Lift Every Voice: The Story of James Weldon JohnsonBy Jerry Urso
JWJ Branch of ASALH
Abstract
James Weldon Johnson stands among the most influential African American intellectuals and cultural leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From his humble beginnings in LaVilla, a suburb of Jacksonville, during the Reconstruction Era in Florida, he rose to become one of the greatest authors of his generation. He served as a consul in South America during the Roosevelt administration and was appointed in 1920 as the first Black Executive Secretary of the NAACP.
His poetry remains as relevant today as it was when he first took pen to paper as principal at Stanton School and wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing. He carried himself with dignity and purpose, yet cared deeply for the most marginalized members of society. Through literature, diplomacy, and civil rights advocacy, Johnson asserted the right of African Americans to define themselves on their own terms rather than through the perceptions of others.
Early Life
James Weldon Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida. Johnson’s father, James Johnson, was a fervent Baptist preacher and served as head waiter at the St. James Hotel. His mother, Helen Louise Dillet, was a native of Nassau, Bahamas.
The Johnson brothers were first educated by their mother, a musician and public-school teacher, before attending Edwin M. Stanton School. She imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and European traditions, especially chamber music. {1}
The Johnsons were among the most prominent families in Jacksonville during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their father was a member of Prince Hall Lodge #2 in Jacksonville, Florida. {2}
Among his father’s contemporaries was Mitchell P. Chappelle. In addition to serving as Justice of the Peace, city councilman, and Mayor of LaVilla, Chappelle owned the largest saloon in LaVilla. Chappelle was Worshipful Master of Harmony Lodge #1 and presided over the convention that formed the Union Grand Lodge in 1875. {3} His brother, Lewis Chappelle, was also a city councilman and later became an AME (African Methodist Episcopal) bishop in Hillsborough County. {4} Another brother, Julius Caesar Chappelle, moved from LaVilla to Boston and became the first African American to serve on the Massachusetts State Senate Committee, where he served three terms. {5} In 1890, Chappelle became Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of Massachusetts. {6}
Pat Chappelle, Lewis Chappelle’s son, in contrast to James Weldon Johnson’s more strait-laced approach to the arts and literature, became one of the first African Americans to own his own theater and production company. He toured the country with a show called The Rabbit’s Foot and was one of the founders of vaudeville.
John R. Scott Sr. was pastor of St. Paul’s AME Church in LaVilla and is considered a pioneer of the AME Church in Florida. He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1868–1873 and again in 1879, when he died in the chambers of the House. Scott was the second Grand Master of the Union Grand Lodge of Florida and a Past Master of Harmony Lodge #1. He also served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Jacksonville. {8}
John R. Scott Jr. was a member of the Florida House of Representatives in 1889. {9} He became the first president of Edward Waters College and was a member of St. Johns Lodge #14 in Jacksonville, Florida. Scott earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity from Wilberforce University. He was a minister in the AME Church, served as secretary for the Florida East Conference of the AME Church in 1889, and was a professor of homiletics at Edward Waters College. {10}
A Childhood Inspiration
In Along This Way, James Weldon Johnson recalled a formative moment from his youth that left an indelible impression on his life and future ambitions. Johnson described how his father took him to the municipal courthouse in Jacksonville, where, for the first time, he witnessed an African American presiding as a judge. The sight was both startling and profound. For a young boy coming of age during Reconstruction, the image of a Black man exercising authority within the legal system challenged prevailing assumptions about race, power, and possibility. Johnson later reflected that this experience played a decisive role in his decision to study law, planting the idea that the legal profession could be both a means of personal advancement and a tool for racial justice.
The judge Johnson encountered was Joseph E. Lee, one of the most influential public officials in the history of Florida politics during the Reconstruction era. Born in Philadelphia in 1849, Lee received his early education in Pennsylvania before attending Howard University, where he earned a law degree in 1873. That same year, he relocated to Florida and was admitted to the bar, becoming the first African American lawyer in Jacksonville and one of the first in the state. His presence in the city was striking, and he commanded widespread attention and respect among both Black and white citizens.
Lee quickly emerged as a dominant figure in public life. He was first elected to serve the citizens of Duval County in 1875 and again from 1877 to 1879. In 1881, he was elected to the Florida State Senate, further solidifying his role as a leading political force. His career continued to ascend when he was appointed county clerk of the circuit court in 1889. From 1890 to 1894, Lee served as United States Collector for the Port of Jacksonville and later as United States Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of Florida.
