If these times we are living in had a soundtrack, I’d
venture to say, it wouldn’t be a hymn. It
wouldn’t be a slow gospel swell or some softly
trembling organ floating through stained
glass. Not now. Not in this particular America
- where Trumpism has rewritten the national
anthem in the key of absolute chaos -
absolute, I say.
A “Twilight Zone”-like time and place where the hallowed
US Constitution is getting side-eyed by the
very same folks sworn to defend it; where
“anti-woke” hats are sold right next to banned
books and Confederate paraphernalia. The
background music of this moment? It shouldn't
be reverent. What Black America needs now is a back-handed backlash - a
righteous and justified revolt against blatant
racist tyranny.
Right now, perhaps the soundtrack of our survival ought
not be limited to a polished choir in
three-part harmony - it ought be a horn
section kicking the damn door in. It’s bass shaking the floorboards of the classroom,
the courtroom, and the Capitol. It’s a rhythm
section that doesn’t ask for silence or
civility. It demands presence. Urgency. Volume.
Because if we’re being real, Lift Every Voice and Sing lives in our bones - but Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud lives in our blood.
Let’s be crystal clear: this is not disrespectful for Lift. That hymn is sacred. Lift is Sunday morning: pressed suits, grandmama’s hat
tilted like a crown, a song that braids grief
to hope with quiet muscle. It’s the lullaby
that got our elders through decades of “No,”
“Not yet,” and “Not you.” It’s the soundtrack
of walking into courthouses that did not want
to see us win. Lift is the rhythmic prayer that keeps us all alive.
But the people trying to drag us backward? They aren’t
whispering baby. No, they’re shouting on
school-board floors, swapping history for
mythology with the confidence of men who can’t
find Africa on a map but want to edit your
syllabus. They roll up to book clubs with
bullhorn energy. They openly dream of making America medieval again. In desperate times like these, I’d submit we don’t
answer a bullhorn with a whisper. We answer
with a battle song.
Say It Loud is that battle song. James Brown doesn’t drift in
like incense; he kicks the door like a
seven-alarm fire. It’s not a petition - it’s a declaration. Drums like a stampede. Horns like they just got
subpoenaed and refused to show. The message
isn’t “please.” The message is “present.” It
belongs on street corners, in marching lines,
in gyms, barbershops, block parties, HBCU
homecomings, and city-council meetings that
run three hours too long. It doesn’t wait for
the mic; it snatches it and turns the whole
room into a choir.
Meanwhile, Lift has been… domesticated.
Corporatized. You hear it at Juneteenth luncheons sponsored by the same
folks who quietly chopped the DEI budget and
called it “efficiency.” Executives hum along,
as long as you don’t ask who’s in the C-suite.
It’s become the anthem of “we recognize your
struggle” as long as the struggle clocks out
by five. Say It Loud does not clock out. It clocks in wearing steel-toed
boots and a leather beret, asking where the
overtime forms are.
“But it’s too confrontational,” whines the crowd that just
confiscated a library card. Good. Because the
opposition already declared confrontation. MAGA is at war with Black reality. They’re banning books, purging voter rolls,
gerrymandering maps, criminalizing protest,
and calling it “law and order.” You don’t
answer a siren with a sigh; you answer with a
rhythm section. Say It Loud isn’t about asking to be seen. It’s about being
unignorable. MAGA loves a spectacle? Fine. So
do we. Ours just has better choreography.
Lift is the carefully handwritten note - measured, meant
to last. Say It Loud is the headline - urgent, blunt, designed to be
shouted from the back row. One is for
ceremonies; the other is for the moment the
mic cuts out and the crowd becomes the PA
system. When your rights are on the ballot,
your body is up for search, and your child’s
curriculum is being redacted with a Sharpie
that smells like the 1950s, you don’t sing a lullaby. You roar a chorus.
This is not a funeral for Lift; it’s a tactical reassignment. Keep it where it belongs:
graduations, memorials, Sundays when the pews
need stitching back together. But for rallies,
walkouts, and those tense meetings where
red-hatted aunties quote memes like scripture,
we need a groove that refuses to apologize for
its volume. Lift is the morning prayer. Say It Loud is the afternoon march. Both sacred - one louder.
