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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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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
Proud
Ought
Walks
Many
Great
Colored
Think
Cake
Thinking
Ashamed
People
Walk

More quotes by 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.
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This country can have no more democracy than it accords and guarantees to the humblest and weakest citizen.
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Make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours. But to attempt to right the wrongs and cease the sufferings of the world in general is a waste of effort.
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The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.
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O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
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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.
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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.
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My mother was kept very busy with her sewing sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
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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.
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In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.
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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.
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As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
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It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
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Northern white people love the Negro in a sort of abstract way, as a race through a sense of justice, charity, and philanthropy, they will liberally assist in his elevation.
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Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
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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.
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I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.
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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.
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And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
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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.
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