To advance this philosophy, Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute, a college with a vocational emphasis for African Americans. If they secured an education, held steady jobs, owned property, and led conventional middle-class lives, white Americans would learn to respect them, and civil and political rights would follow. Instead, he felt, they should focus on advancing themselves economically and professionally. Washington had urged African Americans to put questions about politics and civil rights on the backburner. He embraced the educator-activist’s philosophy of self-help. Johnson started out a disciple of Booker T. Yet for all Johnson’s contributions, his most widely celebrated work is “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” And rather poetically, the song reflects his own evolution as a black activist. And in 1916 he took a position on the staff of the NAACP that would lead to his selection as executive secretary in 1920. He published several books and a collection of poetry. He spent eight years as a diplomat under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, serving in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
BLACK AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM LYRICS PROFESSIONAL
He worked as a professional songwriter briefly in New York. After leaving Stanton School, he would go on an equally diverse and impressive career. In 1897, Johnson had become the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar since Reconstruction. During those years, he also founded a newspaper, the Daily American, and studied law.
Johnson would serve as principal until 1902. After taking his degree, he returned to Jacksonville and was named principal of his former school at the ripe old age of 23. A local academic star, he had graduated at age sixteen and enrolled at Atlanta University. It’s understandable that James would want to make a real impression, as he had grown up in Jacksonville and attended the Stanton School as a child. Rosamond Johnson, a trained composer, to set his words to music. He first wrote a poem, but anxious to have a real impact, he asked his brother, J. James Weldon Johnson was 29 years old and the principal of Stanton School when he was asked to prepare something for the Lincoln celebration. Today, the song is frequently described as the “African American National Anthem.” Within a decade, black school children across America were singing the song, and in 1919, the recently formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) adopted “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as its official song. Though unveiled as part of a community celebration in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the song quickly spread outside the community of Jacksonville. “Life Every Voice and Sing” was written by a school principal and first performed by 500 children in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1900.