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Lift Every Voice And Sing By James Weldon Johnson

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Explication of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
The poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson is about how African Americans have persevered through mistreatment across the United States. Rather than giving up on becoming successful in the United States, African Americans flourished. This perseverance helped to shape what the United States has become today.
The poem begins with the speaker explaining a fantastic celebration of victory and liberty. Johnson explains how African Americans had faith that they would one-day experience equality in the United States, their victory. He continues to explain that this victory for equality would be “Facing the rising sun of our new day begun” (Johnson, line 9). The second stanza begins to explain the difficult struggle that African Americans experienced while living the United States. Johnson is able to explain how hope for better treatment began to die out but, African Americans continued to push on. In the third and final stanza of the poem, the speaker thanks God for helping …show more content…

Johnson tastefully discusses the problems that African Americans are currently facing and problems that they have faced in the past. The speaker masterfully alludes to these problems without actually stating what they are by alluding to them as a “dark past” and the “present.” This really makes the reader consider what terrible abuses were being directed toward African Americans during the early 1900s. African Americans still faced frequent abuse centered around the color of their skin and by their past identity as slaves. Johnson uses figurative language, such as metaphors to enhance the message he is trying to spread against racism. It almost seems that atrocities faced by African Americans are so bad that they should not be discussed openly. As the poem continues, the speaker continues to elaborate on what African Americans struggled with in everyday American

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