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| 2023-05-09 311 Lift Every Voice and Sing (National Hymn for the Colored People of America, 1900), John Weldon Johnson & J Rosamond Johnson; PAFA, Philadelphia |
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In 1935, James Weldon Johnson reflected on the origins of his enduring lyrics: . "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 20 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." |