Can you substitute "The Star Spangled Banner" for "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," a song that is widely knows as the Black National Anthem? Jazz singer Rene Marie decided not to perform "The Star Spangled Banner" at a Denver civic event for the city of Denver this month, and that decision has been met with widespread scorn in Denver and around the country. And even though she is under fire Marie tells KUSA-TV in Denver that she has no regrets.
Rene Marie Sings the Black National Anthem
"I want to express how I feel about living in the United States as a black woman, as a black person," she said. Marie tells The Denver Post she decided to switch the lyrics months ago and will no longer sing the national anthem because she sometimes feels like a foreigner in the USA.
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The Rocky Mountain News says the City Council president has been receiving hate mail, even though he had never met Marie before he introduced her at the State of the City event. "I'm getting — as if I made the decision to do this — I'm receiving a lot of hate mail," he says. "I've received quite a few e-mails that are quite nasty."
Here are the lyrics to Lyrics to 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson. Many have expressed outrage, not for the lyrics, but for the fact that she believed that it was fine to substitute this song for "The Star Spangled Banner." Would you be upset if you had attended the event?
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'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.
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,
'Til 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 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?;
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