How did ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ become known as the Black national anthem?

Called the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” will be heard before every NFL game in the first week of the season, USA Today reports. What’s the history behind the song?

Sources say the song will be performed or played before each game when the season begins in September, before “The Star-Spangled Banner,” CNN reported.

The league also is reportedly working with players on other ways to “recognize victims of systemic racism” and police violence throughout the season, according to the network.

Here’s what you need to know about the history of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

What is the origin of the song?

The song was first written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson, the former leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, according to the NAACP. Johnson wrote the poem for the 90th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1899, the Washington Post reported.

Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, set the poem to music, according to the NAACP.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing ”was first performed by a group of 500 children during the celebration of Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12, 1900, according to the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine.

“The schoolchildren of Jacksonville kept singing the song; some of them went off to other schools and kept singing it; some became school teachers and taught it to their pupils,” James Weldon Johnson wrote, according to The Jaxson. “Nothing that I have done has paid me back so fully in satisfaction as being part creator of this song.

How did it become the Black national anthem?

The song rose in popularity in Black churches, schools and celebrations, an author for The Jaxson magazine wrote. By 1920, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was referred to as the “Negro National Anthem,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

The hymn “is a reminder of the solidarity, commitment and community that African Americans forged to not merely survive in this nation, but to create beauty in the face of persistent injustice,” according to The Crisis Magazine.

Derrick Johnson, current president and CEO of the NAACP, said the song speaks “to the history of the dark journey of African-Americans,” NPR reported.

How popular is the song now?

In 1972, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung by Motown’s Kim Weston in front of nearly 100,000 people, according to NPR. Melba Moore, Anita Baker, Stevie Wonder and Dionne Warwick teamed up for their own version of the song in 1990.

Rev. Joseph Lowery quoted a portion of the hymn during the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, according to the Florida Times-Union.

It reached a new level of acclaim in 2018 when pop superstar Beyoncé sang it during her headlining set of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

“To have someone on the scale of Beyoncé in a space like Coachella, (it) is really a departure,” Shana Redmond, an associate professor of musicology and African American studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, told The Washington Post. “It’s really something to pay attention to.”

To read the lyrics to the song, visit the NAACP’s website.