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James Weldon Johnson. Photo credit: Carl Van Vechten |
Excerpt from poem “50 Years (1863-1913)” by James Weldon Johnson:
O brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Just fifty years - a winter's day -
As runs the history of a race;
Yet, as we look back o'er the way,
How distant seems our starting place!
Look farther back! Three centuries!
To where a naked, shivering score,
Snatched from their haunts across the seas,
Stood, wild-eyed, on Virginia's shore.
This land is ours by right of birth,
This land is ours by right of toil;
We helped to turn its virgin earth,
Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Just fifty years - a winter's day -
As runs the history of a race;
Yet, as we look back o'er the way,
How distant seems our starting place!
Look farther back! Three centuries!
To where a naked, shivering score,
Snatched from their haunts across the seas,
Stood, wild-eyed, on Virginia's shore.
This land is ours by right of birth,
This land is ours by right of toil;
We helped to turn its virgin earth,
Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.
In 1916, Joel E. Spingarn offered him the post of field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. An effective organizer, he became general secretary of the NAACP in 1920. Though his duties prevented him from writing as much as he would have liked, he found time to assemble three ground-breaking anthologies: “The Book of American Negro Poetry”(1922), “The Book of American Negro Spirituals”(1925), and “The Second Book of Negro Spirituals”(1926)
His second collection of poetry, “God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse”, appeared in 1927 and marks his last significant creative endeavor. His administrative duties for the NAACP were proving strenuous, and, after taking a leave of absence in 1929, He resigned as general secretary in 1930. During his final years he wrote a history of black life in New York that focuses on the Harlem Renaissance entitled “Black Manhattan”(1930), his truly autobiographical “Along This Way”(1933), and “Negro Americans, What Now?”(1934), a book that argues for integration as the only viable solution to America's racial problems.
"Lift Every Voice" is known as the "black national anthem"; that the words to the song were written by James Weldon Johnson. He was the first African American lawyer in the state of Florida. He fought for anti-lynching laws as the executive director of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Johnson was "a Renaissance man." He was an artist, writer, and diplomat. He had great accomplishments as US consul in Venezuela and in Nicaragua. But he is best known for his poetry; his poetry reflects the religious fervor in African American culture. He tried to immortalize the sermon of an African American preacher, and was accused of hypocrisy for using religious themes in his poetry. But Johnson was an agnostic, "Lift Every Voice" was once seen as an unpatriotic and divisive song; but the song is now sung by school choirs and in churches. He made such a great contribution that the US Postal Service will issue a stamp in honor of him; the stamp includes musical notation from "Lift Every Voice.
Johnson died on 26 June 1938 near his summer home in Wiscasset, Maine, when the car in which he was driving was struck by a train. His funeral in Harlem was attended by more than two thousand people.
-James Weldon Johnson
Article written by:
Toney Lattimore
Toney Lattimore
University of Texas at Arlington
US History 1312
Feb 20, 2011
____________________________US History 1312
Feb 20, 2011
Interesting Links:
Works cited:
Source: http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-02865.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Wed Mar 21 11:29:47 2001 Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved
Harlem Renaissance: Developed by Jill Diesman of Northern Kentucky University, this site provides the text of seven Johnson poems: "O Black and Unknown Bards," "Fifty Years, 1863-1913," "The Creation," "The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face," "Sence You Went Away," "My City," and "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
