Lift Every Voice and Sing

About

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871, the son of a freeborn Virginian father and a Bahamian mother, and was raised without a sense of limitations amid a society focused on segregating African Americans. He was a lawyer, as well as a civil rights activist, diplomat, poet and author. He became known as one of the leading figures in the creation and development of the African-American artistic community known as the ‘Harlem Renaissance’. He was the first African-American professor at New York University.

This highly rhythmic setting uses only the first verse of the poem (there are three verses in the original).