Episode 031: James Weldon Johnson: A Legal Renaissance
Description:
This week, we shine the spotlight on James Weldon Johnson. Many know him as the author of Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, but Johnson was also a lawyer and Executive Secretary of the NAACP.
In September 1925, a black physician purchased a home in an all-white neighborhood in Detroit. On his second night in the home, a mob gathered outside. After the shooting death of one of the members of the mob, Dr. Ossian Sweet and ten members of his family, including his wife, were arrested and charged with murder. In this episode, we take a look at how Johnson used the case to lay the foundation for what would become the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Host Derrick Alexander Pope portrays Johnson and Clarence Darrow.
For additional reference read, James Weldon Johnson, Along this Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (Penguin Books 1933); Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (Henry Holt 2004)
Excerpts from Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing performed by the Morris Brown College Concert Choir, Glynn E. Halsey, Director, Barbara McNeely-Bouie, Accompanist. Arranged by Roland Harper. (Copyright © 1983).
Legal Figure Bio:
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) 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. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture.
He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life, he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University, a historically black university.
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Podcast Team:
Terrass “Razz” Misher, Producer, Podcast-on-the-Go, LLC
Mia Mance, Social Media Communications, Mia Talks, LLC
Marvin Cummings, Special Voice Talent
Derrick Alexander Pope, J.D., Host
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