Stop. Look. Listen. There’s a seismic shift happening -
psychological, cultural, ancestral. Lift Every Voice and Sing is the trembling heartbeat of hope, wrapped in linen
and lace, noble and still, like a sermon
whispered into the void. But Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud is the war drum of identity - raw, defiant, barefoot
in the dirt, stomping until the earth
remembers who owns the soil. Hope can be
deferred. Identity doesn’t negotiate; it kicks the damn door in.
And in a country where school boards rewrite slavery as
“skills training,” where governors treat Black
history like contraband, and where policy
wears a velvet glove over a clenched fist -
why would we hum lullabies? You don’t enter a
battlefield with your quietest hymn. You come
with a groove so righteous it sets off car
alarms. You lead with a beat that won’t bow,
funk that won’t flinch, an anthem that doesn’t
ask for space - it claims it. We are here. We
are whole. We’re not requesting permission to
be either.
Will the usual suspects complain? Of course. They complained about athletes kneeling, teachers
teaching truth, librarians stacking facts, and
kids wearing shirts that say Humans Are Not Illegal. The outrage machine is coin-operated. Let them rant
about “divisiveness” while the crawl at the
bottom of the screen sells fear in bulk. We’ll
be busy organizing, registering, litigating,
educating - on the beat.
This is intergenerational fluency. Our elders earned the
right to hum Lift with tears in their eyes; it carried them through
doors that were never meant to open. Our kids
deserve the spark that lets them swing those
doors off the hinges. Give a teenager a melody
they can shout with their whole chest and
they’ll remember it longer than any civics
lecture. James Weldon Johnson gave us a
ladder. James Brown hands us a launchpad.
Climb when we must. Launch when we have to.
Honoring the hymn and elevating the chant
aren’t opposites. They’re movements in the same suite: the spiritual and the
shout, the benediction and the breakbeat. We can carry a hymnal in one hand and a Bluetooth
speaker in the other. In a season when futures
are being red-penned by people who think
“equity” is a four-letter word, versatility
isn’t a luxury; it’s survival.
Here’s the motion from the floor: when the setting is
ceremonial, we Lift. When the moment’s combustible - when the stakes demand a
beat that moves feet and policy - cue the
Godfather of Soul. We need a soundtrack that
makes silence impossible, flips porch lights
on, and turns parking lots into town squares.
We need a song that doesn’t beg for a seat at
the table; it brings folding chairs, unpacks
the grill, and feeds the block.
The time that birthed “Black Power,”
“Power to the People,” and “Black Is Beautiful” wasn’t some kumbaya summer retreat; it was the 1960s
and ’70s - a powder keg of police batons,
assassinated prophets, and a nation allergic
to Black autonomy. Those slogans weren’t
poetic niceties; they were battle cries,
declarations that Black life didn’t need white
permission to breathe, thrive, or shine. And
now - look around - the white sheets and
burning crosses are back. States are banning
history, whitewashing slavery, and choking
voting rights like it’s 1963 with Bluetooth.
The police haven’t stopped killing, the courts
have stopped criminalizing, and the culture
still crosses the street when Black pride
refuses to whisper.
Apparently the Confederacy lies but 15 minutes outside of
every US city, from San Francisco Bay to LA,
from Tampa Bay to Chesapeake Bay - it’s the
same old you know what.
So yes, the anthem that once rattled the bones of White
American fragility - Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud - has returned, not as nostalgia but as necessity. Its time is right here, right now. “Push has come to shove.” It belongs on every loudspeaker,
every picket line, every TikTok loop, every
school-board showdown. Keep the hymn close
to your chest like scripture, but put the
funk out front where the fight lives.
Because in Trump-tilted times, civics isn’t
a textbook; it’s a drumline. Pride isn’t
polite; it’s public, amplified, and
unbothered by permission. Identity isn’t
negotiable; it’s stamped in bone and bass.
All power to the people…!
Hell, at this rate, we’ll be shouting “Free Obama” before
we know it.
