A day repaid in elation: the joy of Juneteenth

“Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty,” goes the lyric written in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson.

“Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died. Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet, Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?”

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” within 20 years became known as the Negro National Anthem, in our time the Black National Anthem...