The Book of American Negro Poetry

James Weldon Johnson

• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781513287423
• eBook ISBN: 9781513287423
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) is an anthology by James Weldon Johnson. Alongside some of his own poems, Johnson includes the work of such legendary artists as Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Carefully selected and supported with a masterful preface by Johnson, the poems herein reflect a range of voices, styles, and subjects drawn from tradition and experience alike. In his preface, Johnson justifies his anthology by identifying its vital purpose: "The public, generally speaking, does not know that there are American Negro poets—to supply this lack of information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's effort." And the effort was his. In his poem "O Black and Unknown Bards, " he asks "O black and unknown bards of long ago, / How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?" Recognizing the need for a reconciliation between the long tradition of black culture and the overwhelming erasure of his own contemporary artists, Johnson highlights the efforts of those poets who "Within [their] dark-kept soul[s], burst into song." Like Johnson himself, many of the poets included in The Book of American Negro Poetry work in a variety of voices, moving expertly from dialect to the traditional lyric in poems that harness the spirit of song and sermon alike. To borrow the words of Joseph S. Cotter Jr., a poet included in this anthology, these poems are elemental in their power to rejuvenate an exclusive national culture, and they "Rise and fall triumphant / Over every thing." With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of James Weldon Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• James Edwin Campbell
• James D. Corrothers
• Daniel Webster Davis
• William H.A. Moore
• W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
• George Marion McClellan
• William Stanley Braithwaite
• George Reginald Margetson
• James Weldon Johnson
• John Wesley Holloway
• Leslie Pinckney Hill
• Edward Smyth Jones
• Ray G. Dandridge
• Fenton Johnson
• R. Nathaniel Dett
• Georgia Douglas Johnson
• Claude Mckay
• Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.
• Roscoe C. Jamison
• Jessie Fauset
• Anne Spencer
• Alex Rogers
• Waverley Turner Carmichael
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson
• Charles Bertram Johnson
• Otto Leland Bohanan
• Theodore Henry Shackleford
• Lucian B. Watkins
• Benjamin Brawley
• Joshua Henry Jones, Jr.
• Appendix. Plácido’s Sonnet to his Mother
• A Note About the Author
• A Note from the Publisher