"LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, February 27, 2005

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

The legacy of the civil rights movement has been capsulated in the metaphor of a dream, articulated by Martin Luther King as a dream of equality among all people and justice in America. The dream provides a powerful legacy.

And yet I think there is another legacy from the lessons of the civil rights movement. It is a legacy not so much of a dream, but of a struggle. It is the legacy of courage. It is the will to make real the dream.

Dr. King showed us a dream, but beyond the dream he showed us the resolve to struggle for it. Today, of course, the dream has become part of the national self-identity, and what was so controversial in his day -- the articulation of genuine racial justice and equality -- is today celebrated in schools and government offices where once it was reviled. Today, the dream, though not yet achieved, is accepted as a common national aspiration.

It seems to me that while the dream is now a national vision, too easily we forget the struggle that it took to have the dream affirmed. The images of that struggle are rapidly fading, but they should never be forgotten:

Ø Police officers beating peaceful protesters, unleashing vicious dogs on gatherings of men women and children.

Ø Terrorist bombings of churches and sniper-shooting of innocent people.

Ø Kidnappings and lynchings.

Ø Passing of laws to exclude citizens from voting or a good education or an equal opportunity for buying a house or finding a job.

Ø Innocent people arrested for their opinions and thrown into jail.

Ø The gutting of the Constitution and the American Bill of Rights.

The struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, though, was just one dramatic episode in a history of centuries of oppression. The people who were at the center of this struggle were the inheritors of a long legacy of bigotry and persecution. It is futile for most of us to imagine what life was like for generations under slavery.

From 1500 until the Civil War, between eleven and twelve million people were shipped across the Atlantic from Africa to become slaves in the New World. Originally, slavery existed not just in the Southern colonies and states of North America, but everywhere form Canada to South America. But the institution, as we know, survived longest in the Southern states of this country.

Of course a bloody Civil War would eventually bring technical legal emancipation. But in so many ways, and for more than a century, it was freedom mostly in theory only. Even with legal emancipation, laws and cultural rules were put in place to restrain and oppress. Still, African Americans could not choose where to live. They could only expect an inferior education. Still, their right to vote was blocked at every turn. Still, heart ached for the destiny of your children who would be prevented from entering professions they desired. Still, your life was as a second class citizen, denied the fruits of liberty.

What impresses me most about reflecting on this history is how in the world such people were able to maintain hope. How could they sing songs of faith and victory? How could they keep their spirits strong? It is a testimony to the strength of character in people who could face a life of persecution and still have hope. Because however it happened, it happened. The truth is that the civil rights movement, in spite of all the blood spilled and all the lives harmed and all the hopes quashed, was fueled by a passion of hope. This sermon is about that hope which transcends struggle -- a hope and faith that was expressed in song -- in a particular song -- long before the struggle was organized into a movement.

I don't know where the strength came from, but I do know that one of the reasons that we admire the story of Dr. Martin Luther King is that he was able, in spite of beatings and arrests and persecution, to live with strong ideals and hope. And he was able to communicate that hope in a way few people have been able to do so before or since.

That hope, and that spirit, can be found in these words from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

"I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of humanity. . . . I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant."

Here we see the human spirit stay strong. What kept Dr. King and those around him strong was a deep idealism that would not be derailed. There are times when oppression provides to the oppressed a clearer vision of good, and a deeper motivation to achieve the good.

I want to focus today on that spirit which overcomes oppression with a vision of hope. I find that spirit embodied in a particular song, a song that was written well before the civil rights movement as we know it, but speaks with profound clarity about the power of hope overcoming the pain of suffering.

The song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written generations before Dr. King, before the tumultuous days of struggle that are familiar to us. Long before the articulation of Dr. King's dream, this song came to be regarded across the country as a National Anthem for the African American people of the United States.

