The Gift to Sing - James Weldon Johnson

[Lawrence Robinson]

The Gift to Sing
			


Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,

And blackening clouds about me cling;

But, oh, I have a magic way

To turn the gloom to cheerful day—

     I softly sing.
 

And if the way grows darker still,

Shadowed by Sorrow’s somber wing,

With glad defiance in my throat, 

I pierce the darkness with a note,

     And sing, and sing.
 

I brood not over the broken past,

Nor dread whatever time may bring;

No nights are dark, no days are long,

While in my heart there swells a song, 

     And I can sing.

	- James Weldon Johnson



James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He distinguished himself equally as a man of letters and as a civil rights leader in the early decades of the 20th century. A talented poet and novelist, Johnson brought a high standard of artistry and realism to Black literature in such works as God’s Trombones (1927) and The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man(1912). His pioneering studies of Black poetry, music, and theater in the 1920s introduced many white Americans to the rich African American creative spirit, hitherto known mainly through the distortions of the minstrel show and dialect poetry. Meanwhile, as head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the 1920s, Johnson led determined civil rights campaigns in an effort to remove the legal, political, and social obstacles hindering Black achievement.