"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written during the nadir of American race relations, when racism against Black Americans was being baked into law and other societal institutions. In 1899, James Weldon Johnson, a writer and civil rights activist, tried to write a poem commemorating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Instead, he wrote one that celebrates Black Americans' resilience in the face of oppression. He asked his brother J. Rosamond Johnson to set it to music.

First premiered by schoolchildren in Jacksonville, Florida, the song spread rapidly within Black communities. In 1919, it was adopted by the NAACP as its official song, which it promoted as the "Negro national anthem" (now the "Black national anthem"). The anthem was there at every moment of progress and setback for Black Americans: from the civil rights era of the 1960s to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., from the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 to the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" connects listeners to the past and motivates them to unite and strive for a better future.

Further reading:

• Chow, Andrew R. "A History of the Newly Resurgent 'Black National Anthem.'" Time, 13 July 2020, updated 9 February 2024.

—The GCNA