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    Fifty years & Other Poems
    Fifty years & Other Poems
    Fifty years & Other Poems
    Ebook151 pages58 minutes

    Fifty years & Other Poems

    By Brander Matthews and James Weldon Johnson

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1975
    Fifty years & Other Poems

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      Book preview

      Fifty years & Other Poems - Brander Matthews

      Project Gutenberg's Fifty years & Other Poems, by James Weldon Johnson

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Fifty years & Other Poems

      Author: James Weldon Johnson

      Commentator: Brander Matthews

      Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17884]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIFTY YEARS & OTHER POEMS ***

      Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the

      Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

      FIFTY YEARS & OTHER POEMS

      BY

      JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

      AUTHOR OF

      THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, ETC.

      With an Introduction by

      BRANDER MATTHEWS

      THE CORNHILL COMPANY

      BOSTON

      1917

      To

      G. N. F.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENT

      For permission to reprint certain poems in this book thanks are due to the editors and proprietors of the Century Magazine, the Independent, The Crisis, The New York Times, and the following copyright holders, G. Ricordi and Company, G. Schirmer and Company, and Joseph W. Stern and Company.

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      Of the hundred millions who make up the population of the United States ten millions come from a stock ethnically alien to the other ninety millions. They are not descended from ancestors who came here voluntarily, in the spirit of adventure to better themselves or in the spirit of devotion to make sure of freedom to worship God in their own way. They are the grandchildren of men and women brought here against their wills to serve as slaves. It is only half-a-century since they received their freedom and since they were at last permitted to own themselves. They are now American citizens, with the rights and the duties of other American citizens; and they know no language, no literature and no law other than those of their fellow citizens of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.

      When we take stock of ourselves these ten millions cannot be left out of account. Yet they are not as we are; they stand apart, more or less; they have their own distinct characteristics. It behooves us to understand them as best we can and to discover what manner of people they are. And we are justified in inquiring how far they have revealed themselves, their racial characteristics, their abiding traits, their longing aspirations,—how far have they disclosed these in one or another of the several arts. They have had their poets, their painters, their composers, and yet most of these have ignored their racial opportunity and have worked in imitation and in emulation of their white predecessors and contemporaries, content to handle again the traditional themes. The most important and the most significant contributions they have made to art are in music,—first in the plaintive beauty of the so-called Negro spirituals—and, secondly, in the syncopated melody of so-called ragtime which has now taken the whole world captive.

      In poetry, especially in the lyric, wherein the soul is free to find full expression for its innermost emotions, their attempts

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