“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a hymn written in 1900 to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. It’s been INFORMALLY called the “Black National Anthem” since 1917, which actually predates the Star Spangled Banner being officially named America’s national anthem (1931). The “controversy” (to the extent that any real one exists) comes from the fact that there are a LOT of white people in this country who know absolutely nothing about any thing concerning Black history or Black culture, and those people just heard about the song a few years ago. Meanwhile, people like me have known the existence of the song since I was a child. It says more about the fact that we still live in two Americas. And part of that is because the way we teach American history in general and Black history in particular SUCKS. So I understand how people can view something as “divisive” when they don’t know what it is, don’t know where it came from and never heard of its existence before people started telling you to care about it. But my hope would be that moving forward white folks would sing it too! You’re allowed to, nobody told you you couldn’t. America doesn’t have a national hymn. Congressman Jim Clyburn proposed to make Lift Every Voice and Sing the National hymn, which I would support. But the people who told you to care about this would never support that, even though it would be unifying on multiple levels. Why? Because their goal is not to be uniting, their goal is to erase Black identity from the public sphere, and they weaponize the lack of knowledge that many white folks have about Black America to do it.