by Rev. Dan Schatz
Unitarian Congregation of West Chester
February 2, 2020
Lift every voice and sing, till 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 till 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 sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
We have come, treading our path thru the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
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.
– James Weldon Johnson
The year was 1868.
In Jacksonville, Florida, thousands who until so recently had been enslaved came looking for new lives away from the plantations. They formed churches, started businesses, and established schools and aid societies, and it absolutely terrified the White leaders of the state.
It absolutely terrified the White leaders of the state, so they passed legislation making it illegal to educate White and Black children together. Jacksonville hired only four teachers for hundreds of Black students. But the African American people of Jacksonville refused to settle for what the state was willing to give them. They campaigned, raised money, purchased land, and established the Stanton School. It would take years of effort and fundraising before doors opened, but they remained dedicated through reconstruction and beyond.
The year was 1900.
A young Principal of the now public Stanton School prepared for a great occasion. The children would be celebrating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and welcoming an important guest – the writer and activist Booker T. Washington. As he created a program for the children, Principal James Weldon Johnson turned to a poem he had written just a few months earlier. On February 12, 1900, with music written by Johnson’s brother, a choir of 500 children sang:
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 seas.
I cannot imagine the power of that moment, as 500 young Black voices sang those words for the first time. James Weldon Johnson moved on to a career in government and activism, and within a few decades, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” became known as the Black National Anthem.
The year was 1940.
At the all Black Stamps School – a couple of run down buildings on a dirt hill near Lafayette, Louisiana – Maya Angelou prepared to graduate from the 8th grade. Her friend Henry Reed was the valedictorian, and he’d written a speech, “To Be or Not to Be.” As the ceremony began, the Principal introduced their commencement speaker, a White politician who spoke about how pleased he was to see “work going on just as it was in other schools.” Some boys from this school, he said, had gone on to become athletes at the State agricultural college. And Maya Angelou felt his words falling “like dead bricks around the auditorium.” “We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen,” she said, “and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.” The man finished, and then he got up and left the building. These kids were not worth any more of his time. She said “the ugliness he left was palpable,” and the joy with which she had begun the day turned to anger, hopelessness, and despair.
And then her friend Henry got up to give his speech, “To Be or Not to Be,” and she wondered how he could even do it. He spoke, and he finished. And then he turned away from the audience and toward the graduating class and sang familiar words,
Lift every voice and sing ‘til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty.
And as she heard those words,
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
she found herself again, and her soul, and her pride.
The year was 1943.
A 14 year old high school student named Martin Luther King rode the bus from Atlanta to Dublin, Georgia, to take part in a statewide oratorical contest. The theme was “The Negro and the Constitution.” He’d already won in Atlanta. He said, “On January 1, 1863 the proclamation emancipating the slaves which had been decreed by President Lincoln in September took effect—millions of Negroes faced a rising sun of a new day begun.” Every person in that room would have recognized the words of James Weldon Johnson. He finished, “And I with my brother of blackest hue possessing at last my rightful heritage and holding my head erect, may stand beside the Saxon—a Negro — and yet a man!”
Flush with pride after winning the contest yet again, Martin and his teacher boarded the bus for Atlanta. But soon the bus stopped in a small town and two White passengers came on board. The driver turned to the young teenager and his teacher. “Give them your seats,” he told them. “Move, you Black sons of bitches!” Angry and humiliated, the fourteen year old King remained defiantly seated, until his teacher quietly convinced him that they had to obey the law. The two of them stood for hours, ninety miles back to Atlanta. “It was,” said Dr. King, “the angriest I have ever been in my life.” “That night will never leave my memory.”
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died.
The year was 2018, and the singer Beyoncé hummed a quiet tune to her one year old daughter. She was planning to include the Black National Anthem in her show at the pop festival Coachella. “It was all dark minor chords,” she said, “and stomps and belts and screams.” But every day she found herself singing “Lift Every Voice” to her little girl, and started to realize she had been singing it wrong. So she changed the show. She took out the minor chords and the orchestration, and just sang it.
