The Poetry of James Weldon Johnson: A hugely influential black writer that spearheaded the Harlem Renaissance

Written by James Weldon Johnson

Narrated by Danny Swopes, Richard Mitchley and Ghizela Rowe

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida on June 17th 1871. His mother, Helen, a musician and a public school teacher initially home-schooled him giving him a love of both English literature and European music.

At 16 his education moved to Atlanta University and he graduated with a degree in 1894.

In 1904 Johnson helped in Theodore Roosevelt's presidential bid. On winning Roosevelt appointed him as US consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela in 1906 and then Nicaragua from 1909.

Johnson worked for the NAACP from 1916 as a field secretary, organizing local chapters. To counter race riots and lynching’s he organized mass demonstrations, such as a silent protest parade of over ten thousand African Americans down New York’s Fifth Avenue in July 1917.

In 1920 Johnson was elected to manage the NAACP, the first African American to hold this position. That same year he was dispatched to monitor conditions in Haiti and described in The Nation the brutal occupation and also offered remedies. During the 1920’s he was one of the major inspirations of the Harlem Renaissance

In the midst of all this he continued to write novels, poems, and folklore. In 1917, he saw published ‘50 Years and Other Poems’. In 1922, he edited ‘The Book of American Negro Poetry’, which the Academy of American Poets calls "a major contribution to the history of African-American literature." In 1927 followed ‘God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse’.

One of the first African-American professors at NYU he was also, later, a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University. His career spanned several elements; education, the diplomatic corps, civil rights activism, literature, poetry, and music.

James Weldon Johnson died on June 26th, 1938 whilst vacationing in Wiscasset, Maine when his car was hit by a train.

01 - The Poetry of James Weldon Johnson

02 - Mother Night by James Weldon Johnson

03 - Brothers. American Drama by James Weldon Johnson

04 - A Poet to His Baby Son by James Weldon Johnson

05 - O Black and Unknown Bards by James Weldon Johnson

06 - Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson

07 - I Hear the Stars Still Singing by James Weldon Johnson

08 - A Mid-Day Dreamer by James Weldon Johnson

09 - Morning, Noon and Night by James Weldon Johnson

10 - The Temptress by James Weldon Johnson

11 - Venus in the Garden by James Weldon Johnson

12 - The White Witch by James Weldon Johnson

13 - Beauty That Is Never Old by James Weldon Johnson

14 - Before A Painting by James Weldon Johnson

15 - The Awakening by James Weldon Johnson

16 - The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face by James Weldon Johnson

17 - Her Eyes, Twin Pools by James Weldon Johnson

18 - Down By The Carib Sea by James Weldon Johnson

19 - Deep in the Quiet Wood by James Weldon Johnson

20 - O Southland by James Weldon Johnson

21 - Fifty Years (1863 - 1913) by James Weldon Johnson

22 - The Suicide by James Weldon Johnson

23 - And the Greatest of These Is War by James Weldon Johnson

25 - Sonnet by James Weldon Johnson

26 - To America by James Weldon Johnson

27 - Life by James Weldon Johnson

28 - Ghosts of the Old Year by James Weldon Johnson

29 - Lazy by James Weldon Johnson

30 - The Word of an Engineer by James Weldon Johnson

31 - The Creation by James Weldon Johnson

32 - Prayer At Sunrise by James Weldon Johnson

33 - Listen Lord, A Prayer by James Weldon Johnson

34 - The Reward by James Weldon Johnson

35 - Sleep by James Weldon Johnson

36 - Go Down Death by James Weldon Johnson

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839674877

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, 1871. He trained in music and in 1901 moved to New York with his brother John; together they wrote around two hundred songs for Broadway. His first book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously in 1912, was not a great success until he reissued it in his own name in 1927. In that time he established his reputation as a writer and became known in the Harlem Renaissance for his poems and for collating anthologies of poems by other black writers. Through his work as a civil rights activist he became the first executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as the first African American professor to be hired at New York University. He died in 1938.