“Lift Every Voice And Sing”: Magnificent American Anthem?

By Timothy Askew, Ph.D.

Is the Song Claimed by African-Americans Relevant to all Americans?

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When I was a senior at Morehouse College, my music professor, department chair, and Glee Club Director, Dr. Wendell Phillips Whalum Sr. introduced to the glee club a song that we would sing on our tours across the nation.

In his talk, he said that the new addition to our repertoire, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” was written by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson for a Lincoln-Day program in Jacksonville, Florida in 1900. I had never sung this wonderful song in my elementary or high schools or even at my church in Atlanta; and thus, I did not know of the song’s importance until Dr. Wendell Whalum spoke about it that day in the Fall of 1982.

When I graduated from Morehouse College, I went off to Yale to pursue graduate study in the African American Studies Program and was blessed to meet a classmate who was finishing his doctorate in Art History. Richard Powell reminded me of the vast material on James Weldon Johnson in the Beinecke Library at Yale, and I set off, although initially a bit reluctantly, to peruse hundreds and hundreds of folders and boxes of papers about “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” My quest to understand the importance of this song has been relentless, and I have been researching long after my Ph.D. days at Emory to find out more and more about the significance of this song.

What I have learned is that the study of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” reveals that many African Americans in each decade of the twentieth century have sought to forge an identity which gives them a sense of cultural independence but which also links them to a mainstream American tapestry.

I have also learned in my vast research on “Lift Every Voice and Sing” that many influential African Americans, especially highly visible political and cultural leaders, have designated this song a national symbol for the black race, even as many people have questioned the validity of such a title for this magnificent song.

Recently, in several notable publications, some African American leaders and other James Weldon Johnson scholars have made controversial statements about my research and even about my views on this wonderful song without having read my book at all. Some scholars have even made the erroneous remark that James Weldon Johnson never referred to the song as an anthem, only as a hymn. Their assessment is incorrect. After over twenty-five years of research on “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” I am comfortable in declaring that I know the history of this song thoroughly—in and out—and that James Weldon Johnson did refer to this wonderful song as an anthem.

In 1936, Mrs. W.W. Sanders, the wife of Dr. William Sanders of the National Association of Teachers In Colored Schools in Charleston, West Virginia, wrote to James Weldon Johnson about her visit to the city some years before and about “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” She stated: “After your visit . . . you were kind enough to send to Mr. Sanders two copies of the ‘Negro National Anthem’ which we valued highly. Mr. Sanders gave one of these copies to the Supervisor of Music in our schools, and this served as an introduction of the song to the people of Charleston. There is rarely a public occasion now that this song does not appear upon the programs.” James Weldon Johnson responded: “I am glad that you wrote me about the esteem in which the National Anthem is held in Charleston.”

When I set out on this lonesome journey to find out as much as I could about “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in every place that I could, I was not and am not on a campaign to vilify this amazing song which affirms my own identity politics as an African American but also as an American, in general. However, I have been arduously impassioned about finding out the truth about the history of this song as any serious scholar would. I invite African American leaders, scholars, and all to read my book, Cultural Hegemony and African American Patriotism: An Analysis of the Song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” (www.linusbooks.com) as a work which documents the literary, musical, and cultural history of the song as a scholarly work that is worthy of our critical understanding.

My book does not defame or misrepresent one of the most important musical treasures in America.

But “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is not a song that I wish to force upon or even to suggest to someone as a the Black National Anthem or as the one and only musical or cultural symbol which delineates the history of African Americans, based on my rigorous research on this song and also based on my views and my support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who urged for a color-blind society where all people of all races could sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I really do not believe that the title Black National Anthem unites African Americans to a mainstream American identity.

Calling the song an African American song of identity, an African American patriotic song, an American anthem, or a universal anthem is wonderful, but declaring that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the Black National Anthem can convey to others a sense of racial separatism.

Surely, this wonderful song whose words speak to all people and to all generations belongs to humanity and all who seek the common good and the beloved community about which Dr. King dreamed.

Timothy Askew, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English at Clark Atlanta University, Georgia.