Two important themes emerged in my consciousness at the time: the way the particular history, experience and culture of Black Americans offered a piercing critique of our nation’s collective self-image, demanding that America be what it says it is and the fundamental need for enduring, socially shared meaning to be expressed and passed on through art, ritual and performance. It must have been during my college years that I began to understand the significance of the song-its place in American communal life. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has always been there: in the ether of every Black church attended in Chicago in “the Hills” of north-central Mississippi and in “the Delta,” where the blues and my daddy were born. Not unlike the experience of singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” or reciting the Nicene Creed, it is only possible to pull off the performance in the presence of a congregation that reminds you of the next line. It is the song sung in the places where our “fathers and mothers had sighed.” The words and melody are eminently familiar to me. It has always been there: in the ether of every Black church attended in Chicago in “the Hills” of north-central Mississippi and in “the Delta,” where the blues and my daddy were born. I may have sung it at every assembly at Hearst Elementary, the all-Black school I attended from ages 3 to 6. I cannot recall a time when I did not sing or at least hear “Lift Every Voice and Sing” or even when I first learned to sing this hallowed hymn. What can this song mean for a nation in peril? The prospect of a new life for this hymn heard in churches and assemblies across the country at once causes me discomfort and piques my interest.
Clyburn proposed that “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” popularly accepted as the national anthem of Black people in the United States, be adopted as a new “national hymn”-a symbolic bid to foster healing in a divided nation. Trump’s presidency, House Majority Whip James E. I worry about losing the rituals of belonging and becoming that shape our vastly varying identities and draw us together. As a child I stood, hand on heart, pledging allegiance to the flag and singing about “bombs bursting in air.” I can never remember which lines come first in our national anthem: “gallantly streaming” or “twilight’s last gleaming”? While these patriotic customs may be more contentious these days I find them valuable, especially now as an adult.
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