Lift Every Voice

This past Sunday, January 18, churches across the country gathered to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King.

At the end of this blog entry, you will be able to hear my congregation, The Episcopal Church of Sts. Andrew and Matthew, belt out in strong and emotional voices the wonderful Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Wikipedia writes that Lift Every Voice and Sing" (now also known as "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing") was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 by 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School. Its principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington.

The poem was later set to music by Mr. Johnson's brother, John, in 1905. Singing this song quickly became a way for African-Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and hope for the future. In calling for earth and heaven to "ring with the harmonies of Liberty," they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws—and especially the huge number of lynchings accompanying the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the turn of the century. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem." By the 1920s, copies of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" could be found in black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals.

During and after the American Civil Rights Movement, the song experienced a rebirth, and by the 1970s was often sung immediately after "The Star Spangled Banner" at public events and performances where the event had a significant African-American population.

This past Tuesday, at the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama, the Rev. Joseph Lowery(former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) "used a near-verbatim recitation of the song's third stanza to being his benediction.

I have provided you the lyrics which you can use to follow along as my wonderful friends and family sing.

Lift every voice and sing,

'Til 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 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning 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,

'Til 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 has 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.

As a special treat, I copies out "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and posted it as a separate file. It was the Offertory Anthem. You can hear it and download it at http://drop.io/SsAM_Worship/asset/lifteveryvoice. Very powerful and what a great anthem to hear as we anticipate tomorrow.