lift every voice and sing vanessa williams performance

'Lift Every Voice and Sing' was first recited by a group of 500 students in 1900. However, amid the ongoing civil rights movement, Johnson decided to write a poem which was themed around the struggles of African Americans following the Reconstruction era (including the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South). James Weldon Johnson, Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida, had sought to write a poem in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Its prominence has increased since 2020 following the George Floyd protests in 2021, then House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn sponsored a bill proposing that 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' be designated as the 'national hymn' of the United States. It has been featured in 42 different Christian hymnals, and it has also been performed by various African American singers and musicians. Premiered in 1900, 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' was communally sung within Black American communities, while the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a ' Negro national anthem' in 1917 (with the term ' Black national anthem' similarly used in the present day). Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery that evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the 'promised land.'

' Lift Every Voice and Sing' is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J.

Lift every voice and sing vanessa williams performance