, sung by, and remembered by all Americans.

Bibliography
J. Jefferson Cleveland and Verolga Nix, eds. Songs of Zion. Abingdon Press, 1981.
William Farley Smith. Songs of Deliverance. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993.

Web sites:

A Brief History of Brother James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (Harmon Collection)