Quote of the Day (James Weldon Johnson, on America’s Racial Divide)

“How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?”—James Weldon Johnson, “To America,” Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Like few others in American history when faced with overwhelming odds, James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) kept his “eyes fixed forward on a star.” I wrote briefly on Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” nearly three years ago, on the brink of Barack Obama’s election as the first African-American to reach the Oval Office. Today, however, on the 140th anniversary of Johnson’s birth in Jacksonville, Fla., it seems more appropriate to celebrate his wider achievements, including:

* the first African-American to be admitted to the Florida state bar
* successful songwriter
* U.S. Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua
* founder of a daily newspaper in Jacksonville, then, 20 years later, editorial writer for the New York Age
* high school principal
* field organizer and general secretary of the NAACP
* poet
* memoirist
* novelist