Carrie Underwood - NFL National Anthem

The Man Behind the Anthem They Forgot You've sung "Lift Every Voice and Sing" thousands of times—the Black national anthem. But do you know James Weldon Johnson? Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1871, Johnson was a Renaissance man who changed history six times over. According to the NAACP and PBS, he wrote the anthem's lyrics in 1900 for 500 schoolchildren at a Lincoln birthday celebration—and those children spread it across the South, making it the hymn that defined a movement. But that's just