The year was 1900 and Johnson was a school principal in his hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. He was asked to speak at an Abraham Lincoln birthday celebration, but instead of speaking he decided to write a poem. With time running short, plans changed again and James asked his brother, music teacher J. Rosamond Johnson, to help him write a song. And it became a popular selection for church choirs — a tradition that continues today. The song ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ came to be known as the black national anthem.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/liftvoice/
Today, I exude happiness and tears salvation flow freely down my chicks as I internalize his truth and it dawns on me that one Mohamed Abdikadir and the Parliamentary Select Committee might have just begot Kenya a second Uhuru.
In mine eyes they have already redeemed themselves and given Kenya hope of a rebirth. One clause in their report published widely in local media indicate that they have resolved unanimously that Parliament and the executive will be separate in the new constitution.
As if working immediately under this arrangement, they completely extricated themselves from the two principles, faced the equation squarely and midwifed amendments in the draft constitution which I want to beat Mutahi Ngunyi, Kumekucha and others in saying is the best I have seem.
Did it need to come only after our allies withdrew funding for important projects. Really, in consideration of the journey it has taken us to reach this far, what took so long? All this time, we Wanjiku has been a slave of the politicians. Or perhaps under their spell. Today, the politicians agreed to call the bluff. Today, I think Wanjiku got her emancipation.
And so, tonight my fellow Kenyans, I want not to say more, but instead, I dedicate to us the words of James Weldon Johnson which I have found fitting our plight so perfectly. Johnson referred to his song as the “Negro National Hymn.” I say let’s make it an international anthem. Watch this, hear and read the lyrics below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyS3HPInHtI
Lift every voice and sing, till 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 till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening 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, till 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 hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast 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.
—
Joram Ragem
wuod Ndinya, wuod Onam, wuod Amolo, wuod Owuoth, wuod Oganyo, wuod Mumbe, wuod Odongo, wuod Olwande, wuod Adhaya, wuod Ojuodhi, wuod Ragem! (Are you my relative?)