About the Author

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. Among the first to break through the barriers segregating his race, he was educated at Atlanta University and at Columbia and was the first black admitted to the Florida bar. He was also, for a time, a songwriter in New York, American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, executive secretary of the NAACP, and professor of creative literature at Fisk University-experiences recorded in his autobiography, Along This Way. Other books by him include Saint Peter Relates an Incident, Black Manhattan, and God's Trombones- Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. In addition to his own writing, Johnson was the editor of pioneering anthologies of black American poetry and spirituals. He died in 1938.

Reviews

“The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man established James Weldon Johnson as the first truly modern black American novelist, while his Along This Way, published two decades later (in 1933), recounted his rich life as a diplomat, journalist, songwriter, and secretary to the NAACP. This collection of his writings, which includes both of those longer works plus several rare essays, poems, and songs, is yet another important volume in The Library of America series.” — Dallas Morning News