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James Weldon Johnson: Writings

door James Weldon Johnson

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James Weldon Johnson's career was one of extraordinary range, spanning the worlds of diplomacy (as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua), politics (as Secretary of the NAACP), journalism (as founder of one newspaper and longtime editor of another), musical theater (as lyricist for the Broadway songwriting team of Cole and Johnson Brothers), and literature (as novelist, poet, and anthologist). At the dawning of what would become the modern civil rights movement, he forged a record of accomplishment that defied the odds. The Library of America now presents a collection of his writings that displays the many facets of a complex and impassioned writer. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Johnson's first book, is a novel that on its original anonymous publication was taken by many for an actual memoir. A groundbreaking work of modern fiction, it powerfully describes the inner development of a gifted, socially alienated man as he tries to come to terms with the constraints of racism. Along This Way (1933) is Johnson's genial and enthralling account of his fantastically busy life, with a cast of characters including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Clarence Darrow, Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Van Vechten, and many others. A selection of shorter prose--editorials from The New York Age, political essays, literary prefaces, an excerpt from the historical study Black Manhattan--confirms the variety of Johnson's interests, as he comments on figures and topics including Jack Johnson, Marcus Garvey, Woodrow Wilson, lynching, anti-Japanese discrimination in California, American involvement in Haiti, changing trends in theater and poetry, and the significance of spirituals. Johnson's poetry is represented by the full text of God's Trombones (1927), his stirring homage to African-American preaching, and shorter works including "O Black and Unknown Bards," lyrics from Johnson's Broadway songwriting days, and "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the hymn often referred to as the "Negro National Anthem." LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.… (meer)
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Johnson was a poet, songwriter, novelist, essayist and diplomat. Ishmael Reed used bits of Johnson’s report on the 1915 U.S. invasion of Haiti to great effect in his collage-novel Mumbo Jumbo. Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900) was put to music by his brother and became the black national anthem. The 2004 Library of America edition of Johnson’s Writings includes The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), the memoir Along the Way (1933), editorials from The New York Age (1914-23), selections from the poetry collection God’s Trombones (1927), and excerpts from Black Manhattan (1930). Johnson was a forceful advocate for the recognition of black contributions to the culture of the United States, and represents a perspective on jazz from within the black arts community during the early part of the 20th century.

In one of the columns he wrote for The New York Age newspaper in 1915, Johnson reproduced a letter sent to The New York Globe by one Eugene De Bueris, which begins with a question: Why does society prefer the Negro musician? In his letter, De Bueris expresses consternation that New York hotels are beginning to favor Negro orchestras for their dance exhibitions.

How is it that the Negro so-called musician, who hasn’t the slightest conception of music, would be preferred over the Caucasian musician who has spent well nigh a fortune and engaged in numerous years of painstaking study?…It will not be long before the poor white musician will be obliged to blacken his face to make a livelihood or starve.

In his reply to the letter, Johnson writes that there are good and sufficient reasons why Negro musicians are preferred at social affairs. Modern music and modern dance are both Negro creations. Johnson acknowledges that white musicians can play as well as Negro musicians if the music is written down, but Negro musicians are able to put into the music something that cannot be put on paper—‘a certain abandon that enters the blood of the dancers.’ That, says Johnson, is the secret.

In his Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), Johnson affirms that Negro dance and music are the only artistic creations to spring from American soil and receive universal acclaim. Ragtime (‘the mother of jazz, not just its predecessor,’ according to Alain Locke) originated with Negro piano players in the ‘questionable’ resorts of St. Louis, Memphis and other Mississippi River towns before arriving in Chicago for its first popular hearing at the 1893 World’s Fair. The earliest ragtime songs—like the slave girl Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin—‘jes’ grew,’ writes Johnson. (Ishmael Reed adopted the phrase for the dancing plague in Mumbo Jumbo.) Johnson, with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, appropriated and rewrote ‘jes’ grew’ songs (‘many with unprintable words but irresistible melodies’) for the musical show stage in New York. Johnson credits W.C. Handy with injecting blues into ragtime, blending great melodic beauty with polyphonic structure. By way of affirmation, Johnson asks,

Does not ragtime — with its bizarre harmonies, intricate rhythms, and abrupt jumps from one key to another—express the blare and jangle and surge of our national spirit?

