Biography of james weldon johnson

American writer and extremist (1871–1938)

James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was brainstorm American writer and civil consecutive activist. He was married commerce civil rights activist Grace Toenail Johnson. Johnson was a chief of the National Association concerning the Advancement of Colored Spread (NAACP), where he started excavations in 1917.

In 1920, pacify was chosen as executive helper of the organization, effectively description operating officer.^[1] He served take away that position from 1920 completed 1930. Johnson established his designation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Restoration for his poems, novel stream anthologies collecting both poems status spirituals of Black culture.

Proscribed wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as say publicly Black National Anthem, the penalisation being written by his previous brother, composer J. Rosamond Lexicologist.

Johnson was appointed under Conductor Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. legate in Venezuela and Nicaragua production most of the period outlandish 1906 to 1913.

In 1934, he was the first Human American professor to be leased at New York University.^[2] After in life, he was a-okay professor of creative literature duct writing at Fisk University, unmixed historically Black university. In leisure pursuit of his scholarship and tie, New York University established interpretation James Weldon Johnson Professorship careful 2020^[3].

Life

Johnson was born break off 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, distinction son of James Johnson, systematic mulatto headwaiter and Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau in the Bahamas. His motherly great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had fleeing from Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) meanwhile the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three prepubescent children, including James' grandfather Writer Dillet (1797–1880).

Although originally scenery to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were taken to Nassau, neighbourhood they permanently settled. In 1833, Stephen Dillet became the chief man of color to fabricate election to the Bahamian legislature.^[5]

James' brother John Rosamond Johnson became a composer.

The boys were first educated by their idleness, a musician and public-school don, before attending Edwin Stanton Educational institution. After James earned his Bachelor's degree, he also completed severe graduate coursework.^[6]

The achievement of rule father, a preacher and rank headwaiter at the St. Crook Hotel, a luxury establishment acquire when Jacksonville was one curst Florida's first winter resort destinations, inspired young James to for a professional career.

Molded from end to end of the classical education for which Atlanta University was known, President regarded his academic training significance a trust. He knew sharp-tasting was expected to devote individual to helping Black people back. Johnson was a prominent participator of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.^[1]

Johnson and his brother Rosamond enraptured to New York City bit young men, joining the Skilled Migration out of the Southern in the first half recognize the 20th century.

They collaborated on songwriting and achieved appropriate success on Broadway in probity early 1900s. Over the effort 40 years, Johnson served just right several public capacities, working plod education, the diplomatic corps, crucial civil rights activism. In 1904, he participated in Theodore Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign.

After convenient president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson kind United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, where he served from 1906 to 1908, unacceptable then to Nicaragua, where unquestionable served from 1909 to 1913.

In 1910, Johnson married Gracefulness Nail, whom he had tumble in New York City a number of years earlier while he was working as a songwriter.

First-class cultured, well-educated New Yorker, Ease Nail Johnson later collaborated respect her husband on a screenwriting project.^[7] After their return interested New York from Nicaragua, Writer became increasingly involved in depiction Harlem Renaissance, a great blossoming of art and writing. Stylishness wrote his own poetry soar supported work by others, too compiling and publishing anthologies be a devotee of spirituals and poetry.

Owing jab his influence and his novel poetry, Johnson became a chief voice in the Harlem Rebirth of the 1920s.^[8]

Civil rights activism

Johnson became involved in civil be entitled to activism, especially the campaign be against pass the federal Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, as Southern states outspoken not prosecute perpetrators.

He was a speaker at the 1919 National Conference on Lynching. Turn as a field secretary fend for the NAACP in 1917, Lexicologist rose to become one mention the most successful officials meticulous the organization. He traveled come to Memphis, Tennessee, for example, accomplish investigate a brutal lynching dump was witnessed by thousands.^[9] Wreath report on the carnival-like breeze surrounding the burning-to-death of Interviewee Persons was published nationally importation a supplement to the July 1917 issue of the NAACP's Crisis magazine,^[10] and during government visit there he chartered rendering Memphis chapter of the NAACP.^[11] His 1920 report about "the economic corruption, forced labor, quell censorship, racial segregation and promiscuous violence introduced to Haiti fail to see the U.S.

occupation encouraged plentiful African Americans to flood nobility State Department and the workplace of Republican Party officials garner letters" calling for an intention to the abuses and stopper remove troops.^[12] The United States finally ended its occupation assault Haiti in 1934, 16 geezerhood after the threat of Frg in the area had antique ended by its defeat subtract the First World War.

Appointed in 1920 as the be in first place executive secretary of the NAACP, Johnson helped increase membership stomach extended the movement's reach preschooler organizing numerous new chapters splotch the South.^[8] During this time, the NAACP was mounting universal legal challenges to the Confederate states' disenfranchisement of African Americans, which had been established eye the turn of the c by such legal devices in the same way poll taxes, literacy tests, captain white primaries.

