It’s Black History Month, and it has an anthem too many people don’t know

It’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the just-over-a century-old poem set to music that first was intended to be a tribute to the memory of Abraham Lincoln but later became known as the “Negro National Anthem” – then later the black anthem after “negro” fell out of fashion.

The reporter-type person in me often hears the tune sung as part of the program at any type of black-oriented rally I cover, and it is a sweet little tune about people rising above the status in life that some in society would just as soon see them limited to.

BUT IT ALSO is so isolated within our culture. Way too often, non-black people don’t have a clue about the song.

I once recall an editor many years ago that there was “no such song” as the black anthem. He certainly had never heard of it.

Of course, I was equally as clueless. Although I remember as a kid hearing that there was some sort of song considered to be a “black anthem,” the first time I ever heard the song was an instance many years ago at the Cook County Jail.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was at the jail to give an inspirational talk to the inmates in hopes he could motivate them to get their lives straightened out and make something of themselves.

IT WAS QUITE a sense to be in a gymnasium within the jail and hear inmates singing along to the old gospel-inspired tune, although I don’t know how many of those inmates got the civil rights leader’s message and rehabilitated themselves.

It would be nice to think they did. But we’ll never know.

I most recently heard the tune (or at least a verse of it) this week when the Common Council of Gary, Ind., chose to start off their twice-monthly meeting Wednesday by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance – then singing the anthem.

'Anthem' started as part of Lincoln tribute

Considering that Gary has an overwhelming share of its population (84 percent) as African-American individuals, it shouldn’t be shocking. The ‘black anthem’ certainly wouldn’t be out of place.

ALTHOUGH I ALSO wonder in today’s overly-partisan political times how many people would think it somehow subversive that anybody would think to sing such a tune.

For all I know, the people who go around wearing those chintzy, red “Make America Great Again” caps are probably amongst those who try to deny that a ‘black anthem’ exists and that we’d all be better off forgetting there was ever a need for such a tune.

Particularly when one considers that several of the local government officials chose to wear African-inspired garb as part of a Black History Month tribute, I’m sure the site would have offended the sensibilities of some.

Mostly those whose political leanings are such that the real way to make this nation “Great Again” is to eliminate their very existence.

BUT I’M REALISTIC enough to know that such erasure from our society isn’t going to happen – and that the real advancement for the better is accepting the cultural differences that add a sense of variety to our masses.

Besides, the idea that the poem that inspired the tune was meant to be a part of the program of a Lincoln tribute is something that ought to motivate those of us in the “Land of Lincoln” to take the tune seriously.

It is a pleasant-enough melody that no one ought to be thinking of as an example of political subversion.

That is, unless you’re of the type who seriously venerates the memory of Jefferson Davis. In which case, you really do have some issues to confront about life.

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