Truett Seminary will host the 2016 Pruit Symposium Lift Every Voice and Sing today and Friday. The two-day event will celebrate the heritage of black gospel music. Rev. Dr. Emmett G. Price III, an expert in African-American worship music, will be featured at the event.
“The Pruit Memorial Symposium is such a significant occasion for Baylor, and what better time to have it than during Black History Month,” said Pattie Orr, dean of libraries and vice president of information technology.
At 3:30 p.m. today in the Paul W. Powel Chapel of Truett Seminary, Baylor professors Dr. Coretta Pittman and Dr. Horace Maxile will join Price in a panel to discuss Music and Worship from Hallelujah to Hip-Hop, according to a university press release. The event will be moderated by professor of journalism, public relations and new media, Robert Darden.
Friday, Price will present Lift Every Voice and Sing”in the Paul W. Powel chapel. Joslyn Henderson, a first- year graduate student, will coordinate the music. The event will be followed by a complimentary lunch.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written by poet and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson and first performed at his home in 1900 to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
‘Lift Every Voice and Sing ‘is one of the most significant, most transformative pieces of music ever written,” Darden said.
The song was designated the “Black National Anthem” by the NAACP in 1919.
The event is free and open to the public. More information can be found online at www.baylor.edu/pruit.
