What Doesn’t MAGA Know About the ‘Black National Anthem’? A Lot
Fine. I, too, believe in “one nation under God,” but we don’t get there by fanning the flames of fear and paranoia purely for political exploitation.
But let’s clarify this much: As much as the song is often called the “Black national anthem,” as I, too, have done on occasion, the Super Bowl announcers quite properly referred to it by its formal title, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
That means every voice.
The song doesn’t even mention race. It doesn’t have to. Written in 1900 as a poem by Johnson, a onetime NAACP leader, it was set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson, according to NAACP historians:
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
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