When poet and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson wrote the poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” in 1900, he had no idea that 125 years later it would serve as a virtuous national anthem and pillar of strength for the Black and faith communities.
Now, the cultural paean “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a classic tradition celebrated from the nationally televised Super Bowl to the classrooms of its origin city in Jacksonville, Florida, such as the viral rendition that has circulated the past couple of years of HBCU students and others performing the song to modern dances and self-made beats.
“Learned the song as a youngster and would have never thought of this!! Now I am almost 75 [years old], been to freedom marches, [March] on Washington, marched for equality … and I only wish [to hear] the song in places where they used to sing it,” said one X user under the original 2022 post of the students singing the historic tune.
Originally created to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday at a school assembly, Johnson collaborated with his composer brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, to assemble the melody that would soon see unprecedented success.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing resonates because it tells others that if we are to be free, we must be communal, lifting every voice and connecting our desires on earth as well as in Heaven,” said the Rev. William Lamar, pastor of the Metropolitan AME Church in D.C.
The hymn was first performed on Feb. 12, 1900 by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, where Johnson formerly served as principal.
By 1910, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” had spread from the corridors of Floridian schools across the country and was officially designated the national anthem for the NAACP, of which Johnson is a founding member, 19 years later.
The Johnson brothers’ music became a collective voice of former slaves amid segregation and the bloodiest years of the Reconstruction era.
Today, the hymn has been seared into the hearts of a new generation of African Americans, reflecting the precedence of cultural influence across the Diaspora.
“James Weldon Johnson’s work has been passed on in Black culture for generations,” Lamar told The Informer. “We know ‘The Creation,’ we know ‘God’s Trombones,’ ‘Lift Every Voice’ is not separate from his towering artistic expression, literary expressions, and legal expressions.”
Weldon Johnson and the Storied Impact of the Black National Anthem
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” symbolizes both civil advocacy and a treasured history of art justice still seen among religious figures today.
Joyce Garrett, director of Music and Worship Arts at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, said when she directed the Eastern High School chorus, she taught her students “Lift Every Voice.”
“I learned that song as a child and we had to learn all three verses,” Garrett explained. “As a teacher, I heard of this great choral arrangement by Roland Carter, and I started teaching the song to my choirs at Eastern.”
Garrett said the song became so [liked] that the audience would start applauding before her groups got to the end, “because the song builds to the last Amen.”
Similarly, Dr. Thomas Dixon Tyler, minister of Music of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., said “Lift Every Voice” holds a very special place in his heart, especially the last verse.
“For me, that song is about our ancestors overcoming the struggle of slavery. They had to have a concept and belief that God…was going to protect them…and lift them to a higher plane,” Dixon Tyler told The Informer.
In many ways, the poet and activist lived the life he wrote about. In 1891, the educator spent the summer after his freshman year at Atlanta University teaching former slaves in rural Georgia. He graduated from college in 1894, and three years later became the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar Exam for law school.
Johnson’s civil advocacy progressed right alongside his national status. Shortly after former President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, Johnson became field secretary of the NAACP, in which he rose to become one of the most successful officials in the civil rights organization during a period overcome with nationwide racial violence.
Johnson worked for the passage of federal legislation, including the NAACP-introduced Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1918, and was the only African American to speak at the National Conference on Lynching in Carnegie Hall, New York City the following year, where he reckoned the detriments of lynching to not only bestow African Americans, but also their white counterparts, and thus America itself.
According to New World Records, “Johnson worked to make attending whites… so uncomfortable that they would press political leaders for a federal anti-lynching law.”
Johnson’s legacy of social justice has since prospered through the lens of modern Black leaders.
The 125th anniversary of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and corresponding recognition from religious figures, mirrors an ingrained commitment to the preservation of Black history and culture even in trivial times–an exemplar of generational resilience from the anthem’s muse to the pulpits of 2025.
“[Our ancestors] had to have a concept and belief that God was going to lift them out of the chains of slavery when they sang, ‘Lest our feet stray and plant our feet on a higher ground,’” Dixon Tyler told The Informer. “We will sing ‘Lift Every Voice’ this Sunday at our 10 a.m. worship service.”