February 12, 2020 is the 120th anniversary of the first performance of the song “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”. I first became aware of this tune as a member of the local NAACP chapter in Rutland, VT, at a fund-raising dinner in 2018. Soon after at a Sunday service, I noticed this hymn in the New Century hymnal, one of our hymnals at Grace Congregational Church in Rutland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 6\/8 time signature and melody have a powerful “anthem” quality to it. In fact, this song is often referred to as the “The Black National Anthem” by the NAACP and African Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lyrics to this song were written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson. His words were set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson in 1899.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This song was first performed in public as part of a celebration of President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s birthday on February 12, 1900. The singers were a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, in Jacksonville, FL, where James Weldon Johnson was principal. You can view the lyrics and history<\/a> for this anthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n February 12, 2020 is the 120th anniversary of the first performance of the song “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”. I first became aware of this tune as a member of the local NAACP chapter in Rutland, VT, at a fund-raising dinner in 2018. Soon after at a Sunday service, I noticed this hymn in the … Continue reading “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing: 120th Anniversary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[12,66,120,19],"tags":[91,94,95,96],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ronpulcer.com\/music\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Related posts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n