James Weldon Johnson

And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and my school books. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#books #couple #divided #life #music

Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#congregation #emotions #experience #fervor #heard

As I look back now I can see that I was a perfect little aristocrat. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#back #i #i can #little #look

As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#fully #old #slave #songs #themselves

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. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#american #classic #desire #felt #form

I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#better #colored #country #fact #i

I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#any #being #burning #conscience #death

I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#consideration #enjoyed #had #i #into

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#big #earth #face #i #london

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. ↗

— James Weldon Johnson

#amsterdam #canals #city #conditions #dutch