Kirk Franklin - Lift Every Voice and Sing Lyrics

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" opens with a call to unified voice, asking that song rise "as high as the list'ning skies" and resound like the rolling sea, treating collective singing as an act loud enough to reach heaven itself. That scale, earth and heaven ringing together, frames the song as more than private expression from its opening lines.

Its second stanza names the specific content of that song directly, faith drawn from a difficult past and hope carried by the present, refusing to separate present confidence from historical struggle. Facing "the rising sun of our new day begun" ties that faith and hope to forward motion rather than mere endurance.

Written in the late nineteenth century and long associated with African American congregational and civil rights tradition, the song functions as both anthem and hymn, its closing call to "march on till victory is won" treating persistent faith as the force that carries a people from a painful past toward a still-unfinished future.