Written originally for Lincoln, 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' now revered as Black National Anthem

In 34 lines, James Weldon Johnson told of the pain, anguish, frustration, faith and hope that former slaves and their descendants experienced in a land and country they were forced to call home.He did it in “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,” a poem that later became a song and is now widely called the Black National Anthem. The original manuscript along with other papers by Johnson, who was Black, are held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.Johnson wrote “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing” in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a celebration in 1900 for Abraham Lincoln's birthday. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, later composed the music. It first was performed by Black children in a Jacksonville school where James Weldon Johnson was principal.The song was later adopted by the NAACP and sung at marches and other events during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Singer Kim Weston performed it in 2001 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington during the firs