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6 unusual facts about James Weldon Johnson


Charles Lampkin

The centerpiece of the Charles Lampkin lecture platform was the Black American classic (whose status he helped secure) The Creation from the imaginative sermon series of James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones.

Lampkin introduced Oboler to The Creation by James Weldon Johnson and convinced him to include excerpts of it in the script of Five.

Ignatz Waghalter

He secured the interest and support of militant New York trade unions, the noted African-American musician Alfred Jack Thomas, and such prominent representatives of the Harlem Renaissance as James Weldon Johnson.

James Weldon Johnson

In this period, he also published his first poetry collection Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), which showed his increasing political stance and adoption of the black vernacular influences that characterize his later work.

Robert L. Hill

James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP secretary recommended that he join the Topeka branch.

Ruth Moore

In 1929 Moore accepted a position as Assistant Campaign Manager with the NAACP working directly for the organization's head James Weldon Johnson.


Anne Spencer

Also an activist for equality and educational opportunities for all, she hosted such dignitaries as Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Weldon Johnson, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Augusta Savage

Savage received a commission from the 1939 New York World's Fair; she created Lift Every Voice and Sing, inspired by the song by James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson.

Black No More

The novel is known not only for its satiric bite and inventive plot machinations, but also for the caricatures of prominent figures of the American 1920s including W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, C. J. Walker and others.

Dunbar Hotel

The Dunbar also became the place where African American political and intellectual leaders and writers, including Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Bunche, Thurgood Marshall and James Weldon Johnson, gathered.

Margaret Walker

In 1975, Walker released three albums of poetry on Folkways Records - Margaret Walker Alexander Reads Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes; Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes; and The Poetry of Margaret Walker.


see also

Lift Every Voice

"Lift Every Voice and Sing", a 1900 song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother Rosamond Johnson