Lift Every Voice and Sing and the Tradition of Black Protest Poetry
From James Weldon Johnson to Amanda Gorman
Audio provided by AI technology.
As millions of viewers watched the Super Bowl, Coco Jones stepped onto the field and sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Dressed in white and wearing an outfit that simultaneously honored Whitney Houston’s iconic performance of “Oh Say Can You See” and the colors of the Pan-African flag, she performed the Black National Anthem with the reverence it deserves. This was more than just a pre-game show; it was a tribute to tradition.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first performed in 1900 by 500 Black schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida. James Weldon Johnson, who later became a leader in the NAACP, wrote the lyrics, and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, composed the music. What began as a tribute to Lincoln’s birthday became, over time, an anthem of the Black freedom struggle.
It has always been more than just a song; it is part of Black poetry as protest. The Johnson brothers expressed both Black patriotism and a demand for full citizenship.
Poetry as Protest
From its opening lines, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” acknowledges a “dark past” even as it urges listeners to “march on.” That tension—grief and hope—was a defining feature of twentieth-century Black poetry. These were not just beautifully written words; they were activism on paper.
In 1919, during the racial violence of the Red Summer, Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay published “If We Must Die.” McKay wrote the poem amid white supremacist attacks on Black communities, but it was not a plea for mercy. It was a demand for dignity. “If we must die,” McKay wrote, “let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot.” In fourteen tightly controlled lines, he transformed the European sonnet form into a declaration of Black collective resistance.
A few years later, Langston Hughes would respond to Walt Whitman’s democratic optimism with a sharper claim. “I, too, sing America,” Hughes wrote. While Whitman celebrated a nation already in harmony, Hughes described segregation—being sent to “eat in the kitchen” when company comes. Still, Hughes did not foresee endless exclusion. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll be at the table.” His poem asserts that the American promise must eventually expand.
By the middle of the century, Maya Angelou’s poetry continued that tradition. In “Still I Rise,” she directly challenges historical distortion: “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies…” The refrain, “I rise,” does more than inspire. It demands. It transforms survival into declaration.
But to truly grasp what that insistence really means—and how it connects Angelou to Johnson, McKay, and Hughes—we need to examine the poems more carefully.
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