As you will see from the story I am about to tell, the authors of this song were unusually successful in their day as black Americans, achieving advanced education and vocational success in a world that made it exceptionally difficult for people in their situation.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the song, I might make a few preliminary remarks. Anything I could say about the song could not be more powerful than the words themselves. Anything I could say about the words could not be more expressive than hearing the words with the powerful music accompanying them.

In brief, it is the story of victory over oppression. It reviews the pain of oppression experienced by those who experienced America for so many generations as a land, not of liberty and freedom, but of bondage persecution. And yet a glimmer of hope never completely fades, for through it all the people who have lived this story have never let go of their hopes, have never let the chains and whips of oppressors destroy their spirit. In the end they will find their destiny and victory. Or as one line in the song puts it,

"Out from the gloomy past, (to) where the white gleam of our bright star is cast"

Also like Dr. King after them, the song seems to honor the ideals of America beyond its reality. In his Nobel speech, King was able to say, in spite of so much violence and injustice he experienced, he held an abiding faith in America. Similarly, this song looks beyond the suffering to the aspirations of freedom that America professes, and it ends with a patriotic call: 'May we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land."

I have always found the song inspiring. I don't know when I first heard it, but it continues to inspire. I did not know, until recently, anything about its authors. It turns out that in many ways, the lives of its authors are inspiring as is the song.

The song was written by two brothers. James Weldon Johnson was born in 1871, and his brother John Rosamond Johnson in 1873, in Jacksonville, Florida. They were raised in a middle class African American family in the South. They were fortunate to have many advantages that other blacks in that time didn't have. Tracing their heritage to prominent families from the Bahamas, their father, James, was a headwaiter at a resort in Jacksonville, and their mother Helen was a schoolteacher at the segregated school for black children in town. The city only offered education for blacks until eighth grade, so James and John finished their public schooling at that time at the school where their mother taught. But their education, formal and informal, was really just beginning.

Their mother was musically talented, and both brothers learned to play several instruments. John Rosamond was especially talented musically, and was playing the piano with some proficiency at age four. After finishing school, John Rosamond enrolled in the distinguished New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. There he studied with some of the most accomplished musicians in the United States, and earned a reputation as a talented composer and performer within the musical community. Meanwhile, James Weldon enrolled in college, at Atlanta University, from which he graduated in 1894.

After their higher education, both eventually returned home to Jacksonville. Holding among the best musical training possible in this country, John Rosamond became a music teacher to the black school he earlier attended. James Weldon, at age 23, became the school principal.

During these few years, two things happened. James Weldon studied law on the side, becoming enough self-educated on the subject that he eventually became the first black to be admitted to the bar in the state of Florida. John Rosamond continued composing music, and stayed in contact with colleagues in New York City. Brother James continued writing poetry, which he began doing in college, and they discovered they could collaborate successfully in writing music and lyrics.

This activity inspired a whole new life, and a new dream for the brothers. In 1900 they left Jacksonville and moved to New York City where they began their careers as music writers for Broadway, joining as a team with an established black Broadway composer, Robert Cole. The risk proved to be surprisingly successful.

At first, their work was limited to shows in Harlem or other Off-Broadway productions, but eventually they produced work for popular musical theater on Broadway. Over the next few years they wrote over 200 songs, many of which proved very popular. Eventually, they were earning the impressive sum of about $25,000 a year in royalties alone.

Their next venture was performing themselves. With James Weldon as their manager John Rosamond and Bob Cole put a sophisticated vaudeville act with Rosamond playing classical piano pieces, then singing duets together. The act was so successful, they took it on tour, not only throughout the United States, but also to Paris and London.

By 1906, though, James Weldon had developed interests beyond theater, and the brothers' careers went down different paths. Rosamond continued producing Broadway and Vaudeville musical programs. In 1911, he composed music and conducted the orchestra for the musical revue "Hello Paris." It was the first time an African American conducted a white orchestra for a performance with a white cast in a New York theater.

