James Weldon Johnson

photo from this site.

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) enjoyed a long and multifaceted career as essayist, critic, songwriter, poet, diplomat, attorney, educator and politician. In each of these capacities, Johnson dedicated his energies and passions toward the advancement of African Americans. Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida to parents of humble, yet noble vocations: his father worked as a headwaiter at the opulent St. James hotel; and his mother was the first female and black teacher at an elementary school in Florida. It was his mother who taught her son her love for music of the European tradition and English Literature (1). At the age of sixteen, Johnson became a student at Atlanta University. He graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1894, and later received an honorary MA from that institution. Johnson began a career in education with a teaching post at a rural, backwater Georgia school in which he taught the children of freed slaves. Later he continued at Stanton Preparatory College, eventually become its principal at the age of twenty-three. As principal, he broadened the curriculum with courses in English, Algebra, Spanish, and bookkeeping. Johnson left this post to pursue a law career, and passed the Florida Bar, becoming the first African American since Reconstruction to do so.

Perhaps one of the most striking characteristics of James Weldon Johnson's illustrious career as a member of the African American--and American intelligentsia, was the emphasis he placed on the folk.While still a young man, Johnson went to rural Georgia, where he made his first acquaintance with the children of former slaves. Gates, et al. quotes Johnson as he reflected on the experience, saying that "[i]n all my experience there has been no period so brief that has meant so much in my education for life as the three months I spent in the backwoods of Georgia...I was thrown  for the first time on my own resources and abilities. I had my first lesson in dealing with men and conditions in the outside world...It was this period that marked the beginning of my psychological change from boyhood to manhood. It was this period which marked also the beginning of my knowledge of my people as a 'race'" (qtd. in Gates 791). Such a stance would put Johnson at odds with at least one of the most outspoken cultural leaders philosophers of Africana during this period: W.E.B. Dubois.

By the turn of the last century, Johnson launched a career in activism first through publishing, and founded the newspaper The Daily American. Though the publication went bankrupt only a few years later, Johnson was undaunted. Johnson became the first African American organizer--and later, secretary--of the NAACP, and served as editor and anthologist during the Harlem Renaissance. In this latter capacity he was instrumental in undermining white publishing entities and bringing numerous African American artists and poets to national attention.

Johnson's own literary contributions during this time were generative, and today have been anthologized and studied widely. His collection, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, was published in 1922, honors the tradition set forth by the African American 'folk' preacher, and celebrates the unique poetry and art expressed through the sermon.

Respected actor and bass-baritone singer, the late William Warfield recites James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation":