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    Fifty Years & Other Poems
    Fifty Years & Other Poems
    Fifty Years & Other Poems
    Ebook107 pages31 minutes

    Fifty Years & Other Poems

    By James Weldon Johnson

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    James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an American author whose work extended into politics, poetry, journalism, teaching, music and civil rights activism. He is most famous for his book "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man", which he published anonymously in 1912. Johnson's works deal with issues of race, particularly slavery, lynching, black rights and interracial relationships. His first collection of poetry, "Fifty Years and Other Poems", was published in 1913 to mark the fifty-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The work was comprised of traditional and dialect poetry, and introduced arguments that would later be influential in the Civil Rights movement. The collection includes "Fifty Years," an homage to Abraham Lincoln, the protest poems "To America" and "Brothers," and a section entitled "Jingles and Croons" that touch on somewhat more temporal and humorous subjects, but continue to portray Johnson's serious, fervent beliefs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420941883
    Fifty Years & Other Poems
    Author

    James Weldon Johnson

    James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, 1871. He trained in music and in 1901 moved to New York with his brother John; together they wrote around two hundred songs for Broadway. His first book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published anonymously in 1912, was not a great success until he reissued it in his own name in 1927. In that time he established his reputation as a writer and became known in the Harlem Renaissance for his poems and for collating anthologies of poems by other black writers. Through his work as a civil rights activist he became the first executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as the first African American professor to be hired at New York University. He died in 1938.

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      Book preview

      Fifty Years & Other Poems - James Weldon Johnson

      FIFTY YEARS & OTHER POEMS

      BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

      AUTHOR OF

      THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, ETC.

      WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

      BRANDER MATTHEWS

      To

      G. N. F.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENT

      For permission to reprint certain poems in this book thanks are due to the editors and proprietors of the Century Magazine, the Independent, The Crisis, The New York Times, and the following copyright holders, G. Ricordi and Company, G. Schirmer and Company, and Joseph W. Stern and Company.

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4079-4

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4188-3

      This edition copyright © 2012

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      FIFTY YEARS & OTHER POEMS

      FIFTY YEARS

      TO AMERICA

      O BLACK AND UNKNOWN BARDS

      O SOUTHLAND!

      To HORACE BUMSTEAD

      THE COLOR SERGEANT

      THE BLACK MAMMY

      FATHER, FATHER ABRAHAM

      BROTHERS

      FRAGMENT

      THE WHITE WITCH

      MOTHER NIGHT

      THE YOUNG WARRIOR

      THE GLORY OF THE DAY WAS IN HER FACE

      SONNET

      FROM THE SPANISH

      FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND

      BEFORE A PAINTING

      I HEAR THE STARS STILL SINGING

      GIRL OF FIFTEEN

      THE SUICIDE

      DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA

      I. Sunrise in the Tropics

      II. Los Cigarillos

      III. Teestay

      V. The Dancing Girl

      VI. Sunset in the Tropics

      AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS WAR

      A MID-DAY DREAMER

      THE TEMPTRESS

      GHOSTS OF THE OLD YEAR

      THE GHOST OF DEACON BROWN

      LAZY

      OMAR

      DEEP IN THE QUIET WOOD

      VOLUPTAS

      THE WORD OF AN ENGINEER

      LIFE

      PRAYER AT SUNRISE

      THE GIFT TO SING

      MORNING, NOON AND NIGHT

      HER EYES TWIN POOLS

      THE AWAKENING

      BEAUTY THAT IS NEVER OLD

      VENUS IN A GARDEN

      VASHTI

      THE REWARD

      JINGLES & CROONS

      SENCE YOU WENT AWAY

      MA LADY'S LIPS AM LIKE DE HONEY

      TUNK

      NOBODY'S LOOKIN' BUT DE OWL AND DE MOON

      YOU'S SWEET TO YO' MAMMY JES DE SAME

      A PLANTATION BACCHANAL

      JULY IN GEORGY

      A BANJO SONG

      ANSWER TO PRAYER

      DAT GAL O' MINE

      THE SEASONS

      'POSSUM SONG

      BRER RABBIT, YOU'S DE CUTES' OF 'EM ALL

      AN EXPLANATION

      DE LITTLE PICKANINNY'S GONE TO SLEEP

      THE RIVALS

      INTRODUCTION

      Of the hundred millions who make up the population of the United States ten millions come from a stock ethnically alien to the other ninety millions. They are not descended from ancestors who came here voluntarily, in the spirit of adventure to better themselves or in the spirit of devotion to make sure of freedom to worship God in their own way. They are the grandchildren of men and women brought here against their wills to serve as slaves. It is only half-a-century since they received their freedom and since they were at last permitted to own themselves. They are now American citizens, with the rights and the duties of other American citizens; and they know no language, no literature and no law other than those of their fellow citizens of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.

      When we take stock of ourselves these ten millions cannot be left out of account. Yet they are not as we are; they stand apart, more or less; they have their own distinct characteristics. It behooves us to understand them as best we can and to discover what manner of people they are. And we are justified in inquiring how far they have revealed themselves, their racial characteristics, their abiding traits, their longing aspirations,—how far have they disclosed these in one or another of the several arts. They have had their poets, their painters, their composers, and yet most of these have ignored their racial opportunity and have worked in imitation and in emulation of their white predecessors and contemporaries, content to handle again the traditional themes. The most important and the most significant contributions they have made to art are in music,—first in the plaintive beauty of the so-called Negro spirituals—and, secondly, in the syncopated melody of so-called ragtime which has now taken the whole world captive.

      In poetry, especially in the lyric, wherein the soul is free to find full expression for its innermost emotions, their attempts have been, for the most part, divisible into two classes. In

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