JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
1871-1938

In 1900, he wrote the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on the occasion of Lincoln's birthday; the song which became immensely popular in the black community and became known as the "Negro National Anthem." Johnson moved to New York in 1901 to collaborate with his brother Rosamond, a composer, and attained some success as a songwriter for Broadway, but decided to take a job as U.S. Consul to Venezuela in 1906. While employed by the diplomatic corps, Johnson had poems published in the Century Magazine and The Independent.

In 1912, Johnson published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man under a pseudonym, the story of a musician who rejects his black roots for a life of material comfort in the white world. The novel explores the issue of racial identity in the twentieth century, a common theme in the writing of the Harlem Renaissance.

He had a talent for persuading people of differing ideological agendas to work together for a common goal, and in 1920 he became the national organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He edited The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), a major contribution to the history of African-American literature. His book of poetry God's Trombones (1927) was influenced by his impressions of the rural South, drawn from a trip he took to Georgia while a freshman in college. It was this trip that ignited his interest in the African-American folk tradition.

James Weldon Johnson died in 1938.

photo: Carl Van Vechten

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Fifty Years and Other Poems, 1917
Self-Determining Haiti, 1920
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, 1927
Saint Peter Relates an Incident, 1935
Selected Poems, 1936

Prose

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912
Black Manhattan, 1930
Along This Way, 1934
Negro Americans, What Now?, 1934
The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson, 1995