Page curated by Justin Oei & JaneAnne Stockton
Not long ago a presenter, specializing in diversity training told a story of “the two happy birthday songs”: a “Black one” and "the one we all know" which is presumably for everyone else. The “Black happy birthday song” to which he referred was Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday. Now the "regular" Happy Birthday to You – is a terrible song for a group to sing. It starts out easily enough, staying within the first five notes of a major scale but with the line “Happy birthday dear so-and-so…..” and its octave jump-- well, most folks don’t hit the octave and that derails the end of the song rendering it an intonation nightmare.
Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder, a song celebrating the life of Martin Luther King and from Hotter than July, Wonder's 19th album, published in 1980. Wonder along with a number of artists used their voice and their music and microphone to canvass relentlessly to make MKL's birthday a national holiday, a process that took 15 years.
[See Marcus Barem’s article on the topic.]
But to me Steve Wonder’s Happy Birthday is hardly a sing along for the casual celebrant – at least not without accompaniment. It’s got a syncopated gapped (and not step wise) melody, and the phrases often start – not on the downbeat, but somewhere else. While “Happy Birthday to You” is square, Wonder’s Happy Birthday is anything but! So, I have been wondering about the quotidian use of Wonder’s tune. It’s been on my mind. And when I queued it up for a car-ride birthday playlist over the winter break for my son, Luther, I was reminded that Wonder’s song was composed in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King and that Wonder advocated fiercely for the establishment of a national holiday in King’s honor . . . . for well over a decade. [See Marcus Barem’s article on the topic which includes embedded videos.]
Today, on January 17, 2022, some of us in the William & Mary Winter Seminar “Washington & the Arts” went on the Peace Walk for MLK day. In addition to the continuing relevance of everything that Dr. King stood for and fought for, voting rights (the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is pending in the senate) and DC statehood (taxation without representation), have particular resonance on this day.
The walk began behind the Nationals Ballpark with some speechifying and some chanting and the distribution of posters and the press among the crowd. The wind and barely 40-degree temperature chilled me to the bone as we walked across the newly renovated Frederick Douglass bridge and into Anacostia. Near the end of the 2-mile parade route a band was set up on the sidewalk and the crowd stopped to listen, contributing to the band’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and then Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday.” It was the perfect time and place for the perfect song, and surely some people were singing along. Check it out in my impromptu video.
Caught live during the MLK Day Peace Walk from the Nationals Ball Park to the Ambassador Baptist Church in Anacostia. [Please let us know the names of these performers. (See our home page for contact info.)]
This afternoon we visited the MLK Library where I saw this flyer FOR a rally organized by Stevie Wonder to advocate for an MLK national holiday.
STEVIE WONDER'S
NATIONAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON DC
FOR DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY TO BECOME A NATIONAL HOLIDAY, JANUARY 15
[Note: Always put the date and the year on your flyers and posters! I don't see a date on this one.]
So many things that we take for granted, like MLK Day, a day where I am often furiously preparing for the onset of classes two days later, are only there in our lives because of the work, the collaboration, the determination, and the risks pursued and sustained by others. It is fulfilling to always learn more about the traditions I hold dear. Here's an excerpt of the lyrics from Wonder’s Happy Birthday.
(Contributed by Anne K. Rasmussen)
Why has there never been a holiday
Where peace is celebrated
all throughout the world
The time is overdue
For people like me and you
Who know the way to truth
Is love and unity to all God's children
It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of all people
So let us all begin
We know that love can win
Let it out don't hold it in
Sing it loud as you can ...... Happy Birthday to You .............
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)
Congressman Clyburn's Tweet calling for Lift Every Voice to be named America's national hymn.
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)