James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

James Weldon Johnsonhttp://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/johnson.html

For the majority of the poets following Dunbar , the time for the plantation lyric was over and done; they rejected references to slave life and the use of dialect as degrading, limiting, and pandering to white audiences. One notable exception was James Weldon Johnson. Johnson alone seemed to recognize the inherent beauty of the language developed and cultivated by the slaves, and appreciate Dunbar 's gift of capturing this aspect of Negro culture so incisively. Interestingly, Johnson was very careful to avoid the use of dialect in his own poetry, while still signifying the idiomatic speech of the Negro.

Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its shortcomings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form.... Dunbar was the first to use it [dialect] as a medium for the true interpretation of Negro character and psychology.
James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry

Johnson, among many things a prolific writer and gifted poet, whose work straddled the Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance, also found his models in the vernacular speech of Negro folklore, particularly in the spirituals and the folk sermons of the Black Church. One of his best-known and best-loved poems is "O Black and Unknown Bards," a moving tribute to the creators of the spirituals. In the manner of Sankofa, Johnson looks backwards towards the people whose names are unknown, but whose value to the black community is immeasurable:

O Black and unknown bards of long ago,

How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

How, in your darkness, did you come to know

The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?

Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?

Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,

Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise

Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

Heart of what slave poured out such melody

As "Steal Away to Jesus"? On its strains

His spirit must have nightly floated free,

Though still about his hands he felt his chains.

Who heard great "Jordan Roll"? Whose starward eye

Saw chariot "Swing Low"? And who was he

That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,

"Nobody Knows de Trouble I See"? (1-16)

In the preface to his unified collection of poems, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, Johnson explains the ambiance of the black folk sermon, and affirms the influence of the oral tradition and the spirituals on his work.

I claim no more for these poems than that I have written them after the manner of the primitive sermons. In the writing of them I have, naturally, felt the influence of the Spirituals. There is, of course, no way of recreating the atmosphere – the fervor of the congregation, the amens and hallelujahs, the undertone of singing which was often a soft accompaniment to parts of the sermon; nor the personality of the preacher – his physical magnetism, his gestures and gesticulations, his changes of tempo, his pauses for effect, and more than all, his tones of voice. These poems would better be intoned than read.
James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse

The structure of the folk sermon is common to the spirituals as well, particularly in those that celebrate biblical heroes. The call-and-response dynamic between preacher and congregation can be seen in the music, along with the repetition of key phrases, and a guiding metaphor that provides a framework for understanding the message (carried forward from the ring shout and the griot oral tradition). An exceptional example of this is the spiritual, "Go Down, Moses." The call-and-response structure and repetition of the driving point of the song is established in the opening chorus:

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egyp' land

Tell ol' Pharaoh

Let my people go!

The verses, interspersed between reprisals of the chorus, use the governing metaphor of telling the story of Moses and his ongoing petition for the release of the captive Hebrews:

When Israel was in Egyp' land

Let my people go

Oppressed so hard they could not stand

Let my people go

******

"Thus spoke the Lord," bold Moses said.

Let my people go

"Or else I'll smite your first-born dead

Let my people go

The use of parallel structure and repetition of key words and phrases can be found throughout the music of early African captives, thus lending credence to the idea that the structure of the spirituals is essentially African in nature.

In "Let My People Go," the sixth poem of James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones, Johnson delivers the "stock sermon" of the preacher in a similar fashion. The very title of the poem is lifted directly from the spiritual:

And God said to Moses:

I've seen the awful suffering

Of my people down in Egypt .

I've watched their hard oppressors,

Their overseers and drivers;

The groans of my people have filled my ears

And I can't stand it no longer;

So I'm come down to deliver them

Out of the land of Egypt ,

And I will bring them out of that land

Into the land of Canaan ;

Therefore, Moses, go down,

Go down into Egypt ,

And tell Old Pharaoh

To let my people go. (22-37)

Johnson brings the experience of the sermon to life with his poetic rendition. It too uses call-and-response, repetition of key words and phrases, and the governing metaphor of the life and deeds of Moses. Johnson's poem adds the ingenious twist of taking the oral lyrics of a spiritual that was expressed in a written form and returning it to orality, but in a written form. Such structures and themes continued to influence African American poetry in the ensuing years.