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October 10, 2015
 

The Gift to Sing

 
James Weldon Johnson

About This Poem

 

“The Gift to Sing” was published in Johnson’s book Fifty Years & Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1917).

 

James Weldon Johnson was born on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1920 he became the national organizer for the NAACP. Johnson’s works include The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and Self-Determining Haiti (1920). He died on June 26, 1938.

 

Photo credit: Carl Van Vechten

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Poetry by Johnson

 

Complete Poems

(Penguin Books, 2000)

"The Banjo Player" by Fenton Johnson

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"I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman

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"With Music" by Helen Hay Whitney

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Poem-a-Day

 

Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.