Lift Every Voice and Sing
#519 in
The United Methodist Hymnal (1989)
1. Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
ring with the harmonies of liberty;
let our rejoicing rise high as the listening 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.
2. 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 fathers 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.
3. 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.
Words by James Weldon Johnson, 1921
Music by J. Rosamond Johnsonn, 1921
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| "Bombs bursting in air" and "the rockets' red glare" during the War of 1812. |
Replace our national anthem?
Why it might be time to finally replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with a new national anthem. That's the title of a Yahoo column posted yesterday. Click on the title/link, if you want to read the whole thing. Ideas from the article:
- "The Star-Spangled Banner" has "blatantly racist" connotations. (See my paragraph below.)
- An Afro-Latina student says she asked to sing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," widely known as the Black national anthem, when she was picked to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during graduation, and the school approved the change after strong support from the senior class.
- So, is it time for this country to dispense with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and adopt a new anthem with a less troubling history and a more inclusive message?
If so, should "Lift Every Voice and Sing" be the one? I like the idea of changing our national anthem, especially since the current one includes these words in the third stanza: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave." And the fourth verse mentions "freemen," but not slaves (or women, for that matter). Do we really need to remember "the rockets' red glare" and "bombs bursting in air" from the War of 1812 with Britain? Why? More information:
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in 1905, and first publicly performed as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday by Johnson's brother John. It was dubbed "the Negro national hymn" by the NAACP in 1919. Maya Angelou referred to it in her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Here are the first and last lines of the Yahoo article:
- "In an increasingly anti-racist era when problematic iconography — ranging from Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben to even the Dukes of Hazzard General Lee car and country band Lady Antebellum’s name — is being reassessed, revised or retired, America’s national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' seems to be striking a wrong note."
- "If there's a tradition that hurts any part of the society — sexist, patriarchal, misogynistic — then it’s time to just throw it away."
Racism, sexism, and singing about "bombs bursting in air" — which sounds to me like we're glorifying war. We've done too much of that and are now perpetually at war all over the world. I think a change in our nation anthem might be a good thing. What do YOU think?
