It’s me, it’s me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
It’s me, it’s me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.

It’s me, Carole Boston Weatherford, glowing with gratitude: to the ancestors for creating this powerful spiritual, to editor Sonali Fry for challenging me to make the lyrics my own, to Frank Morrison for another award-winning collaboration, and, last but not least, to the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards Committee for honoring Standing in the Need of Prayer.

Not my father, not my mother, but it’s me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
Not my father, not my mother, but it’s me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.

My parents taught me not only to pray but also to have faith. They helped me to believe in myself by encouraging me to pursue my interests and to push toward my potential. My parents also instilled in me a sense of history and a reverence for the past that have guided my literary career.

Perhaps my calling comes righteous. I am the granddaughter of a minister and the fourth great-granddaughter of an enslaved preacher who taught young Frederick Douglass to pray.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2023 BGHB Picture Book winners.]

When I write about the Black past, I do not merely document historical figures and events. I engage in conjure and conversations across time and space. Ancestral spirits beckon and beg me to channel their ­once-marginalized voices.

Born of oral traditions and distinguished by call-and-response, spirituals are the ideal medium to commune with the ancestors and to tap into their extraordinary faith. Rooted in ­enslavement and improvisational from their conception, spirituals invite subsequent generations to adapt and add to the traditional lyrics.

Thus, I felt empowered to join the chorus by contemporizing “Standing in the Need of Prayer” with verses chronicling African American history — from the Middle Passage to the Black Lives Matter movement.

It’s Africans enslaved and sold apart,
Standing in the need of prayer.
It’s runaways fleeing the yoke by dark,
Standing in the need of prayer.

It’s Black troops tearing down the color line,
Standing in the need of prayer.
It’s brilliance onstage about to shine,
Standing in the need of prayer.

It’s choirs that sing of justice that change will bring,
Standing in the need of prayer.
This land is both yours and mine, let freedom ring.
Standing in the need of prayer.

Somebody say, “Amen.”

From the January/February 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2023 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB23. Read more from The Horn Book by and about Carole Boston Weatherford.