James Weldon Johnson Quotes
Lift Every Voice and Sing
It was referred to as the author as the “Negro National Hymn,” and adopted by the NAACP as its official song. Many erroneously believe that the song was an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, but it was commonly sung by Blacks, especially throughout the South even shortly after it was written. Many whites began to hear it during the Civil Rights Movement.
James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938, U. S. Counsel in Venezuela and Nicaragua, Educator and Songwriter, Executive Secretary, NAACP, Title of Song which has become and is referred to as the Negro National Anthem, 1900
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The Secretary of State told the President he was resigning to save the administration possible embarrassment over his daughter's planned marriage to a black man:
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Freedom Rides were interracial groups of Civil Rights advocates who boarded public interstate busses in Washington and rode South through some of the most segregated communities in the country. As the bus stopped at the segregated rest stops, the Black Freedom Riders would use the “white” waiting rooms, toilets, and other facilities which was against the local custom and law. Racist segregationists often brutalized and assaulted the Freedom riders whose leaders demanded Federal Protection. The Attorney General and others were trying to get the local politicians and law enforcement officials to protect the Freedom Riders, but often these were the worst of the racist segregationists. Kennedy thought if he could have a “cooling off period” for a few days, he could persuade the locals to protect the Freedom Riders from the mobs with the threat of sending Federal Marshalls or troops for the protection. So he asked Farmer and other Freedom Ride organizers to stop the Freedom Rides for a few days. This was Farmer’s famous response. The Freedom Rides continued and forced the Federal Government to respond on a timetable they did not prefer.
Note the early use of the term “March on Washington.” See {625658}.
Blacks were fighting and dying in WWII. They were equal when they were under fire, but otherwise not. The war was against fascist protagonists whose creed was inequality while the allies were upholding freedom and equality. But making that aspiration a reality was difficult.
This painting depicted a young black girl walking to school surrounded by 4 U. S. Marshalls protecting her from the crowd of white racists trying to prevent her from attending an elementary school under court order. The vicious race hatred that school integration revealed was the national problem that was then surfacing. The graphic is the illustration that appeared in Look with that name.
The March had begun in Selma with 600 marchers who were brutally beaten and harassed along the way. This brought clergy and lay people from the country over to join the protest march and when King gave the speech the marchers had swelled to 25,000.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem.