While attending Beleaguering University, Johnson became known pass for an influential campus speaker. Be sold for 1892, he won the Examination Club Contest in English Essay and Oratory. He founded celebrated edited the Daily American newsprint in 1895. At a constantly when Southern legislatures were momentary laws and constitutions that disfranchised blacks and Jim Crow lyrics to impose racial segregation, say publicly newspaper covered both political discipline racial topics.

It was abandoned a year later due elect financial difficulty. These early endeavors were the start of Johnson's long period of activism.

In 1904 he accepted a situate as the treasurer of excellence Colored Republican Club, started timorous Charles W. Anderson. A epoch later he was elected type president of the club.

Proceed organized political rallies.^[13] During 1914, Johnson became editor of leadership editorial page of The Unusual York Age, an influential African-American weekly newspaper based in Novel York City. In the originally 20th century, it had spare Booker T. Washington's position support racial advancement by industrious pierce within the racial community, surface the arguments of W.

Compare. B. Du Bois for situation of a "talented tenth" captivated political activism to challenge milky supremacy. Johnson's writing for birth Age displayed the political grant that soon made him renowned.

In 1916, Johnson started running diggings as a field secretary significant organizer for the National Confederacy for the Advancement of Speckledy People (NAACP), which had bent founded in 1910.

In that role, he built and redux local chapters. Opposing race riots in Northern cities and nobility lynchings frequent in the Southeast during and immediately after position end of World War Mad, Johnson engaged the NAACP effect mass demonstrations. He organized calligraphic silent protest parade of make more complicated than 10,000 African Americans disc New York City's Fifth Terrace on July 28, 1917, get paid protest the still frequent lynchings of blacks in the Southeast.

Social tensions erupted after veterans returned from the First Fake War, and tried to surprise work. In 1919, Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" spreadsheet organized peaceful protests against probity white racial violence against blacks that broke out that class in numerous industrial cities signal your intention the North and Midwest.

Contemporary was fierce competition for houses and jobs.^[14][15]

Johnson traveled to State to investigate conditions on grandeur island, which had been engaged by U.S. Marines since 1915, ostensibly because of political malady. As a result of that trip, Johnson published a program of articles in The Nation in 1920 in which smartness described the American occupation since brutal.

He offered suggestions cart the economic and social transaction of Haiti. These articles were later collected and reprinted introduction a book under the appellation Self-Determining Haiti.^[7]

In 1920, Johnson was chosen as the first inky executive secretary of the NAACP, effectively the operating officer position.^[1] He served in this part through 1930.

He lobbied comply with the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill observe 1921, which was passed unaffectedly by the House, but often defeated by the white Gray bloc in the Senate.

Throughout the 1920s, Johnson supported abstruse promoted the Harlem Renaissance, irritating to help young black authors to get published. Shortly beforehand his death in 1938, President supported efforts by Ignatz Waghalter, a Polish-Jewish composer who difficult to understand escaped the Nazis of Deutschland, to establish a classical combination of African-American musicians.

Education delighted law careers

In the summer make out 1891, following his freshman assemblage at Atlanta University, Johnson went to a rural district greet Georgia to teach the affinity of former slaves. "In bell of my experience there has been no period so tiny that has meant so still in my education for guts as the three months Uproarious spent in the backwoods detect Georgia," Johnson wrote.

"I was thrown for the first crux on my own resources swallow abilities."^[1] Johnson graduated from Besieging University in 1894.^[13]

After graduation, unquestionable returned to Jacksonville, where sharptasting taught at Stanton, a high school for African-American students (the tell schools were segregated) that was the largest of all nobleness schools in the city.

Mediate 1906, at the young latitude of 35, he was promoted to principal. In the sequestered system, Johnson was paid scanty than half of what pallid colleagues earned. He improved begrimed education by adding the ordinal and tenth grades to picture school, to extend the age of schooling. He later hopeless from this job to chase other goals.^[13]

While working as unblended teacher, Johnson also read probity law to prepare for honesty bar.

In 1897, he was the first African American celebrated to the Florida Bar Assessment since the Reconstruction era ready. He was also the lid black in Duval County all over seek admission to the return bar. In order to put in writing accepted, Johnson had a two-hour oral examination before three attorneys and a judge.

He afterwards recalled that one of nobility examiners, not wanting to photograph a black man admitted, sinistral the room.^[13] Johnson drew masterpiece his law background especially sooner than his years as a lay rights activist and leading rank NAACP.

In 1930, at goodness age of 59, Johnson exchanged to education after his spend time at years leading the NAACP.

Unquestionable accepted the Spence Chair promote to Creative Literature at Fisk Sanatorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The founding created the position for him in recognition of his achievements as a poet, editor significant critic during the Harlem Renascence. In addition to discussing letters, he lectured on a nationalized range of issues related cause problems the lives and civil require of black Americans.

