Each and every voice
One thing that was striking to me about the real-time coverage of Tuesday’s Inaugural benediction, delivered by Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder Rev. Joseph Lowery, was the lag time involved in recognizing the source of Lowery’s opening words.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has 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.
Most of the mainstream outlets later (sometimes hours later) identified the lines as being from the lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the century-old anthem that was the official song of the NAACP in the 1920’s. Since Lowery was quoting the final verse of the song, the actual title of the hymn never emerged. It was an on-the-spot cultural litmus test: either you immediately recognized the reference or you needed to call a lifeline.
It’s notable that cultural commentators like Maureen Dowd, who was so bent on establishing that she was not too old to hear the “generational dog whistle” in Obama’s Jay-Z allusion last spring, have remained completely silent (and quite possibly clueless) on this deeply resonant and historical call from a man recognized as one of the deans of the civil rights movement. Members of the chattering class may dread the prospect of appearing old and unhip, but are stunningly unabashed about their ignorance of a major cultural touchstone for millions of Americans.
James Weldon Johnson, who penned the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in 1900, also anonymously released a novel entitled “The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man” in 1912. Written in the first person, the novel’s biracial protagonist ultimately leaves the African-American community in order to pass as a white man.
In the novel’s closing paragraphs, the nameless protagonist — Narrator X, if you will — wistfully muses after attending a public appearance by Booker T. Washington.
Even those who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should go down in defeat. Beside them I feel small and selfish. I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious.
…when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remains of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.
Our new president, when presented with the similar choices throughout his life, did not buy the crock — and that, I think, is a benediction for us all.
