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lift every voice and sing

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Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening 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 ’til victory is won.

I did not know about Juneteenth until I was in my 40s. I recall how embarrassed and ashamed I felt, but it just wasn’t taught to me in school, and America doesn’t exactly go out of her way to teach privileged white kids like me about the horrors our ancestors inflicted on generations of human beings. Hopefully, that has changed.

In the extremely unlikely event you are hearing about this for the first time: “Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth, referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.”

As the institutions and corporations that influence so much of American culture draw shamefully away from celebrating and honoring marginalized communities, including communities of color, it falls (as it always does) to us, the people, to step up and use our collective voice to speak out so our friends, neighbors, and fellow humans who do not have the same privilege that so many of us have are seen and heard.

Here’s LeVar Burton reading the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Google put this on their doodle a few years ago. Today, there is nothing. Shameful. My bad. My VPN autoconnected to the UK, and when I reset it to the US, I see that Google is honoring Juneteenth. I regret the error.

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19 June, 2025 Wil

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in the heat of the summer better call out a plumber → ← it picks me up, puts me down

20 thoughts on “lift every voice and sing”

  1. Molly Grayver says:
    19 June, 2025 at 10:43 am

    Google does have a doodle up.

    Reply
    1. Wil says:
      19 June, 2025 at 10:51 am

      Oh my bad! My VPN connected to the UK instead of the US. I’ll correct that error right now.

      Reply
  2. Daniel Nicholas says:
    19 June, 2025 at 10:45 am

    Oops, you hit send too soon. Google added a thing.
    I appreciate you and your blog. Happy Juneteenth.

    Reply
  3. Malyn says:
    19 June, 2025 at 10:46 am

    Thank you so much for this post. It is utterly shameful and disgusting how certain people are trying to hide and/or rewrite our sordid history of oppression. Remembering and owning our history, is a major step towards change.

    Reply
  4. impossibly46e805cd7a says:
    19 June, 2025 at 11:24 am

    Will… there is no need to apologize for not knowing about “Juneteenth”.
    I am a woman of “color” (mixed heritage) who was born and raised in NY(1957). I went into the military in my late 20s, my first duty station was Barksdale AF Base in Shreveport, Louisiana.
    I had been there for nearly a year when the base had a special celebratory occasion for the soldiers called “Juneteenth”.
    Well….I SERIOUSLY had NO CLUE what it was for!!
    It was not taught or practiced up north. It was never mentioned by family or friends.
    So…you can see historical information…..can be subjective according to where and when you have lived, and family dynamics.
    Don’t beat yourself up about it! I don’t and my family and I have chosen NOT to celebrate it! I will acknowledge it…but that is where we stop.
    As a people, we need to move beyond this and respect each other as ALL being from the same family….Brothers and Sisters in the Human Family!

    Vida(Trekkie since BEFORE the Beginning!)

    Reply
  5. Otis says:
    19 June, 2025 at 11:27 am

    Thank you, Will. For this post, e wry word of it. But most especially for pointing out how shameful Google’s removal of the Juneteenth banner on the actual day.

    Reply
    1. Wil says:
      19 June, 2025 at 4:31 pm

      To be clear, I was mistaken. My vpn was connected to the UK, and I didn’t see that. There is a doodle on the us site.

      Reply
  6. Maureen L Riley says:
    19 June, 2025 at 11:46 am

    Thank you for the reminder!

    Reply
  7. Geoffrey Knobl says:
    19 June, 2025 at 11:53 am

    If I attended my church anymore they are a pretty good church and I’m sure we’d be seeing this anthem Sunday

    Reply
  8. Patricia Alley says:
    19 June, 2025 at 12:05 pm

    Actually Google does have a Google Doodle up. It showed up at midnight. 🙂 Check it out!

    Reply
    1. Val Meade says:
      19 June, 2025 at 8:43 pm

      Ah good! I was just making sure someone saw there is one up & let Wil know!

      Reply
  9. happily6c69f10f58 says:
    19 June, 2025 at 12:51 pm

    We should all be ashamed and a bit humbled for our ancestors past aggressions. If we have learned anything, it’s not to allow it to ever happen again.

    Reply
  10. TheOpionatedCrone says:
    19 June, 2025 at 12:52 pm

    Sadly, I don’t think our schools are doing much better in teaching the atrocities. If they did, we wouldn’t have so many holocaust deniers. I’m a 72, almost 73 year old white woman. I’d never heard of Juneteenth, Black Wall Street, or the trail of tears and why it occurred until I was in my 60’s!! I did, however, have a fantastic grandmother who taught me a lot more than I learned in school about the civil war. She also taught me one should treat the janitor with as much kindness and respect as you would treat the CEO or President. It breaks my heart that we have a president who doesn’t.
    Wil, you have grown up into a great man. I’ve watched you all the way and was shocked when I heard what went on in your life that we didn’t see. I’m glad you had some angels along the way to help you because we need so many more men like you in our world. Just keep on doing what you’re doing! You’ll be just fine. And of course keep sharing your stories. Much love and respect, the Opinionated Crone

    Reply
  11. ginnyred57 says:
    19 June, 2025 at 1:09 pm

    I love singing this as a church hymn. The triplets in the chorus are the best in the alto range.

    Reply
  12. orangerful says:
    19 June, 2025 at 2:07 pm

    I had never heard of this holiday until I saw the episode of ‘Blackish’ and I was also ashamed. And I also did not know that “lift every voice and sing” was the Black National Anthem! We used to sing that in elementary school chorus class…not that I would remember if it was referred to that way in class, but that is good to know. Perhaps my chorus teacher was trying her best to be progressive in the late 80s.

    Reply
  13. 08/28 says:
    19 June, 2025 at 3:31 pm

    It’s shameful that we are only taught the bare minimum in school. Things are constantly coming up that change what we were taught. Both are terrible. I read a lot but can’t recall Juneteenth. Someone i worked with awhile back said she was going to celebrate with her family. I had to ask, and she told me. I read up on it then. Two and a half years before they even knew they were free. America has a lot of bad in it’s past. Hopefully, we can stop having any more bad things in our future.

    Reply
  14. Adam Heine says:
    19 June, 2025 at 10:23 pm

    I also didn’t learn about Juneteenth until I was in my 40s. My education basically taught that slavery ended on January 1st, 1863, and “reconstruction” was barely covered. I’m honestly kind of angry and how thoroughly US education (both public and private) failed me in that regard.

    Reply
  15. quantumkindy says:
    20 June, 2025 at 9:31 am

    Thanks for this awesome reminder!

    Reply
  16. Julie Harris says:
    20 June, 2025 at 3:14 pm

    Thank you.

    Reply
  17. Lynn Rodriguez Hohenstein says:
    20 June, 2025 at 10:55 pm

    Thank you. Simply thank you. We are of an age, and we seem to share too many experiences, so as a too white half-Hispanic girl from the East Coast to a white boy from the California West Coast; your words matter

    Reply

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