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I've added the following information to the article on the NAACP. I don't have time to rewrite it for this piece on JWJ, but it definitely should be reworked slightly and added to this article.
In 1916, when the NAACP was just seven years old, chairman Joel Spingarn invited James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U.S. consul to Venezuela and a noted scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing the NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000. In 1920, Johnson was elected head of the organization. Over the next ten years under his leadership, the increasingly NAACP would escalate its lobbying and litigation efforts, becoming internationally known for its advocacy of equal rights and equal protection for the "American Negro."
deeceevoice 11:52, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The 1991 science fiction comedy novel [ "A World Lost"] is by James Weldon Johnson. Of course he's not _this_ James Weldon Johnson! Amazon.com and many other book sites have the author this Wikipedia article is about linked to the author of the SF novel.
I don't know if the JWJ who wrote the SF book has written anything else. I keep getting hits on the NAACP's JWJ.
The end of the introductory paragraph read until now: "Latter on taught at Harvard University and was then fired for his racist comments." Apart from the faulty spelling etc. I could find no source saying anything about him teaching at Harvard, nor about any kind of scandal involving racist remarks he made. I've thus deleted the passage. Should anyone have different information, please incorporate it into the article - quoting your sources. -- Albrecht Conz 21:16, 23 April 2007 pizza
This entry describes James Weldon Johnson as having had two wives:
Under "Life"
That sounds in keeping with the character of the man and his life. However, this paragraph, at the end of "Education and Law," does not:
The paragraph is poorly written, and has nothing to do with "Education" or "Law." It appears to have been tacked onto a passage about his teaching at Fisk University in Nashville (which occurred toward the end of his life); then, suddenly, we're taken back to New York, for this undated episode with Ms. McKee in Brooklyn. (Is "Naples" a neighborhood in Brooklyn? Naples, NY, is in western New York state, south of Rochester.)
Can anyone help resolve this? Is the McKee story true, and if it is, when did it occur? We can infer that it was when JWJ was in New York with his brother, prior to his marriage to Grace Nail, but there are no dates included.
(Since JWJ moved to New York for his songwriting career at the end of the 1890s, and JWJ and Grace Nail "met several years [before 1910] in New York when Johnson was working as a songwriter," the McKee marriage would have had to have happened not too long before his marriage to Grace Nail.)
It appears someone recently added a version of this story to a place in the entry that makes more sense chronologically (and in which "Naples" might mean Naples, Fla.), but without mentioning the NYC connection; "Spanglej" deleted it and restored that passage to its original condition:
Revision as of 18:27, 13 February 2012; Revision as of 21:10, 13 February 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=James_Weldon_Johnson&diff=next&oldid=476688421
These biographies of Johnson at the U. South Carolina and U. Illinois' Web sites both mention Grace Nail Johnson, but make no mention of McKee:
James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938 http://library.sc.edu/spcoll/amlit/johnson/johnson1.html
James Weldon Johnson's Life and Career http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/johnson/life.htm
The citation given for the McKee story is "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2004 (Second Edition), p.791-792."
I am not a JWJ scholar, but the poor writing quality of the passage in question, the way it was tacked on to "Education and Law," and the fact that I can't find any Web-based mention of the Heather McKee story (other than quotations from this Wikipedia entry), lead me to believe that the story is unsubstantiated and the passage should be removed.
If it is true, it should be re-written and moved to a better place (in terms of context and chronology) in the entry.
Fmjohnson ( talk) 15:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
I wonder how he'd react. He was a writer and scholar, so he'd recognize the article as a hodge-podge, a semi-cohert thrown-together mess. Since he was a successful teacher, and by the appearance of his face, he was probably a kindly, patient man. So he wouldn't rant and rave about what a mess this is. Could someone whose knowledgeable PLEASE clean up this mess, and fill in the gaps in the story so that the article tells a coherent story? Thanks in advance. Tapered ( talk) 04:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville Fl,June17,1871. He married a girl name Grace Nail. Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwritting project. He wrote his own poetry and supported work by others,also compilling and publishing antholigies of spirituals and poetry. During this period,the NAACP was mounting legal challenges to southern states disfranchisement of African Americans. Johnson also read the law to prepare for the bar. Johnson's first success as a Broadway songwritter,Johnson moved in the upper echelons of African American. It was not until 1927 that Johnson acknowknowledged writting endanger the novel,steressing that is not a work of autobiography but mostly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.70.224.234 ( talk) 00:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Is there a reason that his death in an automobile accident is omitted from the article? In his wifes' article it is stated that she sustained grave injuries and that she was driving. Also the fact that he was interred (and where) with his wife could be added to the article IMHO. For the record: Johnson died in a car accident in Wiscasset, Maine, on June 26, 1938, at the age of 67. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem. [1]
References
The section on "Literary Writing" states, "God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) is considered most important." Does this mean "his most important book of poetry" or "very important"? Maurice Magnus ( talk) 23:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I've added the following information to the article on the NAACP. I don't have time to rewrite it for this piece on JWJ, but it definitely should be reworked slightly and added to this article.