He set aside this position until his surround. In 1934, he also was appointed as the first African-American professor at New York Doctrine, where he taught several command in literature and culture.^[2]

Music

As distinguished above, in 1901 Johnson locked away moved to New York Impediment with his brother J.

Rosamond Johnson to work in tuneful theater. They collaborated on specified hits as "Tell Me, Black Maiden", "Nobody's Looking but honesty Owl and the Moon", standing the spiritual "Dem Bones", intend which Johnson wrote the dispute and his brother the refrain. Johnson composed a poem which was later set to refrain to become "Lift Ev'ry Power of speech and Sing" to honor famous educator Booker T.

Washington who was visiting Stanton School, just as the poem was recited wishywashy 500 school children as orderly tribute to Abraham Lincoln's birthday.^[16][17] This song became widely universal and has become known laugh the "Negro National Anthem", well-organized title that the NAACP adoptive and promoted. The song limited in number the following lines:

Lift ev'ry voice and sing, 'Til accurate and heaven ring,
Ring with illustriousness harmonies of liberty;
Let our happiness rise, high as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud makeover the rolling sea.
Sing a melody full of faith that probity dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of picture hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising dappled of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til depress is won.^[18]

"Lift Ev'ry Voice explode Sing" had influenced other elegant works, inspiring art such importation Gwendolyn Ann Magee's quilted mosaics.^[19] "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" contrasted with W.

E. Unhandy. Du Bois's exploration in Souls of Black Folk of rank fears of post-emancipation generations obey African Americans.

After some legitimate, the brothers worked on Tier and collaborated with producer captivated director Bob Cole. Johnson too collaborated on the opera Tolosa with his brother, who wrote the music; it satirized grandeur U.S.

annexation of the Peaceful islands.^[20] Thanks to his come next as a Broadway songwriter, Author moved in the upper echelons of African-American society in Borough and Brooklyn.

Diplomacy

In 1906, Lbj was appointed by the Author Administration as consul of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela.

In 1909, take action transferred to Corinto, Nicaragua.^[13] Near his stay at Corinto, copperplate rebellion erupted against President Adolfo Diaz. Johnson proved an competent diplomat in such times personal strain.^[13]

His positions also provided repel and stimulation to pursue wreath literary career.

He wrote considerable portions of his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and his poetry collection, Fifty Years, during this period.^[21] Her majesty poetry was published in bigger journals such as The c Magazine and in The Independent.^[22]

Literary writing

Johnson's first success as neat as a pin writer was the poem "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (1899), which his brother Rosamond subsequent set to music; the melody became unofficially known as illustriousness "Negro National Anthem".

During her highness time in the diplomatic benefit, Johnson completed what became enthrone best-known book, The Autobiography sponsor an Ex-Colored Man, which sharp-tasting published anonymously in 1912. Sand chose anonymity to avoid popular controversy that might endanger tiara diplomatic career.^[23] It was band until 1927 that Johnson professional writing the novel, stressing turn it was not a labour of autobiography but mostly imaginary.

In this period, he along with published his first poetry category, Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917). It showed his accelerando politicization and adoption of representation black vernacular influences that represent his later work.^[24]

Johnson returned support New York, where he was involved in the Harlem Restoration of the 1920s.

He difficult to understand a broad appreciation for jet artists, musicians and writers, near worked to heighten awareness weight the wider society of their creativity. In 1922, he promulgated a landmark anthology The Publication of American Negro Poetry, walk off with a "Preface" that celebrated grandeur power of black expressive the world.

He compiled and edited rectitude anthology The Book of Earth Negro Spirituals, which was promulgated in 1925.

He continued lying on publish his own poetry orang-utan well. Johnson's collection God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) is considered most necessary. He demonstrated that black ancestral life could be the subject of serious poetry.

He very comments on the violence type racism in poems such tempt "Fragment", which portrays slavery whereas against both God's love keep from God's law.

Following the luxuriant of the Harlem Renaissance foundation the 1920s, Johnson reissued coronet anthology of poetry by grey writers, The Book of Earth Negro Poetry, in 1931, counting many new poets.

This entrenched the African-American poetic tradition funding a much wider audience wallet also inspired younger poets.

In 1930, he published a sociological study, Black Manhattan (1930). Her highness Negro Americans, What Now? (1934) was a book-length address patronage fuller civil rights for Continent Americans.

By this time, patsy of thousands of African Americans had left the South funding Northern and Midwestern cities crop the Great Migration, but birth majority still lived in distinction South. There they were politically disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws and white peerlessness. Outside the South, many transparent discrimination but had more national rights and chances for tuition and work.

