James Weldon Johnson, Writer and Poet:

Author of "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

The Negro National Anthem

born in Jacksonville,

Florida, where he attended the

Public Schools. In 1894 he grad

uated from Atlanta University,

with the degree of A. B., and he

received the degree of A. M. from

the same University in 1904. Mr.

Johnson also spent three years in post graduate

work at Columbia University, in the City of New

York. In 1917, the honorary degree of Litt. D.,

was conferred upon him by the Talladega College,

Talladega, Alabama.

For several years, Mr. Johnson was princi-

pal of the Colored high school at Jacksonville. He

was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1897, and prac

ticed law in Jacksonville until 1901, when he re

moved to New York to collaborate with his bro

ther, J. Rosamond Johnson, in writing for the light

opera stage.

In 1906, he was appointed United States Consul

at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, being transferred as

Consul to Corinto, Nicaragua, in 1909, and to the

Azores in 1912. While in Corinto, he looked after

the interests of his country during the stormy days

of revolution which resulted in the downfall of

Zelaya, and through the abortive revolution against

Diaz.

His knowledge of Spanish has been put to use

in the translation of a number of Spanish plays. He

was the translator for the English libretto of "Goy-

escas," the Spanish grand opera produced by the

Metropolitan Opera Company in 1915. Mr. Johnson

also has several French translations to his credit.

Mr. Johnson is well known throughout the coun

try as the Contributing Editor of the New York

Age. He added to his distinction as a newspaper

writer by winning in an editorial contest, one of

three prizes offered by the Philadelphia Public

Ledger, in 1916.

During the fall of 1916 Mr. Johnson went on a

six weeks mission throughout the South, when he

interviewed the editors of the leading white news

papers and talked with them regarding the atti

tude they should take on the exodus of Negro la

bor, which was then reaching its height, and upon

the whole Negro question.

Mr. Johnson contributes to various magazines

and periodicals. His poems have appeared in the

Century, the Independent, the Crisis and other pub

lications. He is the author of a novel, "The Auto

biography of an Ex-Colored Man," and a volume

of poems, "Fifty Years and Other Poems." He is

a member of the American Society of Authors and

Composers, the American Sociological Society, and

of the Civic Club of New York, and is the Field Se

cretary of the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People.

It is as a writer that Mr. Johnson is best known.

His novel, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored

Man" aroused considerable comment, and his re

cent volume of poems, "Fifty Years and Other

Poems" has been favorably reviewed by a num

ber of the best critics of the country Professor

Branden Matthews, of Columbia University, in his

introduction which he wrote for the book, says of

Mr. Johnson and his work, "But where he shows

himself a pioneer is in the half-dozen larger and

bolder poems, of a loftier strain, in which he has

been -nobly successful in expressing amply the

higher aspirations of his own people. It is in ut

tering this cry for recognition, for sympathy, for

understanding, and, above all, for justice, that Mr.

Johnson is most original and most powerful."

Mr. Elias Lieberman, in the American Hebrew,

says of him, "James Weldon Johnson is not only

versatile but more than that sincere. He has con

tinued to do for the Negro race what Paul Law

rence Dunbar began so inimitably. He has thrown

the illuminating light of interpretation upon lives

which for so many of us are puzzles."

The following was taken from a tribute to him

in the Boston Evening Transcript :

"And in other verses that strike a universal note

there is more often both felicity of conception and

expression. Particular reference should be made

to .Mr. Johnson's poem, "The Young Warrior,"

which, set to music by Mr. Harry T. Burleigh, has

been sung throughout Italy as a martial song in

spiring the Italian soldier on his way to the front.

The pieces in Negro dialect are characteristic of

work of this kind and Mr .Johnson's possesses the

usual intensity of pathos and the usual humorous

abandon. One notes particularly, however, in the

dialect verses in this volume, the absence of

coarseness, of crudity, in the humor which has

more or less pervaded the racial writers of dialect

since Dunbar. Mr. Johnson, if he has done noth

ing else to enhance the value of this kind of speech

in verse, has given it a quality of refinement." 

See also (Excerpt from: Essay on the Negro's Creative Genius)