Juneteenth

This seems timely as we honor our newest national holiday, Juneteenth. I’ve been humming the Black National Anthem ever since the announcement yesterday. I would hear it every June during the years I attended the joyous Black Students’ graduation ceremony at UC Davis. Lift every voice and sing!!

June 19

Juneteenth, the oldest commemoration of the end of slavery in the U.S., recalls the date in 1865 when the enslaved of Galveston,Texas first found out about both the end of the war (signed two and a half months before on April 4) and the Emancipation Proclamation (signed two and a half years before on January 1, 1863).

Lift Every Voice and Sing

A hymn written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) in 1900 and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), for the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1905. (Wikipedia)

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 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 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 Our native land