The portrait is of the black activist, poet, diplomat, educator and musician, James Weldon Johnson. (d. 1938). Not so well known as MLK and other civil rights campaigners but I came across references to him recently and went chasing. In all the euphoria surrounding Obama, such great men as Johnson are too easily and conveniently forgotten.
Amongst the most interesting things I found out:
Johnson qualified for the bar but found the law boring, not least because it functioned within the way things are…and he wanted to be a catalyst for change.
He composed 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' a song that eventually became a national anthem for American Blacks, and with his brother composed music and lyrics for many Broadway shows.
He was a leading influence in the Harlem Renaissance, a resurgence of black cultural and artistic activity in the 1920's, and a vocal supporter of black artists struggling against white prejudice in the publishing houses.
He lived to see the first all African American orchestra formed, a symbol of collective creative energy, disciplined harmony and human co-operation that transcended socially contrived discrimination.
And not least, Johnson was a poet, whose poetry was unashamedly political because he knew the power of words to frame a different reality, and shape political vision. MLK used one of his poems in the great landmark speech 'Where do we go from here?' in 1968, 30 years after Johnson's death in a rail accident.
Men like Johnson created the context, set out the paramenters, exposed the issues, modelled the tactics, that would later coalesce and radicalise into a full civil rights movement.
The words MLK quoted are from "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over the way
That with tears hath been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.
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