Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/112

90 them will be presented in this chapter: James Weldon Johnson, of Florida, author of Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917); Charles Bertram Johnson, of Missouri, author of Songs of My People (1918); Fenton Johnson, of Chicago, author of A Little Dreaming (1914); Visions of the Dusk (1915), and Songs of the Soil (1916). The fourth and fifth are women, and will find a place in another group; the sixth is Adolphus Johnson, author of The Silver Chord, Philadelphia, 1915. The three mentioned above will be treated in the order in which they have been named.

Now of New York, but born in Florida and reared in the South, James Weldon Johnson is a man of various abilities, accomplishments, and activities. He was graduated with the degrees of A. B. and A. M. from Atlanta University and later studied for three years in Columbia University. First a school-principal, then a practitioner of the law, he followed at last the strongest propensity and turned author. His literary work includes light operas, for which his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, composed the music, and a novel entitled The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Having been United States consul in two Latin-American countries, he is a master of Spanish and has made translations of Spanish