MY TRUTH: About the Black National Anthem…

By Cheryl Smith

First things first, I need Negroes, Colored, Blacks, Afro-Americans, African Americans, Blackish, and Blackity-Blacks to stand!

Actually, anyone with any sense of decorum should stand!

If you don’t take a knee, if you don’t march; if you don’t speak up; you need to stand for the Black National Anthem AND you need to learn the words.

And we could also use some help from musicians.

You see, if musicians will play Lift Every Voice and Sing all willy-nilly any time they get the feeling, it disrupts protocol.

Anthems should never be played as part of a playlist. Instead, realize that protocol has been established and the song deserves all the pomp and circumstance.

This subject is not for debate purposes.
Your opinion is not requested or needed.
Some things don’t deserve a response or discussion.
If you didn’t know before, now you do.
Treat this song with respect.

I would also like to suggest, for college orientation classes, teaching students the alma mater. Is that hazing? No, not really.

Again, establish a protocol that makes all the sense in the world. You should want your students, faculty, employees, and staff to know the song. After all, they have no problem learning a lot of those other songs, and some of them are down-right disrespectful, and inappropriate and shouldn’t be repeated around people you hold in high esteem.

But back to the Black National Anthem. We can’t blame young people if they don’t know the words.

We need to do a better job of teaching. And it’s about more than teaching a song.

When you consider the efforts to rewrite history; there’s so much that needs to be taught!

Then too, Lift Every Voice and Sing is a beautiful song!

According to the NAACP, Lift Every Voice and Sing was a hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), composed the music for the lyrics.

A choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal, first performed the song in public in Jacksonville, FL to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Here are the lyrics to the Black National Anthem:

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING

Lift every 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 fa- thers 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.

I get teary-eyed just saying the words.

Words do matter.

And remember, we’re always talking about someone stealing “our culture,” so here’s a chance to take ownership and keep it. We can control the narrative and possibly change the course to avoid the attempt at continuing the “miseducation of the negro” as Dr. Carter G. Woodson told us about.

It’s up to you!