Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Quick and Easy Sign Up!

It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.

Sign Up Browse

Popular Genres

Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

  • Download on iOS
  • Download on Android
  • Download on iOS

Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem; 100 Years, 100 Voices

Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem; 100 Years, 100 Voices

Julian Bond
0/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
"A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln's birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercise. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.

"Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.

"The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children."        

—James Weldon Johnson, 1935

Pasted into Bibles, schoolbooks, and hearts, Lift Every Voice and Sing, written by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson in 1900, has become one of the most beloved songs in the African American community—taught for years in schools, churches, and civic organizations. Adopted by the NAACP as its official song in the 1920s and sung throughout the civil rights movement, it is still heard today at gatherings across America.

James Weldon Johnson's lyrics pay homage to a history of struggle but never waver from a sense of optimism for the future—"facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won." Its message of hope and strength has made Lift Every Voice and Sing a source of inspiration for generations.

In celebration of the song's centennial, Julian Bond and Sondra Kathryn Wilson have collected one hundred essays by artists, educators, politicians, and activists reflecting on their personal experiences with the song. Also featuring photos from historical archives, Lift Every Voice and Sing is a moving illustration of the African American experience in the past century.

With contributors including John Hope Franklin, Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou, Norman Lear, Maxine Waters, and Percy Sutton, this volume is a personal tribute to the enduring power of an anthem. Lift Every Voice and Sing has touched the hearts of many who have heard it because its true aim, as Harry Belafonte explains, "isn't just to show life as it is but to show life as it should be."
Language
English
Pages
304
Format
Hardcover
Release
October 31, 2000
ISBN 13
9780679463153

Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem; 100 Years, 100 Voices

Julian Bond
0/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
"A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln's birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercise. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.

"Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.

"The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children."        

—James Weldon Johnson, 1935

Pasted into Bibles, schoolbooks, and hearts, Lift Every Voice and Sing, written by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson in 1900, has become one of the most beloved songs in the African American community—taught for years in schools, churches, and civic organizations. Adopted by the NAACP as its official song in the 1920s and sung throughout the civil rights movement, it is still heard today at gatherings across America.

James Weldon Johnson's lyrics pay homage to a history of struggle but never waver from a sense of optimism for the future—"facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won." Its message of hope and strength has made Lift Every Voice and Sing a source of inspiration for generations.

In celebration of the song's centennial, Julian Bond and Sondra Kathryn Wilson have collected one hundred essays by artists, educators, politicians, and activists reflecting on their personal experiences with the song. Also featuring photos from historical archives, Lift Every Voice and Sing is a moving illustration of the African American experience in the past century.

With contributors including John Hope Franklin, Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou, Norman Lear, Maxine Waters, and Percy Sutton, this volume is a personal tribute to the enduring power of an anthem. Lift Every Voice and Sing has touched the hearts of many who have heard it because its true aim, as Harry Belafonte explains, "isn't just to show life as it is but to show life as it should be."
Language
English
Pages
304
Format
Hardcover
Release
October 31, 2000
ISBN 13
9780679463153

More books from Julian Bond

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965

4.4/5 ( ratings)

The Black Panthers Speak

4.4/5 ( ratings)

I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters

4.5/5 ( ratings)

Julian Bond's Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Letters from Mississippi: Reports from Civil Rights Volunteers and Freedom School Poetry of the 1964 Freedom Summer

4.4/5 ( ratings)

Prophet Of Rage: A Life Of Louis Farrakhan And His Nation

3.3/5 ( ratings)

Standing Fast: The Autobiography Of Roy Wilkins

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Free At Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle

4.6/5 ( ratings)

This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Race Man: The Collected Works of Julian Bond, 1960-2015

4.4/5 ( ratings)

Vietnam: An Antiwar Comic Book

4.6/5 ( ratings)

Black Candidates: Southern Campaign Experiences

1/5 ( ratings)

Double Exposure: Poverty and Race in America

1/5 ( ratings)

Muhammad Ali - The Whole Story

1/5 ( ratings)

Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series)

1/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?

loader