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LIFT EVERY VOICE
AND SING
Lift ev’ry voice
and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of
liberty.
Let our rejoicing
rise high as the list’ning 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 chast’ning 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
parents sighed?
We have come over a
way that with tears has been watered;
we have come,
treading our path through 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.
Text: James Weldon
Johnson, 1871-1938
Like much of
academia during the early 1960s, the University of Iowa was a hotbed
of intellectual and political unrest. The mood of orators on the
student soapbox was strident, and the rhetoric was punctuated with
fire. In fact, the campus was ablaze. Young men burned their draft
cards; young women burned their bras. Together they burned books,
flags and even buildings. Hell, no, I won’t go!
Vietnam wasn’t the
only the only war zone during those unsettled times. The flames of
righteous indignation rose up from Mississippi and Alabama, fanned
by ignorance and hatred. Americans died on American soil, most of
them young black men whose only crime was that they were young black
men.
Not many white
people knew about the “underground railroad” that ran north from
Mississippi to Chicago and Detroit. It wasn’t a railroad at all,
just a series of friendly spots along the way where a tired black
man in search of sanctuary could wash his hands and rest his weary
soul.
One of the stops on
the “railroad” was a flat roof immediately adjacent to my 2nd
floor apartment. Travelers slept on the roof but could access the
building through a walk-in window. My roommate and I welcomed them
to come through the window and use our plumbing before they slept
under the Iowa stars.
I often sat with
the travelers on the rooftop after dark, smoking cigarettes and
inventing a better world. They could have been bitter as they made
the long trip north, sleeping on rooftops far from home, but they
didn’t seem to be. They seemed optimistic that a new day would soon
be dawning and that, when it did, they would be standing in the
light of justice. I pray they found what they were looking for.
God of our weary
years, God of our silent tears … teach us to sing the songs of
justice and equality. Give us strength to fight for the oppressed,
to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, to care for
those who travel alone. We pray in Jesus’ name.
Dallas Cronk
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