Understanding “Lift Every Voice” in Context with Its Time

Dear Princes of my life,

Yesterday, I told you that “Lift Every Voice and Spring” should be our nation’s anthem. It’s a beautiful song—its lyrics, melody, and sentiment—reflecting the ideals of America. I forgot to mention its context. Thomas Mallon in the New Yorker reminded me. He wrote a powerful piece about the 1920 election of Harding. It sounds surprising similar to our 2020 election.

War World I cost the country about 70,000 lives. It was a war opposed by many people. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, making him less than energetic about fulfilling his Presidential obligations (the 25th amendment would not be ratified for another 45 years). The Spanish Flu finally subsided after two years. It killed almost 700,000 Americans. Immigration was on the rise, and “native” Americans, meaning White people of English or Dutch descent, were panicking about the influence of Rome on the electorate.

Ku Klux Klan marching in Washington DC during the 1920s.

Most important, white supremacy had risen and taken hold in many parts of the country—not just the South. For example, Ellsworth, Maine, near where we took your father and uncle for vacations, was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity in the 20s. (Few African Americans lived up there, but Mainers feared the influence of Jews and papists, as Catholics were called).

African Americans caught the brunt of the hatred of anything perceived as “non-American,” and Blacks, Jews, and Catholics fit that bill. Jews and Catholics weren’t lynched. African Americans were as Mallon noted: “Racial violence remained a phenomenon of such dailiness in 1920 that its occurrence, even when reported, was perceived as being more inevitable than eventful, something that required an occasional word from the candidates without anybody believing it would seriously affect the election. During the campaign, there were lynchings in Duluth, Minnesota; Paris, Texas; Graham, North Carolina; Corinth, Mississippi; Macclenny, Florida; and elsewhere.” Just before election day in 2020, Whites and Klansmen lynched a promising businessman and destroyed his neighborhood in Ocoee, Florida. A year later, there was the massacre of African Americans in Greenwood Oklahoma. Three years after that, Rosewood, Florida, was leveled. In each case, not one single White man was even charged with a crime.

Rosewood, FL, 1923

This was the atmosphere of America when the NAACP declared “Lift Every Voice and Sing” the negro national anthem. It was an act of defiance as much as a celebration of hope and freedom. That sounds more American than the story behind the “Star Spangled Banner.”