{"id":880,"date":"2013-02-03T15:38:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T23:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/?p=880"},"modified":"2013-02-03T15:38:30","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T23:38:30","slug":"celebrating-black-history-month-life-every-voice-and-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/celebrating-black-history-month-life-every-voice-and-sing\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Black History Month \u2013 Life Every Voice and Sing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"background-repeat: no-repeat;\"><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0\u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln\u2019s Birthday on February 12, 1900 by 500 school children 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 Johnson\u2019s brother John in 1905. Singing this song quickly became a way for African Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and hope for the future.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In calling for earth and heaven to \u201cring with the harmonies of Liberty,\u201d they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws\u2014and 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 \u201cThe Negro National Anthem.\u201d By the 1920s, copies of \u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d could be found in black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals. In 1939, Augusta Savage received a commission from the World\u2019s Fair and created a 16-foot plaster sculpture called <em>Lift Ev\u2019ry Voice and Sing<\/em>. Savage did not have any funds for a bronze cast, or even to move and store it, and it was destroyed by bulldozers at the close of the fair.<\/p>\n<p>The lyrics are ones of empowerment<\/p>\n<p>Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,<br \/>\nRing with the harmonies of liberty;<br \/>\nLet our rejoicing rise, high as the list\u2019ning skies,<br \/>\nLet it resound loud as the rolling sea.<br \/>\nSing a song full of the faith<br \/>\nthat the dark past has taught us,<br \/>\nSing a song full of the hope<br \/>\nthat the present has brought us;<br \/>\nFacing the rising sun of our new day begun,<br \/>\nLet us march on till victory is won.<\/p>\n<p>Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast\u2019ning rod,<br \/>\nFelt in the days when hope unborn had died;<br \/>\nYet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,<br \/>\nCome to the place for which our fathers sighed?<br \/>\nWe have come over a way<br \/>\nthat with tears has been watered.<br \/>\nWe have come, treading our path<br \/>\nthro\u2019 the blood of the slaughtered,<br \/>\nOut from a gloomy past, till now we stand at last<br \/>\nWhere the white gleam<br \/>\nof our bright star is cast.<\/p>\n<p>God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,<br \/>\nThou who has brought us thus far on the way;<br \/>\nThou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,<br \/>\nKeep us forever in the path, we pray.<br \/>\nLest our feet stray from the places<br \/>\nOur God where we met Thee,<br \/>\nLest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world<br \/>\nwe forget Thee;<br \/>\nShadowed beneath Thy hand<br \/>\nMay we forever stand,<br \/>\nTrue to our God,<br \/>\nTrue to our native land.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u201cLift Every Voice and Sing\u201d was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln\u2019s Birthday on February 12, 1900 by 500 school children 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistahology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}