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James Weldon Johnson Curtis Harris June 3, 2015

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Autobiographical Johnson published hundreds of stories and poems during his lifetime. He also produced works such as God's Trombones (1927), a collection that celebrates the African-American experience in the rural South and elsewhere, and the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) making him the first black-American author to treat Harlem and Atlanta as subjects in fiction. Based, in part, on Johnson's own life, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was published anonymously in 1912, but did not attract attention until Johnson re-issued it under his own name in 1927.

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General career facts S ongwriter, poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and autobiographer. James Weldon Johnson, much like his contemporary W. E. B. Du Bois, was a man who bridged several historical and literary trends. Born in 1871, during the optimism of the Reconstruction period, in Jacksonville, Florida, Johnson was imbued with an eclectic set of talents. Over the course of his sixty-seven years, Johnson was the first African American admitted to the Florida bar since the end of Reconstruction; the co-composer (with his brother John Rosamond) of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' the song that would later become known as the Negro National Anthem; field secretary in the NAACP; journalist; publisher; diplomat; educator; translator; librettist; anthologist; and English professor; in addition to being a well-known poet and novelist and one of the prime movers of the Harlem Renaissance.

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One spcific work: lift everyvoice and sing

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Renaissance link 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 (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first black 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.

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