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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 in most of them: teacher, school principal, journalist, lawyer, songwriter, diplomat, novelist, poet, civil rights crusader, anthologist, professor. Throughout his various activities three concerns persisted. First, he was usually involved in education in one way or another, viewing it both as a route to individual achievement and as a means of racial advancement. Second, he devoted his considerable talents mainly to the service of his race, notably during his decade and a half as a major leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1916-1930), and in other ways at other times of his life. Third, through his belletristic writing and his anthologies he was both contributor to and preserver of the Afro-American literary tradition, linking the nineteenth century to the Harlem Renaissance.
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