James Weldon Johnson
I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.Collection: Death
The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.Collection: Learning
The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.Collection: Romantic
The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.Collection: Imagination
I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.Collection: Beauty
Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.Collection: God
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.Collection: Music
You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.
She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.
As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.
There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.
I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.
When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.
Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways.
Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys' choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed the singing very much.
Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race; through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation.
My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.
My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.
In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.
And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.
Americans are immensely popular in Paris; and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.Collection: Race
Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.Collection: Sea
This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.Collection: Country
It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.Collection: Black
The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.Collection: Country
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.Collection: Blood
A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.... No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.Collection: Art
Make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours. But to attempt to right the wrongs and cease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort.Collection: Effort
And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said: I'm lonely - I'll make me a world.Collection: Lonely
It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.Collection: People
When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.Collection: Differences
I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull; and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.Collection: Spring
Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.Collection: Music
...evil is a force and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it; we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and hit it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen of other formsCollection: Light
...one of the best things about running is that no matter how fast you've run in the past, running fast in the future does not come easily or with any guarantees.Collection: Running
This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.Collection: Baby
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.Collection: Music
In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.Collection: Memories
My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottageCollection: Dream