Lift Every Voice and Sing

Last weekend at the Shaw University graduation we sang, as always, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Fore some time now, I have been able to sing this song without checking the printed words. When I first began teaching at Shaw in 1994, it was a song with which I was only vaguely familiar. At our convocations and commencements, roughly three times a year, I got practice singing this James Weldon Johnson anthem.

The words of this song have inspired many writers in Black studies. Various phrases have become book titles, such as "Lift every voice" or "Stony the road we trod." Singing it as a white man in the midst of people of African descent has certainly stirred reflection on the different point of view my skin color and heritage casts on the lyrics. No line more consistently stands out to me as being sung with a different meaning by me and the person next to me than, "We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." White or black in the U.S., the generations have trodden a bloody path, but the relationship to the bloodshed is not the same. That's part of singing this song for me.

Shaw University is the place I learned to sing this song and learn its significance. The 2010 commencement is the last time I will sing it together with my colleagues at Shaw. I pray that what I have learned will continue to grow in me as I move on in my pilgrimage.