Product Description

The extraordinary life story of the famed black writer, poet, and Harlem activist, told in his own words

Here is, to quote the eminent historian Nathan Irvin Huggins, "one of the finest American autobiographies written in this century." Born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, James Weldon Johnson began his career as a high school principal. He went on to attain success as a songwriter on Broadway and as the compiler of the definitive Book of American Negro Spirituals. But he achieved one of his greatest triumphs in 1912, when, under a pseudonym, he published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man-a classic novel about a musician who rejects his black roots, a novel that is still in print today in no fewer than five paperback editions. Johnson was, from 1920 to 1930, the first African American head of the NAACP, fighting tirelessly for the passage of a federal anti-lynching law. His life story is that of a truly remarkable man who triumphed over a system of institutionalized racism to become one of black America's leading educators, men of letters, and reformers.

"It is difficult to imagine the Harlem Renaissance without James Weldon Johnson. It is impossible to understand the place of African Americans in the life of this country without Along This Way." (John Hope Franklin)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1285855 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 440 pages

Amazon.com Review
With the possible exceptions of Dr. Alain Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois, no African American excelled on as many different levels as James Weldon Johnson. Along This Way--the first autobiography by a person of color to be reviewed in The New York Times--not only chronicles his life as an educator, lawyer, diplomat, newspaper editor, lyricist, poet, essayist, and political activist but also outlines the trials and triumphs of African Americans from post-Reconstruction to the rise and fall of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Florida in 1871 to middle-class West Indian parents, Johnson recognized the challenges and absurdities of segregated America early on. But it was his experience as a tutor to rural blacks while a student at Atlanta University that was to alter the course of his life: "It was this period that marked the beginning of psychological change from boyhood to manhood," he writes. "It was this period that marked also the beginning of my knowledge of my own people as a race."

With a rare blend of pride and humility, Johnson recounts how he, among other accomplishments, became Florida's first black lawyer in 1898, a diplomat in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and lyricist for his brother Rosamond Johnson's famous song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Johnson's commentary on his epochal novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, as well as writings on his works of poetry--The Creation, God's Trombones, and Fifty Years and Other Poems--is priceless. Equally important are the logical and even-tempered opinions on race that he wrote for The New York Age, which offered comprehensive critiques of Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Marcus Garvey, along with his analysis of the racial climate while serving as head of the NAACP. This remarkable man left a mark on the 20th century that goes beyond the boundary of race. --Eugene Holley Jr.

About the Author
Sondra K. Wilson works at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and is the author of The Crisis Reader, The Opportunity Reader, and In Search of Democracy: The NAACP Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins.

Customer Reviews

A True Classic!!!
I purchased this book several years back, as part of the research for my second book. I cannot recommend any book more highly. Anyone interested at all in African American life from the 1880s to the 1930s (particularly as it was lived in New York City from about 1899 to the Harlem Renaissance) should buy it. There is not a more fascinating autobiography in print anywhere! And the life of this man! He was the founder of the first high school for African Americans in the state of Florida, located in Jacksonville (the high school my own mother would attend); the first African American to pass the bar exam in the state of Florida; part of the first successful African American Broadway composing team (after he left Jacksonville and moved to New York City); composer of the lyrics to, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the song long considered the African American national anthem (his brother Rosamond composed the music); a consulate in Nicaragua and Venezuela; the first executive secretary of the NAACP, in which capacity he pioneered anti-lynching legislation (though he was unsuccessful in seeing it pass, the effort is described in the book, and is a fascinating lesson in the machinations of Congressional politics in the 1920s); author of groundbreaking fiction such as, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"; author of the nonfiction classic, "Black Manhattan." The list goes on... His accomplishments, his dignity and intelligence were stunning, simply awe inspiring. And it is a real shame, an indication of how troubled our culture is, that Hollywood has never made a movie about his life, and he is barely mentioned as a key figure who shaped American culture (notice I didn't say African American culture, I said AMERICAN CULTURE). To everyone reading this review, BUY THIS BOOK. You are in for an experience so delicious it will shame you if you never before knew it existed. It will make you want to call for the resignation of all college professors who do not have "Along This Way" as REQUIRED READING for any course designed to examine the history of American culture.