In his Preface to The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926), Johnson writes that Americans are just coming around to understanding that Negro folk-songs, sacred and secular, provide the basis for the distinct musical idiom by which America expresses itself. He says that jazz has reached a point of development where it is commanding the attention of scholarly musicians, who understand that the music is based upon rhythms and polyphonic structure used by Negro bands at the turn of the 20th c. The distinctive tone-color of the jazz orchestra (with ‘its peculiar power of excitation to motor response’) results from the combination of instruments—horn, banjo, drum—favored by Negro bands because they did not require long and arduous and expensive training under a master, but could be readily self-taught by anyone with a musical ear. From the natural creativity and adaptability of Negroes, then, jazz ‘jes’ grew.’

In “Race Prejudice and the Negro Artist” (Harper’s, 1928), Johnson suggested what he called ‘the art approach’ to the race problem—a demonstration of the intellectual and artistic achievements of Negroes that would place the Negro in an entirely new light before the American people. Negro poetry, theatre, novels, painting and sculpture received new attention in the early part of the 20th century, and though he disliked the term, Johnson was a powerful voice in publicizing the ‘renaissance’ in Negro arts. (He thought no ‘rebirth’ was necessary since black creativity had been long ongoing.) Johnson pointed out that the Negro’s folk-art creations (dance, folklore, sacred and secular music) had already become ‘part of our common cultural fund,’ even if Negroes did not receive proper recognition for their contributions. Black secular music especially—ragtime, blues, jazz—had been taken over and assimilated and was no longer racial, but national. Song and dance have for a long while been both a sword and shield for the Negro, wrote Johnson, but the Negro’s folk-art contributions to American culture over the course of almost 300 years were finally being acknowledged. Since WWI, the efforts of the race had been magnified by individual Negro artists, who bring something fresh and vital to American art from the store of their own racial genius: ‘warmth, color, movement, rhythm and abandon.’ For Johnson, the race problem had become more a question of national mental attitudes toward the Negro than a question of his actual condition, and nothing could do more to change that mental attitude and raise the Negro’s status than a demonstration of intellectual parity through the production of literature and art.

The stereotype that the Negro is nothing more than a beggar at the gate of the nation, waiting to be thrown the crumbs of civilization, is being smashed by the Negro’s artistic efforts; he is making it realized that he is the possessor of a wealth of natural endowments and that he has long been a generous giver to America. He is impressing upon the national mind the conviction that he is an active and important force in American life, a creator as well as a creature.
  JazzBookJournal | Feb 9, 2021 |
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James Weldon Johnson's career was one of extraordinary range, spanning the worlds of diplomacy (as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua), politics (as Secretary of the NAACP), journalism (as founder of one newspaper and longtime editor of another), musical theater (as lyricist for the Broadway songwriting team of Cole and Johnson Brothers), and literature (as novelist, poet, and anthologist). At the dawning of what would become the modern civil rights movement, he forged a record of accomplishment that defied the odds. The Library of America now presents a collection of his writings that displays the many facets of a complex and impassioned writer. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Johnson's first book, is a novel that on its original anonymous publication was taken by many for an actual memoir. A groundbreaking work of modern fiction, it powerfully describes the inner development of a gifted, socially alienated man as he tries to come to terms with the constraints of racism. Along This Way (1933) is Johnson's genial and enthralling account of his fantastically busy life, with a cast of characters including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Clarence Darrow, Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Van Vechten, and many others. A selection of shorter prose--editorials from The New York Age, political essays, literary prefaces, an excerpt from the historical study Black Manhattan--confirms the variety of Johnson's interests, as he comments on figures and topics including Jack Johnson, Marcus Garvey, Woodrow Wilson, lynching, anti-Japanese discrimination in California, American involvement in Haiti, changing trends in theater and poetry, and the significance of spirituals. Johnson's poetry is represented by the full text of God's Trombones (1927), his stirring homage to African-American preaching, and shorter works including "O Black and Unknown Bards," lyrics from Johnson's Broadway songwriting days, and "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the hymn often referred to as the "Negro National Anthem." LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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