Lift Every Voice and Sing ...

Tis the week for national songs, as the 4th of July approaches --- and I've started things off by listening this morning to various versions of a favorite, "Lift Every Voice and Sing ...."

Written in 1900 as a poem by James Weldon Johnson and then set to music in 1905 by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), designated this "the Negro national anthem" in 1919.

It's a good reminder that the work of the United States of America and those of us who claim it --- a rainbow coalition of races, religions, genders, orientations and outlooks --- always is aspirational, not accomplished.

The performance here was recorded during March of 2017 at First Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and features the Winston-Salem State University Choir, Alumni Choir and friends, directed by Dr. Roland M. Carter.

Here are the words:

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
let our rejoicing rise,
high as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea
sing a song full of faith that the dark past has tought 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 chast'ning rod,
felt in the day that hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat,
have not our weary feet,
come to the place on witch 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, till now we stand at last
where the white gleam of our 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,
least our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee,
shadowed beneath the hand,
may we forever stand,
true to our God,
True to our native land.