This upcoming week in America is one of historical significance. On January 20, we hold the inauguration of Barak Obama, our first African-American president. How appropriate that the inauguration occurs the day after we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream of blacks and whites living as equals in society. This week, we will see that dream come to fruition.

Throughout history, many figures have arisen with the same message of hope and dreams for African-American people. One of those figures was James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938). A civil rights activist, he set out to educate members of his community. He became Florida’s first African American to pass the bar exam and became secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Johnson advocated for integration and in the 1930’s published several books on his views including: Black Manhattan(1930), Along this way (1933), and Negro American’s, What Now? (1934). Johnson also was interested in poetry and music. In 1922, he put together a book of American Negro Poetry. Not only did he collect poems, he wrote some as well. One poem he is well known for is “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. The song, adopted in 1912 as the “Negro National Anthem” by the NAACP, was first performed by children of a segregated school to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900.

As we approach this monumental time in American history, let us not forget the struggles that we have faced as a nation to achieve this unity. The struggles and the hopes that Johnson himself so clearly outlines in his anthem.

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING- James Weldon Johnson
Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land