Beyond his civil appointments, Lee wielded significant influence as a political strategist and power broker. He served as a delegate to Republican national conventions and state constitutional conventions. Within fraternal life, he was a Past Master of Harmony Lodge No. 1 and served on the Committee of Jurisprudence for nearly four decades.
Lee’s example resonated deeply with younger generations. Both James Weldon Johnson and Asa Philip Randolph later identified him as an early inspiration. Johnson’s childhood encounter with Lee marked an awakening—an early realization that law could be a pathway to dignity, leadership, and influence.
Reflecting on Lee’s character years later, Johnson’s longtime friend and law partner J. Douglass Wetmore wrote in April 1926:
“Judge Lee was a carpetbagger and was one of the first colored men in the State to be admitted to practice law… I never saw his superior as a presiding officer in a deliberative body, and he was one of the shrewdest, brightest, coolest, and best-read men I ever knew.”
His Mentor
In his book Along This Way, James Weldon Johnson wrote eloquently about his early life in Jacksonville. As he reflected, one man stood out—Alexander Darnes. Darnes was a former slave under General Kirby Smith. After the Civil War, he earned his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and a medical degree from Howard University in 1880. He returned to Jacksonville in 1881 and helped care for the city’s residents during the yellow fever epidemic of 1888. {11}
Darnes served as Deputy Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida in 1893 and was a Past Master of Harmony Lodge #1 in Jacksonville, Florida. {12} Johnson recalled how he and his brother, John Rosamond, swept the floors at Dr. Darnes’s office.
Educator
In the summer of 1891, following his freshman year at Atlanta University, James Weldon Johnson traveled to a rural district in Georgia to teach the descendants of formerly enslaved people. Reflecting on this experience later in life, Johnson wrote, “In all of my experience there has been no period so brief that has meant so much in my education for life as the three months I spent in the backwoods of Georgia. I was thrown for the first time on my own resources and abilities.” {1} This brief but intense period reinforced Johnson’s belief that education was not merely academic training, but preparation for leadership, self-reliance, and service.
Johnson graduated from Atlanta University in 1894, completing a classical curriculum that emphasized literature, rhetoric, philosophy, and critical thinking. His education placed him among a rising generation of African American intellectuals prepared to engage both the cultural and political challenges of the post-Reconstruction era. He later became associated with professional and intellectual networks that emphasized scholarship, civic responsibility, and leadership, including Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. {13}
Upon his return to Jacksonville, Johnson became principal of Stanton School, the city’s leading public school for African American students. Under his leadership, the school expanded its curriculum to include ninth and tenth grades, a significant advancement at a time when secondary education for Black students in the South was rare. Johnson viewed education as a means of cultivating discipline, dignity, and civic consciousness, believing that the classroom was foundational to racial uplift and collective progress.
Stanton School itself carried symbolic importance. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation, the institution had been renamed in honor of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War for the Union Army. Johnson embraced this legacy, positioning the school not only as an academic institution but also as a center for community leadership and cultural development.
Another formative influence during this period was William Middleton Artrell. Born in Nassau, Bahamas, in 1836, Artrell served as a city councilman in Key West, Florida, and was a member of Union Lodge #48. He taught at the Douglas School in Key West in 1871 before relocating to Jacksonville. Beginning in 1887, Artrell served as a teacher and principal at Edwin M. Stanton School. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1888, he also served with the Department of Public Health in Jacksonville, modeling a form of public service that combined education, civic duty, and moral leadership—values Johnson would later embody throughout his career.
Lift Every Voice and Sing
While serving as principal at Stanton School, James Weldon Johnson wrote the lyrics to Lift Every Voice and Sing, a work that would become one of the most enduring cultural and spiritual anthems in American history. Although often broadly associated with Abraham Lincoln, the song was written specifically for the celebration of Lincoln’s birthday in LaVilla—one of the most significant civic observances in the community.
In LaVilla, Lincoln’s Birthday was treated as a major public holiday, comparable in importance to Emancipation Day. These celebrations unfolded as day-long events that included food, cultural expression, public speakers, and a parade. They brought together families, churches, schools, and civic organizations across the neighborhood. To the citizens of LaVilla, these occasions functioned much like their own Fourth of July—days when freedom, progress, and Black civic identity were publicly affirmed and joyfully expressed.