“I swear,” she said, “I felt pure joy shining down on us. I know that most of the young people on the stage and in the audience did not know the history of the Black national anthem before Coachella. But they understood the feeling it gave them.” Reese Walters summed up that feeling in a single tweet: “Life began when I heard Beyoncé’s Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Now the year is 2020, and here it is, one more time, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I hope the words mean something to us, because they are not easy.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
It hurts to sing those words. It’s painful. The images that come to mind are vivid and violent, but they are also real. I think sometimes it’s hard, especially for someone like me, raised in White privilege, to understand how real they are.
Some of us are used to thinking of racism as one of a host of societal ills, something that will be solved by changing minds. But it isn’t as simple as that. Racism lingers even when most of us believe with all our hearts that it is wrong. Racism is insidious. It seeps into unconscious perceptions and societal structures, works its way into everyday culture, until it becomes “just the way things are.”
Look at the schools in Chester, Pennsylvania and look at the school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and tell me racism is not in play. Look at the way we fund those schools, and tell me racism is not in play. Look at our prisons and tell me racism is not in play.
And here is the truth of it, the bitter truth – racism kills. Sometimes it kills through lost opportunity, sometimes it kills through poverty, sometimes it kills through bullets, and sometimes it kills because in our culture Black and Brown faces frighten. Every friend of mine who has been stopped by police because they “looked suspicious” is African American. Most have experienced it multiple times. It’s never happened to me. The bias may not reflect what’s in people’s hearts or intentions, but it is real nevertheless, and it kills. That’s why we have a banner outside our congregation that says “Black Lives Matter.” Because too often, they don’t seem to matter enough.
Stony the road we trod; bitter the chastening rod.
People will say, “I’m not a racist.” Talk about reparations, and they’ll say, “My family didn’t have any slaves,” and it’s true. I’m not either. Mine didn’t either. This is not about guilt. It’s about acknowledging privilege. It’s about listening and taking seriously when someone points out something that needs to change, or that challenges our assumptions. It’s about feeling that deep discomfort that many of those of us who are privileged do feel when somebody points out something we said or did that hurt them, whether we meant it to or not, and just taking it in, learning from it, not defending ourselves, being willing to change.
That’s hard to do, but not half as hard as it is to live with the realities so many people have to face every day of their lives – the stony road and the bitter rod, and the White Supremacy, and the fear, and the debts left unpaid by society, and the too many people who have died too young. Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39 years old when he died. he could have still been alive today. Imagine 52 more years of his leadership. What did our world lose?
What has our world lost in so many Black and Brown people who died too early and too young because they were too Black or too Brown, because they were denied opportunity equal to their potential, or because they simply became victims? It would be easy to fall into despair, or to give up trying to change things because it’s all too painful to face. But then we turn again, and we lift our hands to the work and our voices to those familiar words, “We have come….”
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
This doesn’t end with the blood and the hardship. We have come through it, and we will keep going.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
I want to ask us as Unitarian Universalists to walk the path of justice and equity. I want us to be allies, but more than that. I want us to show up, to lift our hands and voices, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is awkward, even when it is inconvenient, even when it forces some of us to challenge some of what we believe.
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
It’s hard. Some people will call us extremists. They did the same thing to Dr. King, and he said, That’s right. We are. “The question,” he said, “is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”
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.
It is too easy to become comfortable, and leave aside the work of justice. It is too easy to settle for what Dr. King called “the soft poverty of low expectations.” We owe it to ourselves, our neighbors, our integrity, our country, and our faith as Unitarian Universalists to keep striving, keep working, keep listening, keep growing, keep on holding ourselves accountable for doing what we say we believe in.
If we can do that, if we can take everything good about us – our commitment to diversity, our acknowledgment that all of us are learning as new truths emerge with the years, our respect for the dignity and worth of every human being, our willingness to ask hard questions, and our love of justice, then I believe we will live out the promise enshrined in the hallowed words:
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
So may it be.
Lift your hands for what you believe in.
Lift your voices and sing.
Come and go with me
to that land,
where will be freedom,
and there will be singing,
and there will be justice,
where we’re bound.