In 1916, when the NAACP was just seven years old, chairman Joel Spingarn invited James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U.S. consul to Venezuela and a noted scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing the NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000. In 1920, Johnson was elected head of the organization. Over the next ten years under his leadership, the increasingly NAACP would escalate its lobbying and litigation efforts, becoming internationally known for its advocacy of equal rights and equal protection for the "American Negro."
deeceevoice 11:52, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The 1991 science fiction comedy novel [ "A World Lost"] is by James Weldon Johnson. Of course he's not _this_ James Weldon Johnson! Amazon.com and many other book sites have the author this Wikipedia article is about linked to the author of the SF novel.
I don't know if the JWJ who wrote the SF book has written anything else. I keep getting hits on the NAACP's JWJ.
The end of the introductory paragraph read until now: "Latter on taught at Harvard University and was then fired for his racist comments." Apart from the faulty spelling etc. I could find no source saying anything about him teaching at Harvard, nor about any kind of scandal involving racist remarks he made. I've thus deleted the passage. Should anyone have different information, please incorporate it into the article - quoting your sources. -- Albrecht Conz 21:16, 23 April 2007 pizza
This entry describes James Weldon Johnson as having had two wives:
Under "Life"
That sounds in keeping with the character of the man and his life. However, this paragraph, at the end of "Education and Law," does not:
The paragraph is poorly written, and has nothing to do with "Education" or "Law." It appears to have been tacked onto a passage about his teaching at Fisk University in Nashville (which occurred toward the end of his life); then, suddenly, we're taken back to New York, for this undated episode with Ms. McKee in Brooklyn. (Is "Naples" a neighborhood in Brooklyn? Naples, NY, is in western New York state, south of Rochester.)
Can anyone help resolve this? Is the McKee story true, and if it is, when did it occur? We can infer that it was when JWJ was in New York with his brother, prior to his marriage to Grace Nail, but there are no dates included.
(Since JWJ moved to New York for his songwriting career at the end of the 1890s, and JWJ and Grace Nail "met several years [before 1910] in New York when Johnson was working as a songwriter," the McKee marriage would have had to have happened not too long before his marriage to Grace Nail.)
It appears someone recently added a version of this story to a place in the entry that makes more sense chronologically (and in which "Naples" might mean Naples, Fla.), but without mentioning the NYC connection; "Spanglej" deleted it and restored that passage to its original condition:
Revision as of 18:27, 13 February 2012; Revision as of 21:10, 13 February 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=James_Weldon_Johnson&diff=next&oldid=476688421
These biographies of Johnson at the U. South Carolina and U. Illinois' Web sites both mention Grace Nail Johnson, but make no mention of McKee:
James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938 http://library.sc.edu/spcoll/amlit/johnson/johnson1.html
James Weldon Johnson's Life and Career http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/johnson/life.htm
The citation given for the McKee story is "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2004 (Second Edition), p.791-792."
I am not a JWJ scholar, but the poor writing quality of the passage in question, the way it was tacked on to "Education and Law," and the fact that I can't find any Web-based mention of the Heather McKee story (other than quotations from this Wikipedia entry), lead me to believe that the story is unsubstantiated and the passage should be removed.
If it is true, it should be re-written and moved to a better place (in terms of context and chronology) in the entry.
Fmjohnson ( talk) 15:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
I wonder how he'd react. He was a writer and scholar, so he'd recognize the article as a hodge-podge, a semi-cohert thrown-together mess. Since he was a successful teacher, and by the appearance of his face, he was probably a kindly, patient man. So he wouldn't rant and rave about what a mess this is. Could someone whose knowledgeable PLEASE clean up this mess, and fill in the gaps in the story so that the article tells a coherent story? Thanks in advance. Tapered ( talk) 04:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville Fl,June17,1871. He married a girl name Grace Nail. Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwritting project. He wrote his own poetry and supported work by others,also compilling and publishing antholigies of spirituals and poetry. During this period,the NAACP was mounting legal challenges to southern states disfranchisement of African Americans. Johnson also read the law to prepare for the bar. Johnson's first success as a Broadway songwritter,Johnson moved in the upper echelons of African American. It was not until 1927 that Johnson acknowknowledged writting endanger the novel,steressing that is not a work of autobiography but mostly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.70.224.234 ( talk) 00:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Is there a reason that his death in an automobile accident is omitted from the article? In his wifes' article it is stated that she sustained grave injuries and that she was driving. Also the fact that he was interred (and where) with his wife could be added to the article IMHO. For the record: Johnson died in a car accident in Wiscasset, Maine, on June 26, 1938, at the age of 67. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem. [1]
References
The section on "Literary Writing" states, "God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) is considered most important." Does this mean "his most important book of poetry" or "very important"? Maurice Magnus ( talk) 23:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)