In 1912, the great musical composer Oscar Hammerstein recruited Rosamond to be musical director of his theater in London, the Grand Opera House. After two years in London, he returned to New York and founded a music school for black musicians. When World War I broke out, he volunteered with the army and served as a second lieutenant with the 15^th regiment. Following the war, he returned to theater, this time as an actor. He appeared in the 1935 production of Porgy and Bess in New York. He then lived a long life in retirement, and died at age 81 in 1954.

But it was Rosamond's brother James Weldon who became better known throughout the country, and left a more lasting legacy -- enough to have been featured on a U.S. postage stamp in 1988.

While working with his brother in musical theater, James Weldon Johnson decided to take courses in literature at Columbia University in New York, and received a Master's Degree in 1904. He was also involved in political circles, and became friends with Charles Anderson, a black politician in New York who headed what was called the "Colored Republican's Club." Through these associations, he became a friend with Booker T. Washington, who was also a friend of Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, in 1904, the Johnson brothers wrote a campaign song for Roosevelt's presidential campaign. It was called, "You're All Right Teddy."

When Roosevelt was elected, at Booker T. Washington's suggestion, Roosevelt appointed James Weldon Johnson as U.S. Consul General to Venezuela in 1906. Three years later be became Consul General to Nicaragua. While working as a diplomat, he found time to finish a novel he had begun while a student of literature at Columbia. It was entitled The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. He wrote under a pseudonym because he wanted it to look like an autobiography, but it was a fictional story about a black musician who is light-skinned enough to pass as white. It tells about the consequences to his soul when he rejects his black roots in order to seek a life of material comfort in a white world.

The book became very popular about ten years later when James Weldon Johnson was eventually identified as the author. By then, he had successfully published quite a number of books, including several books of poetry, and had become one of the leading names in what during the 1920s became known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of cultural flowering in art, music and literature within the black community of New York City. In 1930, James Weldon would write a book about the Harlem Renaissance entitled Black Manhattan.

But that would be some years down the road. When Johnson left his diplomatic career, he returned to New York where he accepted a position as Field Secretary with the NAACP. The organization was only about seven years old, and his job was primarily to establish branches and recruit members. In two years on the job, membership increased from about 10,000 to 40,000. In 1920, he was asked to become head of the entire NAACP, and by the time of his retirement in 1931, membership rose to about 90,000. During his tenure there, he spent a great deal of time in Washington lobbying for civil rights legislation.

During the 1920s, as he successfully led this distinguished civil rights organization, he was becoming even better known as a writer and anthologist of African American culture. In addition to his own books of poetry, he edited a volume entitled The Book of American Negro Poetry. He worked with his brother during this time in publishing two books of American Negro Spirituals. Through all this, as I say, he was a leader in the phenomenon that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. He supported young talented African Americans and became a father figure and mentor to many, such as Langston Hughes.

After leaving the NAACP, James Weldon Johnson accepted a position of professor of American Literature at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. For the next eight years or so he and his wife would travel back and forth for part of the year in Nashville, another part in their home in New York, and another part at a summerhouse in Maine.

In 1938, he died at the age of 67 in a car and train accident in Maine.

Now, having briefly told the story of these two accomplished and talented brothers, you may wonder where the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" comes in. To get to the story of that song, you need to go back to the early years of the story, back before John Rosamond's impressive career as a composer and performer in New York and Europe. Go back before James Weldon's impressive career as lawyer, musician, diplomat, civil rights activist, poet and college professor. Go back to Jacksonville, Florida, when both were in their twenties and working at the school for black children, where one was principal and the other a music teacher. It was the year 1900 when James Weldon was asked to give a speech at the elementary school to commemorate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. As the time for his speech approached, he decided instead to write and deliver a poem.

He spent as much or more time on the poem than he probably ever would on a speech, and when he finished he recruited his brother John Rosamond to compose music for it. The first performance of this song that was to become immortal was given at the elementary school's Lincoln's birthday assembly that year. The brothers would eventually send the song off to a New York publisher, but otherwise they put it out of their minds.

