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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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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
Chiefs
Satan
Scourges
Humanity
Scourge
Hand
Stretched
War
Crown
Hands
Smiled
Crowns
Chief

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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 yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
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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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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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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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My mother was kept very busy with her sewing sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
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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.
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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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The fortress inspired a tremendous confidence. It was the only propeller driven aircraft I have flown that was completely viceless there were no undesirable flight characteristics. The directional stability was excellent and, properly trimmed, the B-17 could be taken off, landed and banked without change of trim.
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I'm lonely I'll make me a world.
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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.
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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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It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.
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Americans are immensely popular in Paris and this is not due solely to the fact that they spend lots of money there, for they spend just as much or more in London, and in the latter city they are merely tolerated because they do spend.
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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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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.
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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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And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books.
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...one of the best things about running is that no matter how fast you've run in the past, running fast in the future does not come easily or with any guarantees.
James Weldon Johnson