Vanessa Williams to sing 'Black national anthem' for Capitol Fourth celebration

quote:

---

American actress and vocalist Vanessa Williams will be performing the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” widely known as the Black National Anthem, while hosting PBS’s 41st annual “A Capitol Fourth” celebration, airing Sunday.

Williams in an interview with The Associated Press published Friday said that she will be singing the anthem as a way to promote Juneteenth during the show, which was prerecorded because of the pandemic but will have a live fireworks presentation.

“It’s in celebration of the wonderful opportunity that we now have to celebrate Juneteenth. So we are reflective of the times,” she said just weeks after President Biden signed into law an act designating June 19 as an official federal holiday.

---

quote:

---

In a statement on its website, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said the song “spoke to the history of the journey of African-Americans and for many Africans in the diaspora [who] struggled through to get to a place of hope.”

Williams told the AP this week that she hopes the hymn will bring a sense of celebration following her performance at last year’s Independence Day show, where she sang “Not While I’m Around” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd” to express what she was feeling as the mother of a Black son in the weeks following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

---