![]() Later it was adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and is now quite generally used throughout the country as the “Negro National Hymn.” The publishers consider it a valuable piece of property however, in traveling round I have commonly found printed or typewritten copies of the words pasted in the backs of hymnals and the songbooks used in Sunday schools, Y.M.C.A.’s, and similar institutions and I think that is the method by which it gets its widest circulation. Within that time the publishers had recopyrighted it and issued it in several arrangements. Within twenty years the song was being sung in schools and churches and on special occasions throughout the South and in some other parts of the country. But the schoolchildren of Jacksonville kept singing the song some of them went off to other schools and kept singing it some of them became schoolteachers and taught it to their pupils. After we had permanently moved away from Jacksonville, both the song and the occasion passed out of our minds. The song was taught to the children and sung very effectively at the celebration and my brother and I went on with other work. When I had put the last stanza down on paper I at once recognized the Kiplingesque touch in the two longer lines quoted above but I knew that in the stanza the American Negro was, historically and spiritually, immanent and I decided to let it stand as it was written.Īs soon as Rosamond had finished his noble setting of the poem he sent a copy of the manuscript to our publishers in New York, requesting them to have a sufficient number of mimeographed copies made for the use of the chorus. Feverish ecstasy was followed by that contentment-that sense of serene joy-which makes artistic creation the most complete of all human experiences. I was experiencing the transports of the poet’s ecstasy. I could not keep back the tears and made no effort to do so. Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee … Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Thou who hast brought us thus far on our way, As I worked through the opening and middle lines of the last stanza: ![]() While my brother worked at his musical setting I paced back and forth on the front porch, repeating the lines over and over to myself, going through all of the agony and ecstasy of creating. In composing the two other stanzas I did not use pen and paper. I finished the stanza and turned it over to Rosamond. The spirit of the poem had taken hold of me. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. When, near the end of the first stanza, there came to me the lines: I got my first line: “Lift ev’ry voice and sing.” Not a startling line but I worked along grinding out the next five. We planned, better still, to have it sung by school children-a chorus of five hundred voices. ![]() I talked over with my brother the thought I had in mind, and we planned to write a song to be sung as a part of the exercises. My central idea, however, took on another form. So I gave up the project as beyond me at any rate, beyond me to carry out in so short a time and my poem on Lincoln is still to be written. My thoughts began buzzing round a central idea of writing a poem on Lincoln, but I couldn’t net them. I was put down for an address, which I began preparing but I wanted to do something else also. 154–156:Ī group of young men decided to hold on February 12 a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. James described the composition of the song in detail in his autobiography, Along This Way (NY: Viking Press, 1933), pp. The music is by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), who was a teacher at the school. Stanton School in Jacksonville, FL, at the time. The words to this venerable hymn are by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), who was principal of the Edwin M. ![]()
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