“ James Weldon Johnson, Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida, had sought to write a poem in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. However, amid the ongoing civil rights movement, Johnson decided to write a poem which was themed around the struggles of African Americans following the Reconstruction era (including the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South). “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first recited by a group of 500 students in 1900. His brother J. Rosamond Johnson would later set the poem to music.[2][3][4]
After the Great Fire of 1901, the Johnsons moved to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway. In the years that followed, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung within Black communities; Johnson wrote that “the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country.”[2][5]”
We moved to Jacksonville in 1969 when I was in 4th grade, been here ever since and I have personally never heard that song sung here ever.
I’m not racist
I’m not racist
Southerners were
Blah blah blah
How’d that work for you neocons?
I’m sorry? Am I supposed to care?
Geebus... Jim crow again??? Why do they only teach the bad stuff from history. And not the good stuff.. like how the USA led the world in abolishings slavery??? Some people actually believe it was INVENTED here...