by Imani Perry
In August 1920, several weeks after the Pan-African Congress, Garvey’s UNIA and the African Communities League held their first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Madison Square Garden in New York. The month-long convention assembled approximately 2,000 delegates from twenty-two countries. They held regular sessions throughout the month. Halfway through the gathering, the red, black, and green flag (a symbol of black nationalism) and the Universal Ethiopian Anthem “Ethiopia, Land of Our Fathers” were introduced and ratified by delegates as symbols of the UNIA and the black world. Throughout the convention, huge parades were held in the streets of Harlem. One, on August 3, featured UNIA officers in full regalia reminiscent of the French military, riding in floats while the “Black Star Line Band and Choir” played marches. The UNIA Motor Corps, the African Legion, and the Black Cross nurses, along with various national contingents, marched behind them.22 This pageantry was a heightened performance of black formalism, an effort to bring those community rituals into an imagined international community forged of a common political and racial identity. The UNIA anthem’s reference to “Ethiopia,” the biblical term for Africa, was explicit about race and nation in a manner that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was not. And representatives of the entire black world marched to it together.
The audience for Garvey’s inauguration as “president of Africa” at the end of the month was estimated at 25,000.23 The hall in which he spoke that day was decorated in the flags of the many nations represented by convention delegates, including flags of the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States. On the platform, the officers sat in their bright attire, and the audience was decked out in fine Sunday dress. As Garvey stepped onstage to begin his address, the band played “Ethiopia, Land of Our Fathers.” In recording this moment, UNIA reports referred to the song as “the Negro National anthem.”24 This wasn’t an altogether surprising designation, given that Garvey imagined the African continent as a single nation. But it was, somewhat provocatively, the same term almost always exclusively applied to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” On previous occasions, Garvey had in fact used “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to rally listeners. In 1917, while responding to the riots in East St. Louis,25 in a speech delivered at Lafayette Hall in Harlem, Garvey made subtle reference to the anthem by saying that it was “a time to lift one’s voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy.” The East St. Louis riots had begun when 470 African American workers were hired to replace white workers who had gone on strike against the Aluminum Ore Company. Angry white workers complained loudly about black migration into East St. Louis at a local city council meeting. After the meeting, an unsubstantiated rumor started that an armed black man had attempted to rob a white man. In response, white mobs took to the street and savagely assaulted any black person they encountered. Mobs barricaded streetcars and trolleys, dragging black passengers into the street and beating them. The governor, Frank O. Lowden, eventually called in the National Guard and the mobs dispersed for four days, only to return with a vengeance on July 2. This time the crowds beat and shot at black children as well as adults. In the evening they began setting the homes of black people on fire; when the residents ran out to escape the flames, they were shot at. The National Guard and police arrived but did little to stop the violence.26
The NAACP responded by staging a silent protest march in New York City. Ten thousand well-dressed African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue. Garvey’s response was louder. “Millions of our people in slavery gave their lives that America might live,” he said. “From the labors of these people the country grew in power, until her wealth today is computed above that of any two nations. With all the service that the Negro gave he is still a despised creature in the eyes of white people, for if he were not to them despised, the whites of this country would never allow such outrages as the East St. Louis massacre. . . . This is a massacre that will go down in history as one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind for which any class of people could be held guilty.”27
In some sense East St. Louis revealed the appeal and even necessity of a black nationalist politics. Although the white working classes were economically exploited, just as black people were, the most vicious racists were often among that group. Garvey tapped into the deep distrust of all white people, not simply those with concentrated economic and political power, that black Americans generally and appropriately held. At times when Garvey spoke to this distrust, and to the necessity of a black empire, he did so with “Lift Every Voice” as his pomp and circumstance. He approached the podium to the sound of the anthem in 1919 when he gave a speech at the Harlem Casino,28 for example. So, in 1920, when Garvey declared a new anthem, he was betting upon his extraordinary success in rallying black people. He had given them a vision, an imagined independent nation, and was naming and authorizing this imagined national community by declaring “Ethiopia, Land of Our Fathers” to be its anthem. In contrast, the NAACP used “Lift Every Voice” as a way for the organization to assert its fidelity to the people it sought to serve.