Not much later, they themselves moved to New York to pursue their music dream. In their absence, the song took on a life of its own. Word about it spread through the black schools around the South, and music teachers were introducing it to their students. In a relatively short time, it became a familiar part of black culture throughout the South.

The words and music combine to evoke a story of suffering and hope and, ultimately, victory. The lyrics are written in the first person plural -- it is the story of a people, not just a person. It recalls the legacy of slavery:

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died. . .

We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

Yet the song offers us an uplifting spirit of hope and triumph, hinting that the suffering was not in vain because the people learned from and grew as a people because of their suffering:

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 bought us.

The last verse is in the form of a prayer, almost in the form of a biblical Psalm. It tells of gratitude for the faith that brought them through such times of terror, and the faith that they will continue to overcome oppression.

Before very long, the song became a familiar piece to African Americans throughout the United States. The NAACP eventually adopted it as their official song, and it is widely and familiarly known as the Black National Anthem.

Decades later, in 1935, when James Weldon recalled the time when he and his brother wrote it, he said this: "The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children."

The struggle succeeds in large part only to the extent that hope can be kept alive. This is true also for any struggle for justice: women's rights, gay rights, and so forth. In the case of the struggle for justice for African Americans, it is impressive to see the role music has played to keep hope alive.

It would be a mistake to think that because the Johnson brothers were more successful than their peers, or because they came from an unusual middle class family rather than from poverty, that they were exempt from the experience of persecution that was so familiar to the vast majority of African Americans in their day. Because they were so successful, in some ways they able to see even more clearly how oppressive society was to most of their African American friends.

They, of course, were not immune from such experience. In his autobiography, James Weldon Johnson tells a number of personal stories, including the time when, as a young man, he was beaten nearly to death by Jacksonville police because they saw him walking in a park with a woman they mistakenly thought was white. Like Dr. King after him, who achieved so much by his own merit -- an academic doctor's degree, an international following and so forth -- James Weldon Johnson, by virtue of his experience as a black man, regardless of his achievements, knew the struggles of his people.

James Weldon in particular wrote passionately about the experience of black America in the culture of racism. He knew the history, and the history shaped him. But he also knew that his ancestors survived in spite of some of the greatest persecution imaginable, and their resolve gave him strength and hope, hope in a power over evil that inspired so many of his writings, including the song we are about to hear and sing.

That spirit can also be found in one of his better known poems entitled "Fifty Years," written in 1913 in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. I close with a few verses from that poem.

O brothers mine, to-day we stand

Where half a century sweeps our ken,

Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,

Struck off our bonds and made us men.

Look farther back! Three centuries!

To where a naked, shivery score

Snatched from their haunts across the seas,

Stood, wild-eyed, on Virginia's shore.

This land is ours by right of birth,

This land is ours by right of toil;

We helped to turn its virgin earth,

Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.

To gain these fruits that have been earned,

To hold these fields that have been won,

Our arms have strained, our backs have burned,

Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun.

And yet, my brothers, well I know

The tethered feet, the pinioned wings,

The spirit bowed beneath the blow,

The heart grown faint from wounds and stings;

The staggering force of brutish might,

That strikes and leaves us stunned and dazed,

The long, vain waiting through the night

To ear some voice for justice raised.

Full well I know the hour when hope

Sinks dead, and 'round us everywhere

Hangs stifling darkness, and we grope

With hands uplifted in despair.

Courage! Look out, beyond, and see

The far horizon's beckoning span!

Faith in your God-known destiny!

We are a part of some great plan.

Think you that John Brown's spirit stops?

That Lovejoy was but idly slain?

Or do you think those precious drops

From Lincoln's heart were shed in vain?

That for which millions prayed and sighed.

That for which tens of thousands fought,

For which so many freely died,

God cannot let it come to naught.

******************* ************************* ***************************

"Lift Every Voice and Sing"

Words: James Weldon Johnson

Music: John Rosamond Johnson

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.

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 chastening 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

have 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 our 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.