American Literature / Unit 12 AML 1129 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Captions available
The idea
Johnson wrote the words and his brother the music for a song first performed by schoolchildren in eighteen ninety-nine, later adopted by the NAACP and widely known as the Black national anthem. It moves from a stony road toward a hope kept in bitter history.
In practice
A schoolroom song that became an anthem.
Where people slip
The song is a poem before it is an anthem.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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