James Weldon Johnson :: Essays Papers

crowd together Weldon Johnson(1871 - 1938)James Weldon Johnson was born on June 17, 1871 in Jacksonville, Fla. He is best known as being a poet, composor, diplomat, and anthologist of black culture.James was trained in music and other subjects by his mother, a schoolteacher. Johnson gradatory from Atlanta University with A.B. in 1894. He subsequently obtained a M.A. in 1904 darn studing at Columbia. For several years he was principal of the black uplifted school in Jacksonville, Fla. He read law at the kindred time, and was admitted to the Florida bar in 1897, and began practicing there. During this stop, he and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), a composer, began writing songs. In 1901 the two went to New York, where they wrote some 200 songs for the Broadway musical stage.In 1906 president Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and in 1909 he became consul in Corinto, Nicaragua, where he served until 1914. He later taught at Fi sk University. Meanwhile, he began writing a novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (published anonymously, 1912), which attracted unforesightful attention until it was reissued under his own name in 1927. From 1916 Johnson was a drawing card in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP). It was during this time period when James became a distinguished member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. join fellow members of the time like George Washington Carver.One of his most celebrated poems was Lift Every Voice and Sing. His brother later added music to the poem. It is considered to be the unofficial Negro National Anthem. It was a bold hang on of work that spoke of the struggle of the African the Statesn in America and his optimistic hope for a better future.Some of his other kit and boodle include Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) which was followed by his pioneering anthology Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) and books of American Negro Spirit uals (1925, 1926), collaborations with his brother.