February 9, 2025
‘Lift Every Voice And Sing’: Black National Anthem To Be Performed At Super Bowl In Front Of Trump
At this year's game, R&B singer and New Orleans native Ledisi will be performing the anthem.
In 2020, the National Football League began instituting the performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly referred to as the Black National Anthem, ahead of its football contests and that tradition will continue ahead of the Feb. 9 kickoff of Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans.
Although much has been made of the appearance of Donald Trump at this year’s Super Bowl, according to The Oklahoman, the league has made no plans to alter its newest tradition or its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to suit the whims of the Trump administration.
At this year’s game, R&B singer and New Orleans native Ledisi will be performing the anthem, which originated as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900.
Later, it was set to music by his brother, John Rosamund Johnson, and was first performed in public to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in February.
Later, the song was officially adopted by the NAACP and due to its themes invoking God and the promise of liberty, became a rallying cry of the organization during the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s.
According to Newsweek, Trump’s appearance at the game marks the first appearance at the game by a sitting president, and of course, the song’s presence at last year’s Super Bowl sent MAGA Republicans and other right-wing figures into a tailspin.
According to NBC News, some have already begun voicing their protests of the song on social media. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said in a post that the NFL’s choice to perform the Black National Anthem is divisive.
“America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple!? Do football, not wokeness,” Boebert complained in her post.
However, Gerald Early, a pop culture essayist who teaches in the African and African American studies department of St. Louis’ Washington University, indicated to the outlet that the song is an affirmation of Black Americans’ perseverance and inspiration.
“The performance of the song should be framed to the public not as a protest song but as a song of Black affirmation, perseverance and inspiration,” Early said. “It is unfortunate that the song’s performance has become a culture war issue. Feelings might be running a bit more strongly on this issue since Donald Trump won the election decisively and he has always been opposed to this sort of thing.”
The culture war Early references is, in no small part, pushed by figures like Trump and Boebert, who often attempt to simultaneously position sports as a sanctuary from political issues, while also leaning into the political aspect of sports.
To that end, sports is inherently political, as Dr. Harry Edwards, the creator of the field of sports sociology and the architect of the 1968 Olympics protest carried out by Tommie Smith and John Carlos often points out.
“Colin Kaepernick took a stand. And it was made crystal clear that there is a huge price to pay,” Edwards told CBS News.
In 2017, in the midst of Kaepernick’s protests against police brutality, which Edwards provided some counsel to the quarterback on, Trump infamously referred to Kaepernick without saying his name using inflammatory and derogatory language.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!” Trump said during a 2017 speech in Alabama.
Trump has yet to address the song being performed at the Super Bowl.
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