Lift Every Voice and Sing

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," the song known as the "Negro National Anthem," was written in 1890 for a celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies;
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song, full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;
Sing a song, full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun
Of our new day begun,
Let us march on, till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our parents sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light:
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

Source: Nora Panzer, ed. Celebrate America in Poetry and Art (New York and Washington, D.C.: Hyperion Paperbacks for Children in association with the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1994).

Pictured: William H. Johnson, 1901–70, Lift up Thy Voice and Sing, about 1942–44, oil on paperboard, 25 5/8 x 21 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.