A biography for James Weldon Johnsonhasn’t been written yet.
“The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.”
“As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.”
“You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.”
“The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.”
“Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.”
“I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.”
“But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.”
“I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.”
“She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.”
“My appearance was always good and my ability to play on the piano, especially ragtime, which was then at the height of its vogue, made me a welcome guest.”
“It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.”
“It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.”
“My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.”
“Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.”
“And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.”
“Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.”
“I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.”
“Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.”
“In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.”
“I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.”