I don't have much to say. I just wanted to share with the Daily Kos community the lyrics to, and a quite beautiful rendention of, the song 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'. Its one of my favorite poems. In fact its blended acknowledgement of so many aspects of the human condition, though epitomized through black experience in America, makes it on of the most inspiring and life affirming pieces I've ever come across.
Whenever racism rears its ugly head in this world, its lyrics help to calm me down, remind me of how much those who've come before have endured, how much the human spirit can endure, and how the correct response to injustice is never to conceed, never to give up, and never become its victim. It is known as the 'Black National Anthem', but I share it with Daily Kos because I beleive it is more than that, and might just carry meaning to those beyond the narrow confines of the black community. I think its a perfect expession of the iteration of oppression black Americans have faced., perhaps the best of our psalms. But as the Hebrew psalms are appreciated by more than Jews, perhaps this one black psalm can be appreciated by more than blacks.
From Wikipedia:
Lift Every Voice and Sing — often called "The Negro National Hymn" or "The Black National Anthem" — was written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) and then set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) in 1900.
Lift Every Voice and Sing was first performed in public in Jacksonville, Florida as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal.
Singing this song quickly became a way for African Americans to demonstrate their patriotism and hope for the future. In calling for earth and heaven to "ring with the harmonies of Liberty," they could speak out subtly against racism and Jim Crow laws—and especially the huge number of lynchings accompanying the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the turn of the century. In 1919, the NAACP adopted the song as "The Negro National Anthem." By the 1920s, copies of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" could be found in black churches across the country, often pasted into the hymnals.
During and after the American Civil Rights Movement, the song experienced a rebirth, and by the 1970's was often sung immediately after The Star Spangled Banner at public events and performances across the United States where the event had a significant African-American population.
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.
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.
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.