The lyrics to ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ and James Weldon Johnson on how it came to be

Reprinted from Poetry Foundation. 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 exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed […]