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Facts About 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' the Black National Anthem


Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress // Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called Black national anthem, was written by 20th-century novelist/poet/songwriter James Weldon Johnson as a rallying cry for perseverance and social justice. Though it’s been performed publicly for nearly 100 years, there’s probably a lot you still don’t know about this iconic song though if a congressman has his way, you’ll be hearing it alongside “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the near future.
1. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was originally written as a poem.
The song (the lyrics to which you can read here) was originally written by James Weldon Johnson as a poem in 1899, when the KKK was riding hard and Black people were being lynched and terrorized by Jim Crow laws in the American South. Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, is the one who put the verses to music. The anthem was first sung by 500 African American schoolchildren in Ja ....

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