'Lift Every Voice and Sing' will be performed at Super Bowl by Andra Day. Who wrote it?

Grammy and Golden Globe winner Andra Day will perform "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at the Super Bowl on Feb. 11, a distance of a century-plus and thousands of miles from where it was first performed.

Who wrote 'Lift Every Voice and Sing?'

Here's how the song's writer, James Weldon Johnson, described its debut, according to the book "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

"A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.

"Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within 20 years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the 'Negro National Hymn,' is quite generally used.

"The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children."

Now known as "The Black National Anthem," it was used prominently by the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, according to the NAACP.

Who was James Weldon Johnson?

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. Educated at Atlanta University, he was the first African American to pass the bar in Florida, according to Emory University. And he was the first Black person to serve as the United States consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua.

He eventually joined the NAACP staff, eventually becoming executive secretary. After retiring from his position as head of the NAACP in 1930, he joined the faculty of Fisk University as a creative writing professor.

He died in 1938 in a car accident.

Who was J. Rosamond Johnson?

J. Rosamond Johnson, James Weldon Johnson's brother, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 11, 1873, and began playing piano at 4 years old. He later studied at the New England Conservatory, according to the Library of Congress.

He composed music throughout his life, including two musicals in New York City. He composed the music for his brother's poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

During World War I, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the 15th Regiment. After the war, he toured and even played a part in the original production of "Porgy and Bess" in 1935. He died in New York City on November 11, 1954, according to the Library of Congress.

What are the words to 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'?

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.

James Weldon Johnson

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' to be performed Sunday. These are the words