The Poetry of James Weldon Johnson

Gathered here is the verse of James Weldon Johnson, whose collection Fifty Years and Other Poems appeared in 1917 to mark half a century since emancipation. The title poem surveys the progress and unfinished struggle of Black Americans with dignity and restraint, while the rest range from lyric meditations to poems written in dialect. Johnson would soon champion a different path in his landmark God’s Trombones, but these early pieces show a poet already weighing questions of identity, faith, and justice. Introduced by the critic Brander Matthews, the book belongs among the voices that led into the Harlem Renaissance and helped define modern African American poetry. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.