In “The Road,” Johnson merges nature, a cen-
tral recurring theme in her work, with her concern
about the oppression and struggles blacks face. Al-
though the road becomes a metaphor for the op-
pression blacks had suffered, the speaker demands
a proud response that registers action, determina-
tion, and even militancy, much like the speaker in
CLAUDE MCKAY’s “If We Must Die.”
Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,
Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,
Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you
down.
Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry! (25)Johnson’s “A Southern Road” offers a more
stark and indicting image—that of a lynched black
body:
A blue-fruited black gum,...
Bears a dangling figure—...
Swinging alone,
A solemn, tortured shadow in the air. (35)“What do I care for Morning” is representative
of Johnson’s nature poems. “What do I care for
morning, / For the glare of the rising sun, / For a
sparrow’s noisy prating, / For another day begun”
(42). In describing her mother, in “A Daughter
Reminisces,” the afterword of This Waiting for Love,
Abigail McGrath wrote, “Let us say that my mother,
the poet, was extremely eccentric. Even though she
had stopped writing poetry on a professional level
before I was born, she continued to live life with
the soul of a poet until she died” (125).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mitchell, Verner D., ed. This Waiting for Love: Helene
Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Wall, Cheryl A. “ ‘Chromatic Words’: The Poetry of
Helene Johnson.” In This Waiting for Love: Helene
Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by
Verner D. Mitchell, ix–xii. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Wilfred D. SamuelsJohnson, James Weldon (1871–1871)
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871, James Wel-
don Johnson was an educator, lawyer, diplomat,
writer, and activist. He is perhaps best known as
an exemplar of African-American professional
competency, artistic innovation, and political
leadership. His most widely read works include
the novel The AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED
MAN (1912); two major anthologies, The Book of
American Negro Poetry (1922) and The Books of
American Negro Spirituals (1925, 1926); a volume
of poetry, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons
in Verse (1927); a history, Black Manhattan (1930);
and an autobiography, Along This Way: The Auto-
biography of James Weldon Johnson (1933). He ad-
ditionally published many poems and authored
a range of articles, books, and reviews critiquing
the prevalent issues of his times. In his collabo-
rations with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson,
and Bob Cole, the trio composed more than 200
popular songs, librettos, and light operas, includ-
ing the hits “Nobody’s Lookin’ but de Owl and
de Moon” (1901) and “Under the Bamboo Tree”
(1902). James and Rosamond together composed
the Negro national anthem “Lift Every Voice and
Sing” in 1900. Johnson, who dedicated his life to
advancing the status of African Americans, was a
key designer of the New Negro Renaissance of the
1920s. Along with W. E. B. DUBOIS, he was one of
the period’s most articulate spokespersons, argu-
ing the interconnectedness between black art and
black politics.
Johnson was raised in Jacksonville, Florida, one
of the period’s most progressive cities. Johnson’s
mother, Helen Louise Johnson, a schoolteacher,
was originally from Nassau, Bahamas. His father
James, a Virginian, was the headwaiter at the St.
James hotel in Jacksonville. Helen and James se-
nior, both freeborn blacks, sheltered the young
James from the complications of racial identity in
the United States. When James was nine years old,
a preacher asked him what he wished to be when
he grew up, to which James confidently replied, “I
am going to be governor of Florida” (quoted in
Williams, ix). However, when working as a school-
teacher in the “backwoods of Georgia” he grasped
the divisive nature of American race relations.282 Johnson, James Weldon