the course of African-American cultural produc-
tion, citing dance steps, such as the “cakewalk” and
the “shimmy”; music, like spirituals, ragtime, and
the BLUES; and poetry, from the 18th-century slave
poet Phillis Wheatley to writers of his own time—
PAU L LAURENCE DUNBAR, CLAUDE MCKAY, John W.
Holloway, and JESSIE FAUSET, to name a few. He
emphasized the artistic quality of the work, as
“nothing will do more to change that mental atti-
tude [racism] and raise [the Negro’s] status than a
demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro
through the production of literature and art” (vii).
He argued that “dialect” poetry was no longer a
viable poetic form; it had, for too long, been as-
sociated with weak-minded sentimental tales and
racist propaganda. “Traditional Negro dialect as a
form for Aframerican poets,” he wrote later, “is ab-
solutely dead” (God’s Trombones, 8). His preface to
The Book of American Negro Poetry contains a pas-
sage that outlines his vision of African-American
poetry, which can be applied to other artistic and
social forms as well:
What the colored poet in the United States
needs to do is something like what Synge did
for the Irish; he needs to find a form that will
express the racial spirit by symbols from within
rather than by symbols from without—such as
the mere mutilation of English spelling and
pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer
and larger than dialect, but which will still hold
the racial flavor; a form expressing the imagery,
the idioms, the peculiar turns of thought and
the distinctive humor and pathos, too, of the
Negro, but which will also be capable of voic-
ing the deepest and highest emotions and aspi-
rations and allow the widest range of subjects
and the widest scope of treatment. (xl–xli)Along with these collections, he produced God’s
Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927), a
book of poetry inspired by black preachers he had
heard over the years. Despite his secular beliefs,
Johnson found in Negro sermons a folk tradition
that rivaled the already well-documented African-
American traditions, such as spirituals, plantation
tales, and dance steps. One evening in Kansas City,
he witnessed a powerful preacher move his audi-
ence with a voice “not of an organ or a trumpet,
but rather of a trombone, the instrument possess-
ing above all others the power to express the wide
and varied range of emotions encompassed by the
human voice” (God’s Trombones, 7). Before the
preacher concluded his sermon, Johnson had al-
ready begun to compose his poem, “The Creation,”
which was later included in God’s Trombones. This
volume succeeds in capturing the cadence and
rhetorical flourish of Negro preaching, though he
admits his poetry leaves out the most important
elements of the experience—namely, the reactions
of the congregation and the preachers’ irresistible
intonations (God’s Trombones, 10).
In 1930, Johnson published a history of blacks
in New York from the colonial period to the Har-
lem Renaissance titled Black Manhattan, which
remains a nearly definitive reference guide on the
subject. The same year that Black Manhattan ap-
peared, he was awarded the Adam K. Spence Chair
of Creative Literature and Writing at Fisk Univer-
sity in Nashville, Tennessee, a position that was
created specifically for him and that he held until
his death in 1938. His last great book, Along This
Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson,
is not only a major autobiographical achievement
but also an important resource for understanding
American cultural history from 1870 to 1930. The
frantic pace of his career was punctuated by enor-
mous artistic and political successes. Johnson’s
last words in Along This Way reflect the breadth
and depth of his life’s work, from his experiences
as an educator, diplomat, intellectual, and artist,
to his pragmatic approach to spirituality: “each
day, if [man] would not be lost, he must with re-
newed courage take a fresh hold on life and face
with fortitude the turns of circumstance. To do
this, he needs to be able at times to touch God;
let the idea of God mean to him whatever it may”
(414). The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Col-
lection of Negro Arts and Letters, a vital collection
of letters, manuscripts, and memorabilia pertain-
ing to African-American life, now resides at Yale
University.284 Johnson, James Weldon