Johnson photographed in 1932 by Carl Van Vechten. James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 - June 26, 1938) was an African-American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Clark Atlanta U
Johnson photographed in 1932 by Carl Van Vechten. James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 - June 26, 1938) was an African-American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college, from which he graduated in 1894. In 1897, he was the first African-American admitted to the Florida Bar Exam since Reconstruction. Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men, joining the Great Migration out of the South in the first half of the 20th century. They collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s. In 1906 he was appointed by the Roosevelt Administration as consul of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he transferred to Corinto, Nicaragua. He wrote substantial portions of his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and his poetry collection, Fifty Years, during this period. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917, being chosen as the first black executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. He was first known for his writing, which includes poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. Following the flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Johnson compiled an anthology of poetry by black writers, The Book of American Negro Poetry, published in 1931. This established the African-American poetic tradition for a much wider audience, also inspiring younger poets. In 1930, he published a sociological study, Black Manhattan. (1930) His Negro Americans, What Now? (1934), was a book-length address advocating fuller civil rights for African Americans. He died in 1938, at the age of 67, while vacationing in Maine, when the car he was driving was hit by a train.
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