On Friday, Feb. 23, State High held its third-ever Lift Every Voice performance.
Lift Every Voice was first spearheaded by students Zaniyah Acevedo and Siehra Mansaray (Acevedo has since graduated while Mansaray is finishing her senior year at State High). Lift Every Voice is a cultural celebration event designed to bring awareness to the experiences of students of color through testimonials, poetry readings, spoken word, song, dance, and visual arts, while also celebrating the identities and culture of students at State High and Delta.
Original advisor for the event of Spring of 2022, Samantha Corza was working as the equity liaison in the office of equity and inclusion when Acevedo and Mansaray first brought this idea to her.
“There was a lot of unrest I would say within our student body and specifically with our students of color who were feeling at this point in time, particularly, misunderstood […] voiceless, and they really wanted to do something about it,” Corza said. “They really wanted to make sure that people knew what their experiences were, how they were feeling, how they’ve been impacted by different events in the school, and they weren’t quite sure how to do that.”
Corza then began brainstorming with Acevedo and Mansaray about an event that would give students a platform. Their goal was to give students opportunities to express their feelings and emotions they were unsure of how and where to do so.
“We wanted to make sure that there was a way that people would want to listen and would tune in and be engaged. So that’s when we started planning this event because many of the students who wanted to participate and wanted to share their experiences had a lot of different talents and we wanted to do it in different ways,” Corza said.
On Friday, throughout the day, students filled into the auditorium to watch this touching performance. The lights dimmed as Corza and Elisabeth James, a mental health clinician at State High, entered the stage. They welcomed everybody to the event and introduced Mansaray to open the performance.
As her third and final year performing, Mansary began a rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, often referred to as “The Black National Anthem” written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900.
“I would say my favorite aspect is what has to be behind the scenes with everyone. Just practicing, having a good time, vibing out and just meeting […] people who are like me, people of color.” Mansary said. “I feel like we really had more diversity and our cast and diversity in acts and everything. And I was just oh-so amazed and I wish that this wasn’t my last year.”
The performance included a wide variety of entertainment including an emotional dance, choreographed and performed by sophomore Lila Franklin along with her brother, senior Gyasi Franklin to Kendrick Lamar’s, “Count Me Out”.
“I basically was choreographing this dance for a while and I just took this as an opportunity to perform it.” Lila Franklin said. “I like how [Lift Every Voice] is something where people can just express themselves in ways that maybe they aren’t able to get across to a lot of people in the school, […] and you can [perform] in whatever way you want.”
Sophomore Jazlyn Myers was in the audience watching the first performance of the day. “I thought it was really great, a very moving [performance]. I thought everyone was very talented and I really enjoyed everyone’s talents. They were all so great. The speeches were very eye-opening for me,” Myers said.
Additionally, junior Victoria Castano saw the last performance of the day. “I thought the performance was like amazing,” Castano said. “My favorite part was Lila and [Gyasi] dancing. I think they just did a great job and I think everyone in general did so nice.”
On Sunday, Feb. 25, Mansaray and the other seniors in the show took their fi
nal bow for an emotional closing night for the community show performance. Mansaray on behalf of Lift Every Voice thanks all of those who were in attendance and appreciates all of those involved who contributed to make this event happen.
