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Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson
The autobiography of the celebrated African American writer and civil rights activist
Published just four years before his death in 1938, James Weldon Johnson's autobiography is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Not only an educator, lawyer, and diplomat, Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP (which had previously been run only by whites), as well as write the groundbreaking novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man . Beginning with his birth in Jacksonville, Florida, and detailing his education, his role in the Harlem Renaissance, and his later years as a professor and civil rights reformer, Along This Way is an inspiring classic of African American literature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Published just four years before his death in 1938, James Weldon Johnson's autobiography is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Not only an educator, lawyer, and diplomat, Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP (which had previously been run only by whites), as well as write the groundbreaking novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man . Beginning with his birth in Jacksonville, Florida, and detailing his education, his role in the Harlem Renaissance, and his later years as a professor and civil rights reformer, Along This Way is an inspiring classic of African American literature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1933
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About the author
James Weldon Johnson
155 books133 followersJames Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the first African-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 1, 2024
Johnson's "Along This Way"
James Weldon Johnson (1871 -1938) was the closest American approximation possible to a Renaissance man. He is best-known for writing the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", considered the "African-American National Anthem." He was a poet, the author of "God's Trombones" among much else (including the poem "Fifty Years" still one of the best meditations on Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation) and of the famous novel "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (1912). But Johnson was much more. He served several tumultuous years in diplomatic service as American consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. With his brother, Rosamund, and Bob Cole, he formed part of a famed and highly-successful black songwriting and Vaudeville team in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Johnson founded the first African-American high school in his home town of Jacksonville, Florida and, almost in passing, he became the first African-American admitted to the Florida bar without attending Law School (by reading law and passing a treacherous oral examination.) Johnson was a newspaper editor and a founder of the NAACP where he took an active role in litigating against laws restricting the voting rights of African-Americans, and, in particular, worked tirelessly in support of Federal anti-lynching legislation. In the final decade of his life, Johnson taught creative writing and American literature at several universities and lived, for a time, the life of contemplation and reflection that he said had been his lifelong goal.
Johnson lived an inspiring life. And in his autobiography, "Along this Way" (1933) he allows the reader to share in much of it. The autobiography is a lengthy and detailed work in which Johnson not only tells the story of his life, but he also describes a good deal of African-American history in the South, where he grew up, and in the rest of the United States during the pivotal half-century following Reconstruction. We can see in Johnson's story, for example, how segregation and Jim Crow gradually but forcefully came to pervade the Southern States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Johnson also gives vibrant descriptions of life in New York City, of the growth of Harlem, and of African-American singers, actors and entertainers on Broadway -- in which he himself played a prominent role. There are chilling descriptions of lynching and of Johnson's efforts to bring this barbaric practice to an end. One of the more memorable scenes of Johnson's personal life in the book is a description of how he himself was almost lynched when he was observed talking alone to a light-skinned woman in a public park in Jacksonville. (His would-be attackers thought the woman was white.)
The book is divided into four main sections, with the first describing Johnson's childhood and education at Atlanta University. Part two presents a picture of New York City and Johnson's efforts as a songwriter. Part three focuses on Johnson's consular work in Latin America while Part four discusses Johnson's work with the NAACP. These are only the broadest, bare-bones descriptions of an extraordinary life. Johnson combines his discussion of his public life with insightful comments on most of his writings, including his poetry, novel, his history "Black Manhattan" and his work as an anthologizer of African-American poetry and of Spirituals.
There are moments in the book when I wanted to know more of Johnson's inner life. He tells us, for example, of his courtship of and marriage to Grace Nail but, with the exception of some discussion of her reactions to Johnson's diplomatic posts, we see little of her in the book. Johnson is reticent, in common with most writers of autobiography, in letting us see too deeply beyond the public figure. But at the end of the book, he offers the reader some broad reflections, centering upon his agnosticism and of his hopes and ambitions for humanity.
Johnson's life focused upon his efforts to secure the rights of black people in the United States, but his life, work, and writings were universal in theme. In "Along this Way" he gives us the story of a life both active and reflective. His book is a precious work of American literature.
