"Lift Every Voice and Sing," The Tradition, and Black Formalism

Going home and remembering why I wrote what I wrote and why I write what I write...

Today I’m teaching from my own work, a book I published in 2018 on the history of the song known as the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The book is called May We Forever Stand, and you can read the intro on the publisher’s website if you want: https://www.book2look.com/book/LOcFuEoXK9

Anyway, the book begins with a story about my older son singing the song in front of my family in Birmingham, Alabama when he was very young. And I just returned from two trips to Alabama over the past 10 days, with a trip to Atlanta in the midst of that too. And it all has me thinking about tradition. In African American Studies we talk about “the tradition” if African American literature and culture fairly frequently, referring to the history and habits of the people we study and (for many of us) from whom we come. In May We Forever Stand, I focused specifically on a particular aspect of that tradition, called “Black Formalism.” I described the development of a Black formal culture in the American South, a set of sartorial, social and ritual practices for formal spaces in Black life including schools, civic gatherings, church of course, and more. In simple Black English it is the demand to “act right” and “like you been somewhere before.” I distinguished Black formalism from both the politics of respectability that were largely an argument put before the larger society that Black people were decent, and vernacular social cultures of jook joints and night clubs. Every culture has formal places, internal to the community, for communicating seriousness to each other. And every culture also has the more relaxed spaces and places too. It was, and remains, my belief that to study a culture means we have to pay attention to BOTH. And when I wrote May We Forever Stand, I felt like the field of African American studies need a little bit of course correction in terms of making sure we paid attention to the formal and not just the vernacular. And that wasn’t criticism, my first book was about Hip Hop after all. I just was pushing for more balance.

Anyway, over the past I remembered how I knew this was all so important, when I was in Alabama and Georgia. The elegance and poise of Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley Jones and photographer Tyler Mitchell both of whom I appeared with on stages (for Tyler’s amazing exhibition at the High Museum in Atlanta and Joe Minter’s similarly exquisite exhibition at the old Marc Steel Mill in Birmingham) their eloquence and deliberateness were expressions of this tradition. My aunt Thelma Perry Brown and friend, fellow writer Marie Sutton took me to the celebration of the opening of Breast Cancer Awareness month at City Hall in Birmingham and the way that the speakers shared their testimonies, and advocates shared information was also a testament to the traditions of Black formalism, even in what was largely a social event. We don’t do important things any old way. We communicate importance in the how not just the what. In a sea of shades of pink, I saw people’s grief as well as their strength fully acknowledged.

All of that to say, today as I teach the past I am yet again aware of the uses of history, at least for me. I look to the past to understand today and to anchor my ethics for the future. I believe in openness of expression. And I also believe in the seriousness of life especially for those marked as the least of these. Black formalism isn’t about being superior to others, but of value to ourselves.