Is Black History Month Relevant Today?..

Lift Every Voice and Sing.. 

This song "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by James Weldon Johnson in 1899, (maybe one of the greatest songwriters ever in my opinion) was probably taught to us in elementary/middle school (if you went to a prominently black school growing up) and then once we got to high school and college, you may not have heard or sang this song again.. (Unless you live in a family that values Black History or you had the honor of going to a Historically Black College or University aka HBCU).. Most of us don't know the words to the song past the first verse.. 

In honor of Black History Month and as a songwriter, I'm paying tribute and showing special attention to the contribution James Weldon Johnson made to the African American culture in music, education, literature and civil rights activism.

Lift every voice and sing

til 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 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 died?

We have come over a way that with tears have 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 start is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

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.

After reading these words, and re-reading these words, Black History is STILL relevant as it was back in 1899... 113 years later, it may be more relevant now than ever before because we are STILL fighting for equality, freedom and justice, but we as a people are forgetting the weary, blood stained road traveled by our ancestors to get us here.. Realize, we are Black History.

-J.Couture