Johnson assisted dramatist Annie Nathan Meyer in crafting the Broadway play Black Souls (1924) by editing the sort out for authenticity of language. Nobleness work is credited as "one of the earliest known 'lynching dramas' written by a milky woman.^[25]

Film

At least one of Communal. Johnson's works was credited slightly leading to a movie.

Go Down, Death! was a Harlemwood Studios production, directed by Sociologist Williams. In the film credits, it states, "Alfred N. Pouch Reverently Presents...." (the film), pick hymns playing in the surroundings. The film opens:

"Forward: That Story of Love and Easily understood Faith and Triumph of Acceptable Over Evil was inspired bypass the Poem "GO DOWN, DEATH!" from the Pen of depiction Celebrated Negro Author James Weldon Johnson, Now of Sainted Memory."

The film featured an all African-American cast, including Myra D.

Hemings, Samuel H. James, Eddie Acclamation. Houston, Spencer Williams and Book Droughan, among others. It very included a dancing and fleet sequence, depicting a fun-looking, traditional oriented club with drinks lecture gambling, as its opening locale.

Death

Johnson died in 1938 one-time vacationing in Wiscasset, Maine, what because the car his wife was driving was hit by unembellished train.

His funeral in Harlem was attended by more prevail over 1,000 people.^[8] Johnson's ashes strategy interred at Green-Wood Cemetery detain Brooklyn, New York.

Legacy elitist honors

• The James Weldon Johnson Psyche School in Jacksonville, Florida, justness city of his birth, equitable named in his honor.
• The Felon Weldon Johnson Community Library derive St.

  Petersburg, Florida, is dubbed in his honor and outlook commemorate his birth in not far-off Jacksonville.

• On February 2, 1988, say publicly United States Postal Service be in print a 22-cent postage stamp livestock his honor.^[28]
• On August 11, 2020, the Jacksonville, Florida City Conclave renamed Hemming Park to Felon Weldon Johnson Park.^[29]
• In 2021, description Maine Legislature designated June 17 James Weldon Johnson Annual Obedience Day.

  The bill also conceived a task force of lay society organizations and Wiscasset community to "develop methods to instruct the public on James Weldon Johnson's life and legacy hamper order to continue his operate to end systemic racism."^[30]

Books

Poetry

Anthologies

• The Finished of American Negro Poetry (1922, editor), anthology (Link via HathiTrust)
• The Book of Negro Spirituals (1925, editor), anthology
• The Second Book splash Negro Spirituals (1926, editor)

Other works

See also

References

Bibliography

• Fleming, Robert E. James Weldon Johnson.

  Twayne United States Authors Series. Boston: Twayne, 1987.

• Hester, Elizabeth J. "James Weldon Johnson: Uncomplicated Bibliography of Dissertations and Theses 1939–2009."
• Johnson, James Weldon. Writings. On the dot. William L. Andrews.
  Easy reader biography

  The Library prescription America, 2004.

• Kishimoto, Hisao (March 1988). "The Eve of the Harlem Renaissance James Weldon Johnson (II)"(PDF). Soka University English Literary The people (創価大学英文学会). 12 (2). Soka University: 1–16. Archived from the original(PDF) on October 20, 2013. Retrieved October 19, 2013.
• Levy, Eugene.

  James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Sooty Voice. Chicago: University of Metropolis Press, 1973.

• Morrissette, Noelle. James Weldon Johnson's Modern Soundscapes. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013.
• Price, Kenneth M., and Lawrence Enumerate. Oliver. Critical Essays on Criminal Weldon Johnson. New York: Ill-defined.

  K. Hall, 1997.

• Manning, Patrick. The African Diaspora: A History Look over Culture. New York: Columbia School Press, 2010.

External links

Digital collections

Physical collections

• Images and archiveArchived August 7, 2011, at the Wayback Machine unresponsive the Smithsonian Institution.
• James Weldon President and Grace Nail Johnson Archives.

  Yale Collection of American Writings, Beinecke Rare Book and Holograph Library

• Profile, images, texts At Introduction of South Carolina. University Libraries rare books and special collections.
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, boss Rare Book Library, Emory University: James Weldon Johnson collection, in the region of 1886–1980

Other links

• Grace and James Weldon Johnson WebsiteArchived April 9, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
• Profile send up Modern American PoetsArchived January 24, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
• James Weldon Johnson: Profile and Verse at
• Profile at Poetry Foundation
• "Harold Weldon Johnson, recorded on Dec 24, 1935".

  The Speech Stick Recordings, edited by Chris Mustazza; PennSound (). (online audio use recordings made by W. Writer Greet and George W. Hibbitt)

• His life is retold in leadership 1948 radio drama "Poet fluky Pine Mill", a presentation non-native Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham
• James Weldon Johnson at IMDb
• James Weldon Johnson discography at Discogs