As they finished, he later wrote, “I could not keep back the tears, and made no effort to do so. James Weldon Johnson had many careers, and each is worthy of its own story.Īs principal, he expanded the school to offer high school classes.Īs a poet, he commemorated what would’ve been the 91st birthday of Abraham Lincoln with his famous song, originally sung by his school children, with his brother writing the music. When James Weldon graduated from Atlanta University, he returned to Stanton, then perhaps the state’s largest school as well as its first school for black children, as principal. Johnson’s mother, meanwhile, found work teaching at the Stanton school, the first school for black children in the state. James Hotel, a luxury hotel downtown, and his job attracted high-class visitors to their home in LaVilla. How his father, inspired by an entrepreneurial spirit, moved the family to Jacksonville when he heard it would soon become a Northern vacation spot. How his mother and father, both born in freedom, left the United States during the Civil War for fear of what would happen if the South won. How his mother’s father was the first black man in the Bahamas to win election to the legislature. He also grew up hearing stories from his parents. James Weldon Johnson would later write about his childhood love of Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and Frederick Douglass. “’Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing’ is a reminder of the solidarity, commitment and community that African Americans forged to not merely survive in this nation, but to create beauty in the face of persistent injustice.”Ī constant in the Johnson home was literature and music. “Johnson’s lyrics told the story of Black life in terms that were epic, wrenching, and thunderous. Imani Perry is a Princeton University professor who wrote a book on the song, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem.” In a recent article on the online Crisis Magazine, the official publication of the NAACP, she explained the song’s power. It was an optimistic song, as seen in this lyric: Joseph Lowery began his benediction by quoting from the Johnson brothers’ song. It’s been covered and adapted by pop singers and jazz and gospel ensembles, and by artists from Ray Charles to Beyonce, who drew much attention after she sang a few lines during her headlining act at the Coachella Music Festival in 2018.Īnd at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, the Rev. It became a protest song, the sound of civil-rights gatherings. It became a childhood staple, sung in classrooms and at graduations. It began spreading, through songbooks and black civic voices. "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing“ was first performed by a choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School where James Weldon Johnson was principal. It depictss the Johnson brothers and displayed the song’s lyrics. 12, something that in its hometown was marked by an inaugural celebration called “120 Years of Lifting Our Voices,” a community singing of the words at the Ritz Theatre and Museum.Ī new 90-foot-long mural also was unveiled Tuesday at James Weldon Johnson College Preparatory Middle School. Together the brothers wrote one of the most significant songs of the last 150 years, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which would become adopted by the NAACP as its official song, hailed by many as the black national anthem and recited by black churches and schools across the country. He pushed against the stereotypical minstrel portrayals of black life to create more human portraits. His younger brother, John, was a musical prodigy who toured Europe, wrote songs for Broadway and vaudeville. James was the principal of the largest school in Florida, the first black lawyer in the state since Reconstruction, a diplomat, a poet, a political activist, a professor, the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a journalist who unleashed his sense of justice with satire and wit in an astonishing 2,000 editorials in a nine-year period. Philip Randolph and many others - perhaps none represented the city so much to a national audience as the Johnson brothers. While Jacksonville’s history is replete with African-American icons who shaped this country - T. Just west of downtown Jacksonville, in a cordoned-off corner of a grassy parking lot, signs mark the birthplace of two brothers: James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson.
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