“How would you have us, as we are?Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?”—James Weldon Johnson, “To America,” Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
Like few others in American history when faced with overwhelming odds, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) kept his “eyes fixed forward on a star.” I wrote briefly on Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” nearly three years ago, on the brink of Barack Obama’s election as the first African-American to reach the Oval Office. Today, however, on the 140th anniversary of Johnson’s birth in Jacksonville, Fla., it seems more appropriate to celebrate his wider achievements, including:
* the first African-American to be admitted to the Florida state bar
* successful songwriter
* U.S. Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua
* founder of a daily newspaper in Jacksonville, then, 20 years later, editorial writer for the New York Age
* high school principal
* field organizer and general secretary of the NAACP
* poet
* memoirist
* novelist
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