Robin Friedman
James Weldon Johnson (1871 -1938) was the closest American approximation possible to a Renaissance man. He is best-known for writing the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", considered the "African-American National Anthem." He was a poet, the author of "God's Trombones" among much else (including the poem "Fifty Years" still one of the best meditations on Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation) and of the famous novel "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (1912). But Johnson was much more. He served several tumultuous years in diplomatic service as American consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. With his brother, Rosamund, and Bob Cole, he formed part of a famed and highly-successful black songwriting and Vaudeville team in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Johnson founded the first African-American high school in his home town of Jacksonville, Florida and, almost in passing, he became the first African-American admitted to the Florida bar without attending Law School (by reading law and passing a treacherous oral examination.) Johnson was a newspaper editor and a founder of the NAACP where he took an active role in litigating against laws restricting the voting rights of African-Americans, and, in particular, worked tirelessly in support of Federal anti-lynching legislation. In the final decade of his life, Johnson taught creative writing and American literature at several universities and lived, for a time, the life of contemplation and reflection that he said had been his lifelong goal.
Johnson lived an inspiring life. And in his autobiography, "Along this Way" (1933) he allows the reader to share in much of it. The autobiography is a lengthy and detailed work in which Johnson not only tells the story of his life, but he also describes a good deal of African-American history in the South, where he grew up, and in the rest of the United States during the pivotal half-century following Reconstruction. We can see in Johnson's story, for example, how segregation and Jim Crow gradually but forcefully came to pervade the Southern States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Johnson also gives vibrant descriptions of life in New York City, of the growth of Harlem, and of African-American singers, actors and entertainers on Broadway -- in which he himself played a prominent role. There are chilling descriptions of lynching and of Johnson's efforts to bring this barbaric practice to an end. One of the more memorable scenes of Johnson's personal life in the book is a description of how he himself was almost lynched when he was observed talking alone to a light-skinned woman in a public park in Jacksonville. (His would-be attackers thought the woman was white.)
The book is divided into four main sections, with the first describing Johnson's childhood and education at Atlanta University. Part two presents a picture of New York City and Johnson's efforts as a songwriter. Part three focuses on Johnson's consular work in Latin America while Part four discusses Johnson's work with the NAACP. These are only the broadest, bare-bones descriptions of an extraordinary life. Johnson combines his discussion of his public life with insightful comments on most of his writings, including his poetry, novel, his history "Black Manhattan" and his work as an anthologizer of African-American poetry and of Spirituals.
There are moments in the book when I wanted to know more of Johnson's inner life. He tells us, for example, of his courtship of and marriage to Grace Nail but, with the exception of some discussion of her reactions to Johnson's diplomatic posts, we see little of her in the book. Johnson is reticent, in common with most writers of autobiography, in letting us see too deeply beyond the public figure. But at the end of the book, he offers the reader some broad reflections, centering upon his agnosticism and of his hopes and ambitions for humanity.
Johnson's life focused upon his efforts to secure the rights of black people in the United States, but his life, work, and writings were universal in theme. In "Along this Way" he gives us the story of a life both active and reflective. His book is a precious work of American literature.
Robin Friedman
April 24, 2021
Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson is an autobiographical memoir written by James Weldon Johnson with an introduction by Sondra Kathryn Wilson. It is an autobiography of James Weldon Johson – an educator, lawyer, writer, activist, and diplomat.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer.
James Weldon Johnson began his career as a high-school principal and eventually went on to attain success as a songwriter and as the compiler of the definitive Book of American Negro Spirituals. However, he achieved one of his greatest triumphs in, under a pseudonym, he published "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" – classic novel about a musician who rejects his black roots. Johnson went on to be the first African-American head of the NAACP, fighting tirelessly for the passage of a federal anti-lynching law.
Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson is written rather well. It is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP. Beginning with his birth in Jacksonville, Florida, and detailing his education, his role in the Harlem Renaissance, and his later years as a professor and civil rights reformer, it is a wonderful and inspiring classic of African American literature.
All in all, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson is a inspiring account of a life story is that of a truly remarkable man who triumphed over a system of institutionalized racism to become one of black America’s leading educators, men of letters, and reformers.
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer.
James Weldon Johnson began his career as a high-school principal and eventually went on to attain success as a songwriter and as the compiler of the definitive Book of American Negro Spirituals. However, he achieved one of his greatest triumphs in, under a pseudonym, he published "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" – classic novel about a musician who rejects his black roots. Johnson went on to be the first African-American head of the NAACP, fighting tirelessly for the passage of a federal anti-lynching law.
Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson is written rather well. It is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP. Beginning with his birth in Jacksonville, Florida, and detailing his education, his role in the Harlem Renaissance, and his later years as a professor and civil rights reformer, it is a wonderful and inspiring classic of African American literature.
