Photographs
Far left: Dorothy Allison (third from left) and students following Allison's Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration keynote address. Photo by Joseph Mehling, College Photographer. Center: Members of AXIS Dance Company, a mixed-ability dance troupe, performing at the Hopkins Center as part of a Hopkins Center campus residency cosponsored by IDE. Photo by Jack Rowell. Right: Discussions at a Diversity Forum hosted by IDE. Photo by The Dartmouth.
Artwork
Detail from mural produced by Ernesto Cuevas and Dartmouth students as part of Encuentro Latino, a Summer Arts Festival coordinated by the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
The hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written in the days of the Jim Crow South and was intended to inspire African Americans to persist in their struggle for equal rights. During the 1920s, the song was being pasted into the backs of hymnals and had become known as the "Negro national anthem." It opens with an injunction to "ring with the harmonies of Liberty," calling for those constitutional rights which were being denied to African Americans, and closes by affirming God and country. These sentiments frame hopes for a better future, "the white gleam of our bright star." The lyrics were written by James Weldon Johnson, author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1920). Johnson's brother, the composer John R. Johnson, wrote the music.
Web resources of interest:
Lift Every Voice and Sing, song lyrics and audio from the The Cyber Hymnal.
Lift Every Voice: Music in American Life, an exhibition web-resource created by the University of Virginia Library.
Present at the Creation: Lift Every Voice and Sing, a segment of the NPR project "Present at the Creation," designed to examine the creative process behind the designs, sounds, images and writings that helped shape American culture.
James Weldon Johnson's Life and Career, a biography of the writer at Modern American Poetry, an online journal and multimedia companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry.
