Five hundred children gathered in a Jacksonville schoolyard, their breath holding history before they knew its weight. The year was 1900, and the melody that would become Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing still slumbered in James Weldon Johnson's imagination, waiting for those young voices to wake it. They had asked him for a poem to honor Abraham Lincoln, but what emerged instead was a prayer, a prophecy, a map home. J. Rosamond Johnson's musical setting transformed these words into what would become known as the "Negro National Anthem", a song passing from teacher to students like a secret that knew its own importance.
