Prof. Rasmussen, Alice, JaneAnne, Jill, and I participated in the 16th annual "Peace Walk" in honor of Martin Luther King Day, starting behind Nationals Park and ending in the historically-Black neighborhood of Anacostia.

Protest is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, though I don't often participate in one. As Alice has already noted, living outside of DC and growing up in an affluent suburb, I was aware of the underrepresentation that voters in Washington DC suffer from but only from an academic standpoint. (Incidentally, visiting the exhibits at the MLK Library on the history of home rule showed me how it was somehow even worse before the city council became an elected body rather than a group of Congressmen.)

Participating in the march reminded me that democracy is only worth its name if we actively participate in it. The ballot box is one important way to do this, but the systematic efforts to deny people - particularly Black voters who were crucial in delivering Democrats the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress - are challenging that very access.

Finally, as someone who shares Dr. King's Christian faith, I am reminded of his challenge to White moderate pastors who called for him to back down in the name of unity. Among them were the Episcopal bishops of the State of Alabama, C.C.J. Carpenter and George M. Murray. As an Episcopalian, I believe that respecting the dignity of every human being is perhaps the paramount call of our faith, a truth that Dr. King certainly embodied and many of us would be all too uncomfortable actually doing the work for. There is no choice but to advocate for a more perfect union - one where all are valued, cared for, and treated as fellow Americans and not as subordinates.

At left: A brief snippet of Lift Every Voice and Sing, recorded in Anacostia by Justin Oei.

(Justin Oei)

Words by James Weldon Johnson; Music by J. Rosamond Johnson

Lift Every Voice and Sing is often called the Black national anthem, and in 2021 House Democratic Whip, Congressman James Clyburn, proposed that it be named our new national hymn. Below are the lyrics to the song, and a recording of the choir of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, NYC, singing this hymn.

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

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?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand
True to our God, true to our native land.

(contributed by Justin Oei)