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Lift Ev'ry Voice And Sing
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954). Written from the context of African Americans in the late 19th century, the hymn is a prayer of thanksgiving as well as a prayer for faithfulness and freedom, with imagery which evokes the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom of the "promised land." After its first recitation in 1900, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was communally sung within Black communities, while the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a "Negro national anthem" in 1917. It has been featured in 42 different Christian hymnals, and it has also been performed by various African American singers and musicians. History James Weldon Johnson, Chair of the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida, had sought to write a poem in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. However, amid the ongoing civil rights movement, Johnson decided to write a poem w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson. Johnson was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. Leaders of the organization included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins. Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination". National NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts and litigation strategies developed by its legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term ''colored people,'' referring to tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the course of ''Caged Bird'', Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice. Angelou was challenged by her friend, author James Baldwin, and her editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that was also a piece of literature. Reviewers often categorize ''Caged Bird'' as autobiographical fiction because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, but the prev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical ''The Monthly Review'', when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that " utobiographyis a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, ''Porgy and Bess'' cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was also an actress, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board, whose members are appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry form a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 established a national program to guard America's sound recording heritage. The Act created the National Recording Registry, The National Recording Preservation Board and a fund-raising foundation. The purpose of the Registry is to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Clyburn
James Enos Clyburn (born July 21, 1940) is an American politician and retired educator serving as a Democratic Party (United States), Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina. He has served as House majority whip, House Majority Whip since 2019. He is a two-time majority whip, previously serving in the post from 2007 to 2011, and served as Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives, House assistant minority leader from 2011 to 2019. Currently in his 15th term, Clyburn has served as the United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative for since 1993. His congressional district includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, Charleston, as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort, South Carolina, Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina's share of the Black Belt in the American South, Black Belt. Clyburn is the dean of United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White People
White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as "White" in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient or medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a White or pan-European race. The term "White race" or "White people", defined by their light skin among other physical characteristics, entered the major European languages in the later seventeenth century, when the concept of a "unified White" achieve universal acceptance in Europe, in the context of racialized slavery and unequal social status in the European colonies. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on physical complexion rather than race. Prior to the modern era, no Europe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pledge Of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version, with a text different from the one used at present, was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. Bellamy, the circulation manager for ''The Youth's Companion'' magazine, helped persuade President Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Star-Spangled Banner
"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Outer Baltimore Harbor in the Patapsco River during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory. The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" (or "The Anacreontic Song"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. This setting, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", soon became a well-known U.S. patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very diffi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservatism In The United States
Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative and Christian media organizations, along with American conservative figures, are influential, and American conservatism is one of the majority political ideologies within the Republican Party. American social conservatives typically support what they consider Christian values, moral absolutism, traditional family values, and American exceptionalism, while opposing abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage. It favours economic individualism, and is generally pro-business and pro-capitalism, while supporting anti-communism and opposing labor unions. It often advocates a strong national defense, gun rights, free trade, and a defense of Western culture from perceived threats posed by both communism and moral relativism. Since the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Race (human Categorization)
A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Today, scientists con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
