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— James Weldon Johnson
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JW
James Weldon Johnson
writer, poet, novelist, songwriter, composer, diplomat, lawyer, politician, jurist
1871 – 1938
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
All Quotes by James Weldon Johnson
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Lift every voice and singLet it resound loud as the rolling sea.
— James Weldon Johnson
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We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
— James Weldon Johnson
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The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.
— James Weldon Johnson
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The glory of the day was in her face,The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
— James Weldon Johnson
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It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.
— James Weldon Johnson
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How would you have us, as we are?Or gazing empty at despair?
— James Weldon Johnson
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O black and unknown bards of long ago,The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?
— James Weldon Johnson
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Whose starward eye“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?
— James Weldon Johnson
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You sang far better than you knew; the songsYou sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Father, Father Abraham,The children of thy Christ-like love.
— James Weldon Johnson
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I am a thing not new, I am as oldOf evil forces and the powers of wrong.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Eternities before the first-born day,A brooding mother over chaos lay.
— James Weldon Johnson
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The glory of the day was in her face,Of Morning blushing in the early skies.
— James Weldon Johnson
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And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."
— James Weldon Johnson
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Some men enjoy the constant strifeI fear that I am lazy.
— James Weldon Johnson
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And God stepped out on space,I'll make me a world."
— James Weldon Johnson
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So God stepped over to the edge of the worldThe cooling waters came down.
— James Weldon Johnson
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And God smiled again,And curled itself around his shoulder.
— James Weldon Johnson
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With his head in his hands,Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
— James Weldon Johnson
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This Great God,Till He shaped it in His own image.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Find Sister Caroline...Go down, Death, and bring her to me.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Young man—Young man—Your arm’s too short to box with God.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.
— James Weldon Johnson
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Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.
— James Weldon Johnson