In honor of Black History Month, the Feb 6 Golden Valley City Council meeting started off with a performance of the Black National Anthem by award-winning singer, actor, and entertainer Mari Harris. 

The story of the Black National Anthem starts in 1900, 35 years after chattel slavery was outlawed by the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. Black Americans were living in the oppression of Jim Crow, and America still had not made good on its promise of reconstruction and an equal society.

James Weldon Johnson was a poet, songwriter, and lawyer who held many leadership positions in the NAACP. He originally wrote “Lift Every Voice And Sing” as a poem, and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, composed the music. The song put forth hope that America still had something to offer Black Americans. 

The first public performance of “Lift Every Voice And Sing” was in Jacksonville, Florida by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal. It was to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday. To this day, the song serves as a reminder of how far Black Americans have come, and also how far this country still has to go. Click here to learn more about James Weldon Johnson. 

If you want to sing along next time the Black National Anthem is performed, learn the lyrics below and click this video.

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING 

Lift every voice and sing / ‘Til earth and heaven ring / Ring with the harmonies of Liberty / Let our rejoicing rise / High as the list’ning 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 ‘til 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 / ‘Til 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 has brought us thus far on the way / Thou who has 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 meet Thee / 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

Photo of Mari Harris, guest at the Feb 6 City Council meeting, who opened the meeting by singing the Black National Anthem