When Grammy Award winning singer Coco Jones sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before the kickoff of the Super Bowl on Sunday (2/8) many were surprised on social media when some called it The Black National Anthem.
The term is an unofficial one for the song that was written as a poem in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson and put to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson.
In his autobiography, Along This Way (1933), James wrote that the song which is often heard in churches was first performed by schoolchildren at the Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, in honor of President Lincoln’s birthday celebration in 1900.
Over time it adopted in the Civil Rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s and deemed the Negro National Anthem by the NAACP who still praise Johnson’s lyrics as ones that “eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans.”
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