WASHINGTON — Grammy-winning musician Ledisi performed "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at the 2025 Super Bowl, delivering a powerful rendition of the song often referred to as the Black national anthem.

At age 5, Aquil Sudah first heard the “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” or as he prefers to call it, the Black National Anthem. The hymn, written by James Weldon Johnson and composed by J. Rosamond Johnson ...

WASHINGTON — James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” set to music by his brother John Rosamond, was first presented as a hymn, then adopted as a song and soon cherished as an anthem.

A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the ...

WASHINGTON (RNS) — “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a hymn many African Americans of older generations just know. They’d sung it in church, learned it in school and stood for what is dubbed the ...

As early as around age 5, Aquil Sudah recalls first becoming acquainted with the 1900 hymn written by James Weldon Johnson and composed by J. Rosamond Johnson “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” or as he ...

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," often called the "Black national anthem," was performed at the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay. The song, written by James Weldon Johnson to honor Abraham Lincoln, has been ...

Nevaeh “Vivi” Vilella, a sixth grader at Central Middle School, performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in February as part of the school’s Black History Month celebration. Photo by Stuart Sudak Nevaeh ...

Why a Black National Anthem? For folks who say that there should be one national anthem, I say, why? There is nothing wrong with having more than one national anthem. There was a time when African ...

The music of Grammy Award-winning gospel artist and songwriter Donald Lawrence is considered contemporary. But his songs speak to what it has meant to be Black in America since we arrived. “When ...