Johnson composed the lyrics of Lift Every Voice and Sing within this atmosphere of collective pride and historical consciousness. The poem reflects a people deeply aware of their past and resolute about their future. Drawing upon biblical imagery, spiritual cadence, and classical poetic structure, Johnson articulated a narrative of suffering endured, faith sustained, and hope carried forward. The song neither denies hardship nor surrenders to despair; instead, it insists upon perseverance, moral clarity, and collective memory.
In 1905, Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson, set the lyrics to music, giving the poem a solemn and majestic musical structure that elevated it from a written composition into a shared communal expression. First performed by schoolchildren, the song quickly transcended its original setting. It was embraced by churches, schools, and civic gatherings, becoming a unifying voice across generations.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People later recognized the song’s profound resonance, dubbing it “The Negro National Anthem.” Its enduring power lies in Johnson’s ability to give poetic voice to a collective journey rooted in struggle, dignity, and moral resolve. Lift Every Voice and Sing does not ask for recognition; it declares worth. Through this composition, James Weldon Johnson gave lasting expression to the spirit of LaVilla and, ultimately, to a nation still striving to live up to its ideals.
Attorney at Law
While still serving as principal at Stanton School, James Weldon Johnson pursued the study of law. In 1897, he passed the Florida Bar examination and was admitted to the state bar after a rigorous oral examination lasting approximately three hours before three attorneys and a judge. Johnson later recalled that one examiner, unwilling to see a Black man admitted to the profession, left the room during the proceedings.
Johnson’s admission to the bar was historically significant. He was the first attorney to pass the Florida Bar during the post-Reconstruction period through direct examination. Many of the African American attorneys who preceded him were graduates of Howard University and were admitted initially to the federal bar, a process that then granted them access to practice before Florida courts. Johnson’s path differed. He earned admission solely through examination, without the benefit of federal bar reciprocity, making his success a testament to his legal acumen and intellectual discipline.
The grueling examination required Johnson to demonstrate an immediate command of legal principles, statutes, and precedent, often reciting case law extemporaneously under intense scrutiny. His performance reflected not only mastery of the law but also the ability to reason clearly and decisively in an openly hostile environment. This achievement marked Johnson as a lawyer of exceptional ability and resolve.
In 1900, Johnson and his childhood friend J. Douglass Wetmore opened a law firm in Jacksonville. Together, they challenged segregation laws and advocated for anti-lynching legislation at a time when such positions carried significant professional and personal risk. Johnson’s legal training complemented his literary and civic work, equipping him with the tools to confront injustice within formal institutions as well as through public advocacy. His experience in law would later prove essential during his work with the NAACP.
Freemasonry
On April 14, 1901, under District Deputy Grand Master A. J. Butler, a dispensation charter was granted by Grand Master John R. Dickerson. James Weldon Johnson served as the first Worshipful Master, while his future law partner, J. Douglass Wetmore, was seated in the Senior Warden’s station in the West. {14} The lodge was named Paul Laurence Dunbar Lodge, and it is possible Johnson selected the name in honor of his friend, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Johnson’s association with Dunbar extended beyond fraternal ties. The two men shared a deep respect for literature and poetry. Johnson later recalled conversations in which Dunbar reflected on his own artistic development and struggles. In his autobiography Along This Way, Johnson remembered Dunbar’s visit to his Jacksonville home in 1901, where the two spent evenings discussing poetry, form, and purpose. {15}
James Weldon Johnson and J. Douglass Wetmore demitted in 1907. {16} Efforts to locate records documenting where either man continued their Masonic travels after that date have been unsuccessful.
Harlem Renaissance
As racial conditions in the South deteriorated in the early twentieth century, Johnson relocated to Harlem, where he immersed himself in the flourishing artistic and intellectual movement that would become known as the Harlem Renaissance. Reuniting with his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and collaborating with composer and performer Bob Cole, Johnson became part of a formidable creative partnership that shaped early African American musical theater.
Johnson later studied classical music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston but ultimately left, recognizing that his creative interests lay in musical comedy and popular performance rather than formal classical training. By the age of twenty-three, he was touring as a vocalist with the company Oriental America, regarded as one of the first African American Broadway productions to depart from the minstrel tradition. {16}
Bob Cole, born in Athens, Georgia, on July 1, 1868, had begun publishing music as early as 1893 and gained early stage experience with Sam T. Jack’s Creole Show. Cole later directed the All Star Stock Company at Worth’s Museum in New York, the first such company organized by African Americans. Cole and Johnson collaborated on numerous musical and theatrical works, including Under the Bamboo Tree, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, The Red Moon, and Louisiana Lize.
