James Weldon Johnson

The poem below was written by the author above. A leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson was a creative jack-of-all-trades, mastering most. Celebrated for his songwriting, which he got into after giving up a successful law practice, he was at times a lyricist, journalist, novelist, autobiographer, activist, in addition to being a lawyer, songwriter, poet, and, late in life, professor.

I came upon the man or at least a collection of his poems at the bottom of rather dismal stack of textbooks on the psychology of welding or similar nonsense, at the recent USC Bookstore firesale. For pennies on the dollar, I'm the proud owner of Saint Peter Relates an Incident, among many other books. I don't quite heartily recommend Johnson's poems, but I've found more than enough gems in his largely rhyming verse to satisfy me of the wisdom of my purchase and my instincts. More importantly, though, while trying to determine who Johnson actually was, I spent hours learning about the turn of the century from a perspective I'd never encountered before. Such are the opportunities to discover so readily proffered by life.