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 in the United States is not a racial problem. He is a human problem.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
Charles Bertram Johnson entered the world on October 5, 1880, in the small town of Callao, Missouri, a place where the rolling prairies of Macon County stretched under vast Midwestern skies, whispering promises and hardships in equal measure. He departed this life on March 20, 1958, at the age of seventy-seven, in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he was laid to rest in Longview Cemetery. His seventy-seven years spanne…
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Longing