All in all, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson is a inspiring account of a life story is that of a truly remarkable man who triumphed over a system of institutionalized racism to become one of black America’s leading educators, men of letters, and reformers.
January 26, 2019
An important book which should be better known. It not only gives great insight into the lives and struggles of African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also interesting looks into American misadventures in Latin America and the music and literature of the period.
August 7, 2020
I learned a great deal about Mr. Johnson, of which I was unawares. He was a fascinating, brilliant, creative man who attempted, as best he could, to make the world better, not only for his race, but for every race, for every man, woman, and child. This is a MUST READ FOR EVERYONE!
December 17, 2024
Excellent book! Long (over 400 pages), but very engaging. I learned some new things about James Weldon Johnson and his friends. I have recommended the book and will continue to recommend it.
August 20, 2009
Johnson (1871-1938) is most famous as the author of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” but that is just the bright tip of his many accomplishments. Johnson was a school principal in Florida who opened the first public high school for African Americans, he was a journalist, lawyer, scholar, novelist (The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man), poet, a successful Broadway songwriter (with his brother who was the composer), an American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, the editor of ground-breaking anthologies of African-American poetry and Negro Spirituals, the first African American president of the NAACP, and a college professor. Not a bad resume, that, and a tremendously important American life and story, particularly for those who know little of what American life was like for African Americans between the start of Jim Crow and the start of the modern Civil Rights movement. For too many of us the timeline of American history has little to no knowledge of what happened between the end of Reconstruction and the Montgomery Bus Boycott and James Weldon Johnson is a significant part of the bridge between the two.
Growing up in Jacksonville he did as well in public school as one could do to at the time and after going to Atlanta University, first for what would represent a high school education and then as an undergraduate, he returned home to become the principal of the school at which is mother had been a teacher and that he had attended. In the summer he would travel to New York City and work with his brother and a friend on musicals, placing songs in Broadway shows and eventually producing shows of their own. He wrote poems, as well as songs, was friends with Paul Laurence Dunbar, worked with Flo Ziegfield, became an associate of W.E.B. Dubois, an acquaintance of Theodore Roosevelt, and many more political, literary, entertainment, and social reform figures of the era. His work at the NAACP was critical in two regards, dramactically expanding membership by organizing southern chapters of the group, and working with its dedicated team to promote anti-lynching legislation (mob violence was A-OK with southern conservatives and moderates as long as it was white on black, in the 60s when urban unrest meant black mobs in the street, it was time for some law and order and the rise of the Republican party in the South). It is worth witnessing in Along This Way the political landscape that had Republicans as the party of possibility for African-Americans in the first decades of the 20th century and the Democrats as the slammed shut door. Also worth noting, that the Jacksonville that Johnson grew up in and established himself as an edcuator, lawyer and journalist was not the same Jacksonville of the post-World War I era and beyond, when the nation, north and south, responded to African Americans patriotic participation in the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy with a backlash of locally supported and nationally tolerated terror that made communities like Jacksonville that had been limited but livable for African Americans into hostile, violently repressive communities of intolerance. (Segregation, like slavery itself, grew increasingly repressive and brutal over time, not less so.) Johnson’s family made a life and he made a start in the pre-World War I Jacksonville; he could not have lived and survived in the post-war Jacksonville.
But this national context is but a side benefit of this remarkable autobiography. Johnson, as his career would suggest, is a very good writer and this is an excellent personal history. The first half of the book is the best because there is a perspective in the recounting of his parents lives and his own education and development to manhood that connects the narrative as a whole. The second half, while ripe with significant accomplishments and characters, reads too much like a chronicle than a full reflection on his life work. He was not done with his work when he wrote Along This Way in 1933, but his life was cut short five years later by an automobile accident before he might have written with further perspective and insight on a life of profound significance and interest to American literary and political history. Still it’s an engrossing, enlightening story Johnson tells and it should be a must-read for anyone interested in 20th century American history.
