Since that time, the anthem has been the musical inspiration for generations of Black Americans in the never-ending battle for equality and human rights. In 1919, Johnson’s "Lift Every Voice and Sing" became the official song of the NAACP. He began working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1917 and was named executive secretary of the organization in 1920-a position he held for 10 years. Weldon Johnson, who wrote The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, was a towering literary figure and a prominent voice in the battle for civil rights. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was the official song of the NAACP. ![]() The anthem was first sung by 500 African American schoolchildren in Jacksonville, Florida, on February 12, 1900, as part of a celebration honoring Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, is the one who put the verses to music. The song (the lyrics to which you can read here) was originally written by James Weldon Johnson as a poem in 1899, when the KKK was riding hard and Black people were being lynched and terrorized by Jim Crow laws in the American South. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was originally written as a poem. ![]() Though it’s been performed publicly for nearly 100 years, there’s probably a lot you still don’t know about this iconic song-though if a congressman has his way, you’ll be hearing it alongside “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the near future. ![]() “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called Black national anthem, was written by 20th-century novelist/poet/songwriter James Weldon Johnson as a rallying cry for perseverance and social justice.
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