JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871-1938) was a novelist, poet, lawyer, editor, and ethnomusicologist, and coauthor of the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is widely known as the Black national anthem. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he was educated at Atlanta University and at Columbia University and was the first Black lawyer admitted to the Florida bar. He was also a songwriter in New York, American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, executive secretary of the NAACP, and professor of creative literature at Fisk University. His other books include an autobiography, Along This Way, and the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

ABOUT THE INTRODUCER:
GREGORY PARDLO is the author of Air Traffic and of Digest, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Pardlo's poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New York Times, among others, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and a visiting associate professor at New York University Abu Dhabi.