Lift Every Voice and Sing

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is an exhortation to readers and audience members to become active participants in the struggle for freedom. The poem and this idealized song are thus symbols for Black unity and resolve. In the first stanza, the speaker commands that the audience participate in this song alongside the speaker, a point James Weldon Johnson underscores through the use of the plural possessive “our” (Line 4). The speaker will only be content if others join them. The song has been many things in Black American culture—“a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us” (Line 7) and one “full of the hope that the present has bought us” (Line 8). The song is a representation of Black American history, including the past and the history the speaker and the audience are making in the present moment.

The “Stony road” (Line 11) is a symbol of the adversity Black Americans have overcome. This adversity includes the historical period of enslavement when “hope unborn […] died” (Line 13) because Black Americans did not gain full liberty, despite their emancipation and short period of recognition as citizens during Reconstruction. Johnson represents Black Americans as people who have nevertheless continued marching on “weary feet” (Line 15) to arrive at their freedom in law, if not in fact.