James Weldon Johnson

Johnson, James Weldon 

Born June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville; died June 26, 1938, in Maine. American Negro writer, cultural historian, and public figure.

Johnson, a teacher, lawyer, and professor of literature at Fisk and New York universities, served as the United States consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua and was an organizer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He is the author of songs and musical comedies (with his composer brother), the collection of verses Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), the novel Autobiography of an Excoloured Man (1912), and books on the history of Negro culture (for example, Black Manhattan, 1930). Johnson also compiled anthologies of Negro poetry and folklore. In the 1920’s he came forth as a theoretician of the so-called Negro Renaissance, issuing an appeal to Negroes to create artistic works free of racial or national character.

WORKS

The Book of American Negro Poetry. New York, 1922.
The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York, 1925.
Along This Way. New York, 1933.
Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems. New York, 1935.

REFERENCE

Bekker, M. I. Progressivnaia negritianskaia literatura SSHA. Leningrad, 1957.