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"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving to God as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery that evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom ...
(The California NAACP called for a new anthem in 2017, calling certain lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — written in 1814 long before the song became the national anthem — racist and ...
Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of James Johnson, a biracial headwaiter and Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau in the Bahamas.His maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including James' grandfather Stephen Dillet (1797–1880).
After it gained popularity, it was often referred to as "the new black national anthem" [4] (the original being the 1900 song "Lift Every Voice and Sing"). Kelefa Sanneh noted the song was, "an exuberant number often interpreted as an expression of Black pride".
For Black Music Month, also celebrated in June, theGrio crafted a list of the Top 12 Black anthem songs. Some are obvious, like the Black National Anthem or our #1 song, a James Brown classic.
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Two events are credited to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” becoming “the Black national anthem.” In 1905, the song earned the endorsement of noted educator, author and community leader Booker ...
The song was the official anthem for the African National Congress during the apartheid era and was a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement. [7] For decades during the apartheid regime it was considered by many to be the unofficial national anthem of South Africa, representing the suffering of the oppressed masses. Because of its connection to ...