One of the most beautiful hymns in our United Church of Christ hymnbook is “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Written in 1871 as a poem, it was publicly read as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, 1900, by school children at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida. The poet, was also the principal of the school– James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was set to music in 1905 by Johnson’s brother John Rosamond Johnson. In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) dubbed it “The Negro National Anthem” for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African-American people. . Today “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and speaks of challenge, hope, and the spiritual call to racial justice, liberation, and equity.

Here are the lyrics:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,

‘Til 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 ’til 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 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,

‘Til 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 has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has 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.