African American man of letters James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was also a teacher, politician, and lawyer. He is best known for his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and a book of poems, God's Trombones. On June 17, 1871, James Weldon John...

Versatility is the most salient characteristic of the life and career of James Weldon Johnson. Equipped with restless intelligence, abundant energy, and "an abhorrence of spare time," he crowded almost a dozen occupations into a busy lifetime, excelling...

Versatility is the most salient characteristic of the life and career of James Weldon Johnson . Equipped with restless intelligence, abundant energy, and "an abhorrence of spare time," he crowded almost a dozen occupations into a busy lifetime, excelling...

. A number of 12th- and 13th-century poems were called “sermons” by their authors, but the term seems to have referred as much to their oral mode of presentation as to their religious content. The eight extant 12th-century...

God's Trombones: Eight Negro Sermons in Verse is a 1927 book of poems by James Weldon Johnson patterned after African-American folk sermons. Johnson observed an absence of attention in folklore studies to what he called a "folk sermon," then went on to...