Visual and Performing Arts

History

In 1882, the Florida Baptist Academy was established in Jacksonville, Florida. The name was later changed to Florida Normal and Industrial Institute. It was there that two brothers, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson (former faculty members at Florida Memorial University), wrote the words and music to what has become known as the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” in 1900.

Fathers of the Black National Anthem

James Weldon Johnson: Words
J. Rosemond Johnson: Music

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 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.