Growing up in Jacksonville he did as well in public school as one could do to at the time and after going to Atlanta University, first for what would represent a high school education and then as an undergraduate, he returned home to become the principal of the school at which is mother had been a teacher and that he had attended. In the summer he would travel to New York City and work with his brother and a friend on musicals, placing songs in Broadway shows and eventually producing shows of their own. He wrote poems, as well as songs, was friends with Paul Laurence Dunbar, worked with Flo Ziegfield, became an associate of W.E.B. Dubois, an acquaintance of Theodore Roosevelt, and many more political, literary, entertainment, and social reform figures of the era. His work at the NAACP was critical in two regards, dramactically expanding membership by organizing southern chapters of the group, and working with its dedicated team to promote anti-lynching legislation (mob violence was A-OK with southern conservatives and moderates as long as it was white on black, in the 60s when urban unrest meant black mobs in the street, it was time for some law and order and the rise of the Republican party in the South). It is worth witnessing in Along This Way the political landscape that had Republicans as the party of possibility for African-Americans in the first decades of the 20th century and the Democrats as the slammed shut door. Also worth noting, that the Jacksonville that Johnson grew up in and established himself as an edcuator, lawyer and journalist was not the same Jacksonville of the post-World War I era and beyond, when the nation, north and south, responded to African Americans patriotic participation in the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy with a backlash of locally supported and nationally tolerated terror that made communities like Jacksonville that had been limited but livable for African Americans into hostile, violently repressive communities of intolerance. (Segregation, like slavery itself, grew increasingly repressive and brutal over time, not less so.) Johnson’s family made a life and he made a start in the pre-World War I Jacksonville; he could not have lived and survived in the post-war Jacksonville.
But this national context is but a side benefit of this remarkable autobiography. Johnson, as his career would suggest, is a very good writer and this is an excellent personal history. The first half of the book is the best because there is a perspective in the recounting of his parents lives and his own education and development to manhood that connects the narrative as a whole. The second half, while ripe with significant accomplishments and characters, reads too much like a chronicle than a full reflection on his life work. He was not done with his work when he wrote Along This Way in 1933, but his life was cut short five years later by an automobile accident before he might have written with further perspective and insight on a life of profound significance and interest to American literary and political history. Still it’s an engrossing, enlightening story Johnson tells and it should be a must-read for anyone interested in 20th century American history.
May 15, 2007
James Weldon Johnson was a high-school principal by age 21; spoke Latin, Spanish, French, and god knows what else; worked as a singer-songwriter and poet, Roosevelt diplomatic appointee and consul to Venezuela, the first Black man admitted to the Florida bar since Reconstruction, NAACP executive, ACLU activist, and sometime politician; he also did more than perhaps anyone else to bring government attention to the rate and causes of lynchings in the South in the early 20th century.
Johnson's an odd duck - both stridently radical and almost unbearably stoic, I sometimes wanted more than anything for him to smack the racists he ran into upside the head; heroically generous in his assessments of others, but armed with a cutting wit so subtle that sometimes I had to back up a paragraph or two to discover that he just shredded W. E. B. Du Bois or Henry Cabot Lodge.
His prose dawdles along a little, and sometimes it's obvious that he was writing for an audience of white liberals (not that there's anything wrong with those). Even though his autobiography isn't that intimate, it's still worth reading because of the breadth of Johnson's accomplishments.
Johnson's an odd duck - both stridently radical and almost unbearably stoic, I sometimes wanted more than anything for him to smack the racists he ran into upside the head; heroically generous in his assessments of others, but armed with a cutting wit so subtle that sometimes I had to back up a paragraph or two to discover that he just shredded W. E. B. Du Bois or Henry Cabot Lodge.
His prose dawdles along a little, and sometimes it's obvious that he was writing for an audience of white liberals (not that there's anything wrong with those). Even though his autobiography isn't that intimate, it's still worth reading because of the breadth of Johnson's accomplishments.
August 26, 2010
This is an important read for anyone wishing to explore the origins of the Black intellectual elite who led the United States to enlightenment after Radical Reconstruction. Like many of his class, James Weldon Johnson rose up from indentured servitude to exemplify the caliber of talent that was unable to contribute to American society due to the legacy of segregation.
An author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson was man of boundless talent. An essential read for anyone wishing to understand the Black Establishment at the dawn of the 20th century.
(The writing style is of its era, so the reading can be a bit challenging. And, as a format, autobiographies can wander.)
An author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson was man of boundless talent. An essential read for anyone wishing to understand the Black Establishment at the dawn of the 20th century.
(The writing style is of its era, so the reading can be a bit challenging. And, as a format, autobiographies can wander.)
June 1, 2015
Amazing autobiography of an American genius.
June 19, 2015
An excellent biography which informs one about African American life iin the first quarter of the 20th Century.
March 9, 2016
Reading this made me feel like an ignoramus for all this history that I don't know.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews