The Power of Song

Each morning the students of Ricks Institute gather at the flag pole, standing in rank by class, for the start of a new day. At 7:30 the day is young and the promise of dawn is fresh. 

With the exception of the Pledge to the Flag of the Republic of Liberia—to which we will turn in a future post—the daily ceremony is sung. Every day six hundred or so voices fill the air with “the school ode!” as the leader of the ritual announces it. 

Most days the same choir successfully completes a rather difficult anthem, “All Hail, Liberia, Hail.” It is difficult because of the range required for voices of all ages. It is made more difficult by a dramatic pause mid-way through (sometimes I see the younger children counting to four to be sure not to jump in too soon).

A few days the fading dawn is greeted with “The Lone Star Forever,” with the memorable and apt words 

When freedom raised her glowing form
on Montserrado's verdant height,
She set within the doom of night,
'midst low’ring stars and thunderstorms
the star of liberty—and seizing from the waking morn,
its burnished shield of golden flame,
she lifted in her proud name
and raised a nation long forlorn
to noble destiny.

18th President of Liberia
1930-1944

The patriotic hymn was written by Edwin James Barclay (1882–1955), Liberia’s eighteenth President. His administration was born in scandal and rested in the glory of Liberia taking her place on the global stage with the Allies in World War II. The immediate predecessors (President C. D. B. King and Vice President Allen Yancey) of Barclay’s administration were swept away when their complicity in a later-day slave trade was exposed (King and Yancey allegedly benefited from corvée associated with the domestic workforce and outright slave trading with the Spanish). Secretary of State at the time, Barclay was selected to finish King’s term; he was elected in 1931.

Presidents Barclay and Roosevelt
in 1943

 During the fourteen years of his administration, Barclay restored international respect for Liberia, greatly improved the economy, and became a trusted ally of U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Barclay was instrumental in the construction of Robertsfield—with runways long enough to welcome Allied Forces planes; perhaps Barclay’s legacy is negotiating with Pan American Airlines to make Monrovia a destination for international travelers. In 1943 FDR visited Liberia en route to a summit in Morocco; later that year Barclay was welcomed in Washington, D. C. and was the first black person to stand at the rostrum in the U. S. Capital as an honored head of state.

Barclay’s patriotic hymn focused upon the dawn of Liberia in the 1820s, but the song’s power is in part that it also touches upon so many new dawns that Liberia has greeted in her troubled history.

 Each time I hear the Ricks students sing, “When freedom raised her glowing form on Montserrado's verdant height, she set within the doom of night, the star of liberty—and seizing from the waking morn, she lifted in her proud name and raised a nation long forlorn to noble destiny,” I rehearse the recent horrors of war and know, for sure, that the Ricks students understand “a nation long forlorn.”

Daniel Bashiel Warner
Liberia's 3rd President
1864-1868

Liberia’s third President, Daniel B. Warner [image] wrote “All Hail, Liberia, Hail.” It is a song that captures the Zeitgeist of mid-nineteenth century for the hope of the end of slavery and the greater hope of a land of freedom for “a race benighted race”: 

All Hail, Liberia, Hail!
All Hail, Liberia, Hail!
This glorious land of liberty shall long be ours.
Though new her name green be her fame
And mighty be her power
In joy and gladness with our hearts united
We'll shout the freedom of a race benighted
A home of glorious liberty by God's command. 

Liberia was the focus of hope for abolitionists, slaves in “the new world,” and free people of color for whom freedom already being compromised by political and economic realities in the Americas that were determined to establish a two-tiered society based upon race. And, for most of the hopeful, it was “God’s command” that would bring their hopes to fruition.

“And mighty be her power. And mighty be her power.”

In the midst of persistent challenges, Liberians hold to the claim that Liberia is blessed by Providence with “mighty . . . power.” When I hear the children sing those lines I know that they believe in the power (pun intended) of the song. I know it because, even in the midst of confusion and poverty and struggle, the children and their teachers and their public leaders refuse to capitulate to the despair that lurks in every shadow. 

All Hail, Liberia, Hail!
All Hail, Liberia, Hail!
In union strong, success is sure
We cannot fail
With God above our rights to prove
We will over all prevail
With hearts and hands, our country's cause defending
We'll meet the foe with valor unpretending.

 The theme of Providence appears, again: “With God above our rights to prove / We will over all prevail.”

 These same themes of hope and divine guidance permeate the Ricks Ode, too, written in the mid-twentieth century by Baromi Morris, well-known Liberian jurist and musician.

Stella Polaris, O, Ricks Institute,
Thy way to greatness and prosperity;
Ye we point to glorious Ricks for fame and victory.
With God before us, success we are sure,
Upward and forward the victor we go;
Therefore with uplifted eyes
We are sure to win the prize.

On the days when the students sing the Ricks Ode and The Lone Star Forever, I am always struck by how the songs carry the singers and listeners from the dark of night—the invocation of the North Star in the Ode—to the dawn of perpetual new days—“and seizing from the waking morn' . . . [Freedom] lifted in her proud name and raised a nation long forlorn to noble destiny” from Lone Star.

Taken together, these three songs have a power that, I hope, will sustain the students, faculty at Ricks, and any other who has the opportunity to be present for the morning flag ceremony.