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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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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
Clay
Till
Dust
Mammy
Image
Toiling
Baby
Lump
Great
Lumps
Like
Bending
Shaped

More quotes by James Weldon Johnson

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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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O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
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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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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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My mother was kept very busy with her sewing sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
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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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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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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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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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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...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.
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I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.
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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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I'm lonely I'll make me a world.
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
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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.
James Weldon Johnson
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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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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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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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As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat.
James Weldon Johnson