In 1912, Johnson published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man anonymously. In the work, he alluded to the main character being inspired in part by his childhood friend and law partner, J. Douglass Wetmore. In The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Johnson later reflected on Harlem’s significance, expressing confidence that African Americans would remain rooted there and describing the community as a place of permanence, dignity, and cultural promise. {18}
The Diplomat
Johnson’s growing reputation as a writer, intellectual, and civil rights advocate attracted national political attention. In 1904, he served as treasurer of the Colored Republican Club in New York. In 1906, the Roosevelt administration appointed him United States Consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he was reassigned as Consul to Corinto, Nicaragua, a post he held until 1913. {19}
During this period, Johnson gained firsthand experience navigating international politics, economic interests, and racial hierarchies abroad. His diplomatic service expanded his worldview and deepened his understanding of how American policy affected non-white populations beyond its borders. These experiences would later inform both his political advocacy and his moral framework for international responsibility.
Grace Nail Johnson married James Weldon Johnson on February 3, 1910. She was herself a civil rights activist and a strong supporter of arts and education. Grace Nail Johnson later founded the NAACP Junior League in 1929 and was the only Black member of the feminist group Heterodoxy in Greenwich Village. She was invited to the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt, along with Mary McLeod Bethune and Numa P. G. Adams, to discuss race relations. {20}{21}
Johnson’s diplomatic service abroad positioned him as a respected authority on international affairs and labor conditions, a role that would soon bring him into direct consultation with national leadership.
Relationship with President Warren G. Harding
James Weldon Johnson’s relationship with President Warren G. Harding began prior to Harding’s inauguration. While Harding was president-elect, Johnson visited him in St. Augustine, Florida, accompanied by Bishop Hurst and Captain James W. Floyd. This meeting established a personal and professional rapport that continued into Harding’s presidency and positioned Johnson as a trusted voice on matters of race, labor, and international responsibility.
According to records preserved by the Presidential Library of President Harding, Johnson later advised and corresponded with Harding on issues related to the Panama Canal and conditions within the Canal Zone. Johnson raised concerns regarding the safety and working conditions of laborers employed on canal operations, particularly Black and Caribbean workers who bore the brunt of the most dangerous and physically demanding tasks. He emphasized the moral obligation of the United States to safeguard the health, dignity, and lives of those whose labor sustained one of the nation’s most strategically significant infrastructure projects.
Johnson also urged Harding to consider American responsibility beyond narrow national interest. He stressed that U.S. policy in Panama should account for the welfare, sovereignty, and long-term interests of the Panamanian people themselves. His counsel reflected a broader ethical framework that viewed power as inseparable from responsibility and justice, particularly in regions shaped by American intervention.
This correspondence illustrates Johnson’s role as a bridge between diplomacy, labor advocacy, civil rights, and international ethics. His engagement with President Harding demonstrates that Johnson was not merely an observer of policy but an active participant in shaping discussions about America’s moral obligations both at home and abroad.
NAACP
James Weldon Johnson joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1916 as a field secretary during one of the most dangerous periods in American race relations. His duties required extensive travel throughout the South at a time when lynching, mob violence, and racial terror were common tools of intimidation and control. Johnson investigated lynchings firsthand, documented racial violence, and interviewed witnesses and victims’ families—often in communities openly hostile to Black civil rights advocacy.
As a field secretary, Johnson routinely entered towns where lynch mobs operated with impunity and where any challenge to white supremacy was met with swift retaliation. Travel itself carried risk. Rail lines, lodging, and public accommodations were rigidly segregated, and a Black man suspected of organizing or investigating racial violence faced the constant threat of assault, arrest, or death. Johnson understood that simply asking questions about a lynching could place him under surveillance by local authorities or vigilantes.
In the aftermath of the widespread racial violence of 1919, Johnson coined the term “Red Summer” to describe the bloodshed that erupted across the nation. The phrase captured the scale and intensity of riots, lynchings, and coordinated white mob attacks against African Americans in cities and rural communities alike, particularly targeting returning Black veterans who asserted their rights after World War I. By naming the moment, Johnson gave language to a national crisis that many sought to minimize or ignore.