“Ethiopia, Land of Our Fathers” is not a particularly well-composed song: its lyrics are repetitive and not terribly poetic or narrative in form (it mainly consists of a series of claims rather than a story), and the music is plodding without the coloratura and emotion of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (at least not until the 1970s reggae versions began to be produced). Perhaps that’s why it never really took hold. Moreover, regardless of the excitement and commitment generated by the UNIA, by 1920 black Americans had already committed to their song, and it was “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was embedded in so many aspects of life—church services, civic organization meetings, school assemblies, and celebrations—that even the majesty of the UNIA processions, for those who witnessed them, couldn’t possibly rival its impact. The regularity of the rituals associated with black formalism meant that changing the dearly held anthem would have required much more. Moreover, as Garvey came under attack, the UNIA suffered alongside him. In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Bureau of Investigation (which became the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), already had officers reporting on the UNIA in numerous cities. In 1925 Garvey was charged and convicted of federal mail fraud. Soon the UNIA began to fray, with factionalism across regions unsettling the unity it had enjoyed under Garvey’s leadership. In 1927 Garvey was deported. He spent a few years in Jamaica before moving to London, where he died in 1940. It bears repeating that despite the acrimony between the UNIA and the NAACP, the two groups shared some common sensibilities and some common weaknesses. They both had an international scope, as did the black press and many other black civic organizations. They both rejected colonialism. In August 1920, James Weldon Johnson published an article in the Nation titled “Self-Determining Haiti.” A book by the same title would soon follow. Johnson opened his essay with a denunciation of U.S. colonialism:
To know the reasons for the present political situation in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know that the National City Bank of New York is very much interested in Haiti. It is necessary to know that the National City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that are being collected by American officials, and that R. L. Farnham, vice president of the National City Bank, is virtually the representative of the State Department in matters relating to the island republic. Most Americans have the opinion—if they have any opinion at all on the subject—that the United States was forced, on purely humane grounds, to intervene in the black republic because of the tragic coup d’état which resulted in the overthrow and death of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam and the execution of the political prisoners confined at Port-au-Prince, July 27–28, 1915; and that this government has been
compelled to keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the country and maintain order. . . . The independence of a neighboring republic has been taken away, the people placed under foreign military domination from which they have no appeal, and exposed to foreign economic exploitation against which they are defenseless. All of this has been done in the name of the Government of the United States; however, without any act by Congress and without any knowledge of the American people.
The law by which Haiti is ruled today is martial law dispensed by Americans. There is a form of Haitian civil government, but it is entirely dominated by the military occupation.29
Even as Garvey’s organization declined in membership and prestige in the late 1920s, members of the NAACP and other organizations kept alive a global vision of black liberation. Even though the NAACP maintained an integrationist philosophy in the United States, contrary to Garvey’s nationalism, this was an argument for full inclusion of black Americans into the body politic, and the NAACP supported anticolonialism and racial equality abroad. Both the UNIA and the NAACP, however, had the unfortunate limitation of assuming that those in the diaspora had greater capacity to do this work than Africans on the continent, and they often maintained paternalistic assumptions about what Africa ought to do, and some presumptuousness regarding their claims to Africa as “theirs.” Despite this shortcoming, they did nurture and follow the will of the “people”: black folks who saw their lot in terms of “the race” and not simply in terms of the nation where they lived.
The people—that varied, large, and complex group who fell under the designation “Negroes”—found themselves politically much more often in the interstices of these and other organizations rather than explicitly identified with one or another. In fact, black institutional life and civic life was so robust that many black Americans belonged to a number of political, religious, and civic organizations devoted to the well-being and uplift of black people, with distinct models and approaches.
As we have seen, their ritual programs, events, discussions, and celebrations of all sorts organized by these associations usually began or concluded with the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Emancipation Day gatherings on January 1, Frederick Douglass’s birthday gatherings in February, May Day celebrations on May 1, and Juneteenth ceremonies (the summertime emancipation ritual of the Southwest) were among the principal holidays when people sang “Lift Every Voice,” in addition to graduation ceremonies and church celebrations. Carrie Allen McCray, a civil rights activist from Lynchburg, Virginia, describes an Emancipation Day program circa 1919: “The congregation stood to sing James Weldon Johnson’s ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ a song Negroes back then sang at the beginning of almost every important program. We knew every word growing up.”30 It should be noted, however, that at the time the NAACP referred to “Lift Every Voice” not as an “anthem” but instead, more cautiously, as the national Negro hymn. However, its stature as an anthem was proved by the angry response of those who thought an anthem specifically designated for black Americans was anathema to the goals of full citizenship. Interestingly, this objection began to be raised well before the United States adopted “The Star-Spangled Banner” as its anthem in 1931.