Johnson's "Along this Way"
James Weldon Johnson (1871 -1938) was the closest American approximation possible to a Renaissance man. He is best-known for writing the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", considered the "African-American National Anthem." He was a poet, the author of "God's Trombones" among much else (including the poem "Fifty Years" still one of the best meditations on Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation) and of the famous novel "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (1912). But Johnson was much more. He served several tumultuous years in diplomatic service as American counsul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. With his brother, Rosamund, and Bob Cole, he formed part of a famed and highly-successful black songwriting and Vaudeville team in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Johnson founded the first African-American high school in his home town of Jacksonville, Florida and, almost in passing, he became the first African-American admitted to the Florida bar without attending Law School (by reading law and passing a treacherous oral examination.) Johnson was a newspaper editor and a founder of the NAACP where he took an active role in litigating against laws restricting the voting rights of African-Americans, and, in particular, worked tirelessly in support of Federal anti-lynching legislation. In the final decade of his life, Johnson taught creative writing and American literature at several universities and lived, for a time, the life of contemplation and reflection that he said had been his lifelong goal.

Johnson lived an inspiring life. And in his autobiography, "Along this Way" (1933) he allows the reader to share in much of it. The autobiography is a lengthy and detailed work in which Johnson not only tells the story of his life, but he also describes a good deal of African-American history in the South, where he grew up, and in the rest of the United States during the pivotal half-century following reconstruction. We can see in Johnson's story, for example, how segregation and Jim Crow gradually but forcefully came to pervade the Southern States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Johnson also gives vibrant descriptions of life in New York City, of the growth of Harlem, and of African-American singers, actors and entertainers on Broadway -- in which he himself played a prominent role. There are chilling descriptions of lynching and of Johnson's efforts to bring this barbaric practice to an end. One of the more memorable scenes of Johnson's personal life in the book is a description of how he himself was almost lynched when he was observed talking alone to a light-skinned woman in a public park in Jacksonville. (His would-be attackers thought the woman was white.)

The book is divided into four main sections, with the first describing Johnson's childhood and education at Atlanta University. Part two presents a picture of New York City and Johnson's efforts as a songwriter. Part three focuses on Johnsons counsular work in Latin America while Part four discusses Johnson's work with the NAACP. But these are only the broadest, bare-bones descriptions of an extraordinary life. Johnson combines his discussion of his public life with insightful comments on most of his writings, including his poetry, novel, his history "Black Manhattan" and his work as an anthologizer of African-American poetry and of Spirituals.

There are moments in the book when I wanted to know more of Johnson's inner life. He tells us, for example, of his courtship of and marriage to Grace Nail but, with the exception of some discussion of her reactions to Johnson's diplomatic posts, we see little of her in the book. Johnson is reticent, in common with most writers of autobiography, in letting us see too deeply beyond the public figure. But at the end of the book, he offers the reader some broad reflections, centering upon his agnosticism and of his hopes and ambitions for humanity.

Johnson's life focused upon his efforts to secure the rights of black people in the United States, but his life, work, and writings were universal in theme. In "Along this Way" he gives us the story of a life both active and reflective. His book is a precious work of American literature.

Shamefully Neglected Classic
One of the superb American autobiographies, and one of the great autobiographies of any period. After reading an example of this calibre it does not surprise me that I am rarely able to read biographies... second hand views, with some exceptions (Philip Horton's biography of Hart Crane, Frank Harris' of Oscar Wilde) are simply not sufficient....those exceptions being almost invariably written by men or women contemporaries who lived and loved in the same circle as their subject.
James Weldon Johnson was a great American, not just a great African American, and a master stylist. This book is a pleasure to read both for its countless wonderful episodes and for the inspiring way of its prosody. He is one of those writers who makes you feel that his wonderful style is an organic product of a graceful upbringing, it is classic and yet unmannered...or rather the manner, being the grace, is the man, all inseparable. There is an additional poignancy in the narrative, especially in the childhood portion, deriving from our knowledge that the nobility of his home education is a thing entirely vanished from the American scene. He went to school, but was also in every sense home schooled. See the autobiography of Kenneth Rexroth for a similar example..."The years as they pass keep revealing how the impressions made upon me as a child by my parents are constantly strengthening controls over my forms of habit, behavior, and conduct as a man." (Along the Way, p. 19, Penguin ed.)
This is certainly one of the best examples of Childhood Autobiography in the World Literature of any age. It should at the very least be required reading in AP English for Black History Month. The very highest endorsement.