Katharine Lee Bates was born on 12 August 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and died on 28 March 1929 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her name is permanently associated with “America the Beautiful,” one of the most familiar and resonant poems in United States culture. Yet the anthem has sometimes obscured the range of the woman who wrote it. Bates was not simply a patriotic versifier who happened to find a m…
“I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
James Weldon Johnson entered the world on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida, a bustling port city where the St. Johns River met the Atlantic and where the scars of Reconstruction still lingered in the humid air. He left it on June 26, 1938, in a car accident near Wiscasset, Maine, at the age of sixty-seven, his body laid to rest in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Between those dates stretched a life of astonish…
“The Negro's greatest contribution to American civilization has been in the field of music.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
