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Watch Lisa Williamson '12 MM accompanied by Jill Brunelle, from her recent concert at Beinecke, where she sang the opening of Lift Every Voice and Sing, the National Hymn, with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson, namesake and inspiration for the library's James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters. Johnson's own papers are in Beinecke and the collection established in his honor, established in 1941, is one of the library's most consulted. The special exhibition, Gather Out of Star-Dust: The Harlem Renaissance and the Beinecke Library, drawed from the treasures of the JWJ Collection. View images from Johnson's notebooks in 1900 with the lyrics of the song here: http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3522526 Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring Ring with the harmonies of Liberty Let our rejoicing rise High as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has tought 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 chast'ning rod Felt in the day that hope unborn had died Yet with a steady beat Have not our weary feet Come to the place on witch 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 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 Shadowed beneath the hand May we forever stand True to our God True to our native land