“Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing”

Title and first line of a song that has come to be known as the African-American national anthem. The words and music are by James Weldon Johnson and his brother J. Rosamond Johnson. The first stanza is:
Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till 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 till victory is won.

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“Lift every chair and swing,” read one shirt in a play on “ Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” the late-19th century hymn sometimes referred to as the Black national anthem.

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Gannon University, a private school in Pennsylvania, decided to play "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" ‒ otherwise known as the Black national anthem ‒ in wake of the racial tension and unrest that occurred last summer over the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake.

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"Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" is widely considered to be the Black national anthem.

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"Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" was played minutes before the start of Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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Featuring the saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy; the tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan; the trumpeter Johnny Coles; the pianist Jaki Byard; and the drummer Dannie Richmond, the sextet mixes Ellingtonian harmonies and quotes from “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” into a half-hour exploration that’s heavy on rough, avant-garde improvising and passages of pregnant silence, all of which heighten the collective intensity.

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