Ernest Lyons, a black Honduran African Methodist Episcopal minister and professor at Morgan College who had served as consul to Liberia in 1903, directed his anger about a “Negro Anthem” at James Weldon Johnson in the June 19, 1926, edition of the Baltimore Afro-American:
The anthem has been going the round of schools and colleges and without serious thought is being adopted as an appropriate thing for the youth of our group. We are persuaded to inquire from its author, by reason of its title, what it can really mean, what it is intended to accomplish, and for what class or group to which it can be applied. . . . There are only two independent sovereign Negro Nations of African origin. They are the republics of Hayti and Liberia. . . . It is our judgment that neither one of these would be willing to discard their own inspirational national anthem for one arranged by a subdued group, whose social status in their own land is somewhat nondescript. . . . If we need a national anthem, then we will also need a negro national flag which will carry us on the verge of Garveyism. We need neither. We are American citizens.31
Johnson replied in the same issue:
There is nothing in “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to conflict in the slightest degree with use of “Star-Spangled Banner” or “America” [“My Country ’Tis of Thee”] or other patriotic songs. It is fully as patriotic, among possibilities are that it may grow in general use among white as well as colored Americans. . . . Music of “America” is that of the British National Anthem. Music of “Star-Spangled Banner” is derived from old foreign drinking songs, difficult to sing; in addition the sentiments are boastful and bloodthirsty. Words of “Lift Every Voice” are more elevated in spirit. I do not hesitate to say my brother’s music is better than either of these imported songs.32
Johnson’s defense, that the song was home-grown and not exclusive, was perhaps effective argumentation, but it was also a bit of an obfuscation. Whatever he intended, his song was in fact an anthem and in particular black America’s anthem, and he knew it. In March 1926 W. E. B. DuBois wrote a letter to James Weldon Johnson asking him to provide an account of how the song came to be written, presumably because of its clear status in the cultural life of black Americans. Over the years, Johnson would be repeatedly asked to recount the story of how he and Rosamond came to write and compose the song. There was some variation in his tellings. As a result, some scholarly accounts have the brothers writing and composing it at the same time, while others say the lyrics came before the words. Some accounts have “Lift Every Voice” sung first at Florida Baptist Academy, where Rosamond worked, but most have its premiere at Stanton, where James was principal. And some reports say the song was adopted by the NAACP in 1919 (as my research suggests), but others say 1920. Despite the variance in these details, one constant in every version of the story Johnson shared is this: Communities carried forward the popularity and significance of the song, not its authors. And communities chose it as the anthem. That was beyond the power of Johnson or Lyons to dictate or dismantle.
Critics continued to complain about this community embrace of “Lift Every Voice” over the years. An editorial in the Kansas Plaindealer from 1949 praised the song but rejected its designation as an anthem: “We believe that every Negro should know and have a copy of the words to a song that yet causes many of us mental anguish whenever a group rises to sing it. Too, an effort to correct an impression will be made. There is no Negro National Anthem. The correct title, we believe, is LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING. . . . Do you know all three verses, just one or none at all? Anyway, here is the whole song, clip it out and learn it, teach it to your children!”33
Even people from outside the community acclaimed the song. Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who founded the Free Synagogue of New York, wrote to Johnson after hearing the song performed at Morehouse College: “Your national anthem, text and music alike, is the noblest anthem I have ever heard. It is a great upwelling of prayer from the soul of a race long wronged but with faith unbroken. I wish that ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ might be substituted for some of the purely martial and unspiritual so-called anthems which are sung by the people.”34
Regardless of the designation, singing this song together, repeatedly, had a profound impact on black communities. Cultural critic Benedict Anderson referred to the emotion produced by collective anthem singing as “unisonance.”35 Unisonance is a way of feeling in one’s body, resonating through one’s breath and flesh, membership in a community bigger than simply those in the room. For singers of “Lift Every Voice,” it is a physical realization of belonging to the black world.
That sense of membership was on display when the Circle for Peace and Foreign Relations, an African American women’s group, organized the 1927 Pan-African Congress in New York City. They raised $3,000 to hold the confe
rence, whose sessions took place in Harlem churches. The conference was opened by delegates singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Then Addie Hunton, who had attended the NAACP’s Amenia weekend in 1916, delivered the opening address and articulated a vision of international solidarity. Other activists and intellectuals present included the Philadelphian novelist and essayist Jessie Fauset; William Leo Hansberry, a Howard University professor who specialized in African history; Melville Herskovits, an anthropologist remembered for his work establishing the African retentions present in African American culture; and J. E. Caseley Hayford, founder of the National Congress of West Africa and author of what has been called the first Pan-African novel, Ethiopia Unbound. DuBois chaired the proceedings and put together an elaborate exhibit that displayed replicas and drawings of the black world, with attention to both political formations and economic conditions. The resulting manifesto called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti, the end of economic exploitation in Haiti, and the restoration of local control. It also explicitly condemned the growing racial segregation and subjugation of black Africans in South Africa, as well as Western imperial ventures in Egypt and Ethiopia.
