Stony the Road –
A teenage boy rolled into town. He was alone. He had no friends. His mother was taken out of Missouri in the dark chaos of the war – never to be seen again. So this young man moved across the middle of the country. Drifting with purpose. If he failed, he would be consigned to the wastebin of society.
He landed in a small town – Minneapolis, Kansas – and opened a laundry. He washed other people’s clothes so he could afford to sit in a classroom – learning what other kids learned as a matter of course.
The year is 1880. This is George Washington Carver before the peanuts. Just a young man, refusing to let the world’s opinion of him become his own.
I grew up in a racially balanced town, also in Kansas. Balanced. All white. Green River Ordinance enforced.
We didn’t talk about race because we didn’t have to. Any particular racial privilege we had was simply assumed. Assumption, when completely unnoticed, is a powerful thing.
So I have no business writing about a song entitled Lift Every Voice and Sing. I didn’t live that history. I never had to do a laundry to earn my way into a classroom. I never had to live it in a primal, existential way. But I have listened to this song. I have sung it. And it moved me.
The tempo is important. It needs to be fast enough to feel the joy. Slow enough to carry the pain.
And this is a very complex piece of music, written by the Johnson brothers: James Weldon and J. Rosamond. This is not just the blues. Not just jazz. Not just enslaved fieldhands crying out prayers.
“Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring…”
The song begins with a human choir – filling heaven and earth with liberty.
Not just justice for all
Not just freedom as escape.
Not just equality as demand.
But Liberty.
Like the green lady in the harbor—welcoming the huddled masses…
those from across the ocean, and those already standing on this land.
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us…”
Here the rhythm shifts – into a march. A human march through the dark and into the ever-promised hope.
“Facing the rising sun of our new day begun…”
The next verse gets real:
“Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;”
And if I am honest, I know something of that feeling – miscarried hope, roads that do not lead where they promised. Here, race and privilege do not erase the human condition – but they do shape its burden.
This stream of the Hopeland watershed runs dark with silt and despair. It does not replace my stream – but it joins it. And once joined, it belongs to all of us.
“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,”
Even death could not stop the march.
“Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last…”
And here—125 years later—we can hear the outrageous optimism. A people imagining a future that did not yet exist. Yet, the song knows the journey is not over.
“Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world…”
The warning is clear: do not forget what formed you. And then this:
“True to our God,
True to our native land.”
Not Africa.
Not some distant homeland.
But this land.
Our land.
Our Hopeland.
The complete lyrics of Lift Every Voice and Sing:
Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
