Black History Month James Weldon Johnson

Continuing with the series on Black History Month I want to cover James Weldon Johnson a man  who would be a special man in the is History of the Black People.

James Weldon Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and James Johnson. James' maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including (James Weldon Johnson's grandfather), Stephen Dillet (1797-1880). Although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were brought to Nassau, Bahamas instead. There they permanently settled. Stephen Dillet was the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature in 1833.

James' brother was John Rosamond Johnson, who became a composer. The boys were first educated by their mother (a musician and a public school teacher) before attending Edwin M. Stanton School. His mother imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and the European tradition in music. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college, from which he graduated in 1894. In addition to his bachelor's degree, he also completed some graduate coursework.  During this time, he needed money so he taught at the black school in Stockbridge, GA.  While there he worked to instill in the people at Trinity Methodist Church what their Civil Rights meant to freed slaves.  He molded the very people who would teach Michael King, Sr. (Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.) about Civil Rights and the meaning of freedom. James was a young man with many talents who finished college by the age of 20.

The achievement of his father, headwaiter at the St. James Hotel, a luxury establishment built when Jacksonville was one of Florida's first winter havens, inspired young James to pursue a professional career. Molded by the classical education for which Atlanta University was best known, Johnson regarded his academic training as a trust. He knew he was expected to devote himself to helping black people advance. Johnson was a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men, joining the Great Migration out of the South in the first half of the 20th century. They collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s.
Johnson served in several public capacities over the next 40 years, working in education, the diplomatic corps, and civil rights activism. In 1904 he participated in Theodore Roosevelt’s successful presidential campaign. After becoming president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela from 1906 to 1908, and to Nicaragua from 1909 to 1913.
In 1910, Johnson married Grace Nail, whom he had met in New York City several years earlier while working as a songwriter. A cultured and well-educated New Yorker, Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwriting project.
After their return to New York from Nicaragua, Johnson became increasingly involved in the Harlem Renaissance, a great flourishing of art and writing. He wrote his own poetry and supported work by others, also compiling and publishing anthologies of spirituals and poetry. Owing to his influence and his innovative poetry, Johnson became a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
He became involved in civil rights activism, especially the campaign to pass federal legislation against lynching, as southern states seldom prosecuted perpetrators. Starting as a field secretary, he became one of the most successful officials in the NAACP; as executive secretary, he helped increase members and reach by organizing new chapters in the South. During this period, the NAACP was mounting frequent legal challenges to the southern states disfranchisement of African Americans at the turn of the century by such devices as poll tax, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries.
Johnson died in 1938 while vacationing in Wiscasset, Maine, when the car his wife was driving was hit by a train. His funeral in Harlem was attended by more than 2000 people. When Mr. Johnson died a great man with a great man died that day.  A man with a clear vision.  And part of his life was spent right here in Henry County, GA.