Johnson’s investigative work directly informed the NAACP’s landmark publication Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918, which documented 3,224 lynchings of African Americans during that period. The report exposed lynching as an organized instrument of racial control rather than a response to isolated crimes and became a foundational document in the fight for federal anti-lynching legislation. [22][23]
The danger Johnson faced was constant. NAACP field secretaries were frequently threatened, forced to flee towns under cover of darkness, or warned that their lives were in imminent danger if they continued their work. Johnson’s willingness to confront these risks reflected a deep commitment to truth, justice, and the protection of Black life.
In 1920, Johnson became the first African American Executive Secretary of the NAACP. From this position, he expanded the organization’s national reach, strengthened its investigative capacity, and amplified its moral authority. After ten years of service, Johnson resigned and accepted a position teaching creative writing at Fisk University. [23]
Legacy
James Weldon Johnson died on June 26, 1938, when his automobile was struck by a train near his home in Wiscasset, Maine. His funeral, held in Harlem, was attended by more than 2,000 mourners, reflecting the breadth of his influence and the deep respect he commanded across communities. [24]
Johnson’s legacy has been preserved through numerous honors and institutions. James Weldon Johnson Middle School in Jacksonville, Florida, was named in his honor. The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp recognizing his contributions on February 2, 1988. He was awarded the NAACP Springarn Medal in 1925 for outstanding achievement by an American Negro.
Johnson also received the Harmon Gold Award for God’s Trombones in 1929 and was granted support from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. In 1933, he received the W. E. B. Du Bois Prize for Negro Literature and was appointed the first incumbent of the Spence Chair of Creative Literature at Fisk University. He received honorary master’s degrees from Atlanta University and honorary doctorates from Talladega College and Howard University. [25]
The legacy of James Weldon Johnson continues through Paul Laurence Dunbar Lodge #219, one of the oldest continuously active lodges in the jurisdiction of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida. H.P.G.M. Russell Davis, its longest surviving member, began his work with the Knights of Pythagoras in 1977 and continues to educate and mentor young men in Jacksonville, helping to shape future leaders.
James Weldon Johnson stands among the enduring voices of American history. His life bridged education, law, literature, diplomacy, and civil rights advocacy. His words still guide collective memory and moral purpose. We assemble to the 133rd Psalm and part to Lift Every Voice and Sing, a hymn of faith, perseverance, and hope that continues to echo across generations.
References
[1] Gates Jr., Henry Louis; McKay, Nellie Y., eds. (2004). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2nd ed.). New York: Norton.
[2] Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge, 1886.
[3] Proceedings of the Free and Accepted York Masons of the State of Alabama, 1876.
[4] Brown, Canter Jr. Florida’s Black Public Officials. University of Alabama Press.
[5] Obituary, “Julius C. Chappelle,” The Cleveland Gazette, front page, February 13, 1904.
[6] Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of Massachusetts, 1890.
[7] Smith, Peter Dunbaugh. Ashley Street Blues: Racial Uplift and the Commodification of Vernacular Performance in LaVilla, Florida, 1896–1916.
[8] Brown, Canter Jr. Florida’s Black Public Officials. University of Alabama Press.
[9] Brown, Canter Jr. Florida’s Black Public Officials. University of Alabama Press.
[10] “Ministers in the African M.E. Church.” Florida Memory, 1889. Retrieved February 22, 2018.
[11] Johnson, James Weldon. Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson.
[12] Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida, 1893.
[13] Stecopoulos, Harilaos. “A Hot Time at Santiago: James Weldon Johnson, Popular Music, and U.S. Expansion,” October 12, 2006.
[14] By-Laws of Paul Laurence Dunbar Lodge #219.
[15] Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida.
[16] Morgan, Thomas L.
[17] Jass.com
, April 19, 2018.
[18] The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson: The New York Age Editorials.
[19] NAACP.org
, April 20, 2018.
[20] “Junior League Tells History: Mrs. J. W. Johnson Is Its Founder,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, February 8, 1941.
[21] “Mrs. Bethune, Friends Are Feted by First Lady,” Chicago Defender, April 19, 1941.
[22] NAACP.org
, April 20, 2018.
[23] Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918. NAACP; introduction by Paul Finkelman.
[24] Timothy Hughes, Rare Newspapers, Associated Press.
, April 20, 2018.
