People were disillusioned and somewhat angry because the National Football League chose to open the Super Bowl with a performance of a song that has been called the “black national anthem.”
After the 13% minority in the country was appeased and placated, the National Anthem was played. The National Anthem includes everyone. The black national anthem does not. It’s in the name: the BLACK national anthem.
‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ first performed by Sheryl Lee Ralph, has been considered a de facto “black national anthem” since the NAACP adopted it in 1917.
The NFL started playing the song before every game in 2020 after Black Lives Matter protests followed the George Floyd incident.
While it has been included in the Super Bowl for the last three years, this year marks the first time it has been performed live.
Many clear-thinking people spoke out against the move, saying that having two national anthems sends the message that Americans are split along racial lines.
Regarding the song, the NAACP claims that James Weldon Johnson, one of the organization’s founders, wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in 1900 as a hymnal written as poetry. John Rosamond Johnson, James’ brother, sometimes known as “Johnny,” composed the score.
The NAACP says that on February 12, 1865, the choir, comprised of 500 children, at the segregated Stanton School, led by James Weldon Johnson, sang the song to honor President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in Jacksonville, Florida. NAACP President Derrick Johnson told NPR in 2018 that the song became popular in the early 20th century after being supported by Booker T. Washington and became the official hymn of the NAACP.
The NAACP notes that the song was embraced by NAACP and featured as a spiritual throughout the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s” because of its “religious invocation of God and the promise of freedom.” the religious invocation of God and the promise of freedom is “set against” this, the NAACP claims.
