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O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

James Weldon Johnson

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James Weldon Johnson
Age: 67 †
Born: 1871
Born: June 17
Died: 1938
Died: June 26
Author
Composer
Diplomat
Jurist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Songwriter
Writer
Jacksonville
Florida
J. W. Johnson
Sacred
Fire
Came
Black
Music
Bards
Long
Unknown
Lips
Touch

More quotes by James Weldon Johnson

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At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes? I also learned the names of the notes in both clefs, but I preferred not be hampered by notes.
James Weldon Johnson
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Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
James Weldon Johnson
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...evil is a force and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot annihilate it we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and hit it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen of other forms
James Weldon Johnson
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So God stepped over to the edge of the world And He spat out the seven seas He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down.
James Weldon Johnson
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There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
James Weldon Johnson
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The Southern whites are in many respects a great people. Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque. If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.
James Weldon Johnson
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Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.
James Weldon Johnson
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My luck at the gambling table was varied sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.
James Weldon Johnson
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This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.
James Weldon Johnson
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When one has seen something of the world and human nature, one must conclude, after all, that between people in like stations of life there is very little difference the world over.
James Weldon Johnson
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It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
James Weldon Johnson
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When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.
James Weldon Johnson
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A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.
James Weldon Johnson
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But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
James Weldon Johnson
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As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
James Weldon Johnson
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You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
James Weldon Johnson
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This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.
James Weldon Johnson
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As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
James Weldon Johnson
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And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said, O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.
James Weldon Johnson
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And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
James Weldon Johnson