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James Weldon Johnson Quotes

James Weldon Johnson was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , where he started working in 1917. In 1920 he was the first African American to be 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, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture.

He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.

✵ 17. June 1871 – 26. June 1938
James Weldon Johnson photo

Works

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
James Weldon Johnson: 23   quotes 0   likes

Famous James Weldon Johnson Quotes

“Father, Father Abraham,
To-day look on us from above;
On us, the offspring of thy faith,
The children of thy Christ-like love.”

James Weldon Johnson

Father, Father Abraham, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

“Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”

James Weldon Johnson

Lift Every Voice and Sing, st. 1 (1900).

“So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Creation, st. 6.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

“This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Creation, st. 11.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

“And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
"I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world."”

James Weldon Johnson

The Creation, st. 1.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

“With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!”

James Weldon Johnson

The Creation, st. 10.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

James Weldon Johnson Quotes about beauty

“The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face, st. 1 (1917).

“The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

“O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?”

James Weldon Johnson

O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

James Weldon Johnson Quotes

“Whose starward eye
Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?”

James Weldon Johnson

O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 2.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

“Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.”

James Weldon Johnson book The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, ch. 10.

“And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—
"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."”

James Weldon Johnson

And the Greatest of These is War.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

War , Smile

“The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.”

James Weldon Johnson book The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, ch. 2 (1912).

People , Color , Understanding , Country

“How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?”

James Weldon Johnson

To America, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Star , Despair

“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.”

James Weldon Johnson

Black Manhattan, ch. 11 (1930).

Music

“Some men enjoy the constant strife
Of days with work and worry rife,
But that is not my dream of life:
I think such men are crazy.
For me, a life with worries few,
A job of nothing much to do,
Just pelf enough to see me through:
I fear that I am lazy.”

James Weldon Johnson

Lazy, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Life , Men , Fear , Dreams

“I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull;—and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.”

James Weldon Johnson

Brothers, st. 3.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Law , Spring , Nature , Evil

“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

Lift Every Voice and Sing, st. 2.

Way , Tear , Water

“Find Sister Caroline…
And she's tired—
She's weary—
Go down, Death, and bring her to me.”

James Weldon Johnson

Go Down, Death, st. 5.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

Death , Sister

“Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.”

James Weldon Johnson

Mother Night, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Sun , Night

“Young man—Young man—Your arm’s too short to box with God.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Prodigal Son.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

God , Box

“And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.”

James Weldon Johnson

The Creation, st. 7.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

God , Smile , Appearance

“You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,—but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.”

James Weldon Johnson

O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 6.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Heart , Christ

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