James Weldon Johnson—born in 1871, died in 1938—school principal, journalist, lawyer, composer, librettist, poet, novelist, editor, social historian, literary critic, diplomat, civil rights worker, and, at the end of his life, professor—truly a "Renaissance man."
In 1917, Johnson became the field secretary for the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He founded local chapters both in the South and in other parts of the country, so that by the end of 1918, he had helped increase the membership of this organization from 10,000 to 44,000. In 1920, he was made the General Secretary of the NAACP, its chief operating officer. Then ten years later, in 1930, Johnson resigned from that post and became a professor of creative writing at Fisk University.
It was during Johnson's years with the NAACP that he wrote and published his most famous work, entitled God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. It was published in 1927, although the immediate stimulus for writing these poetic sermons had come to him in 1918.
He had been in Kansas City one Sunday, speaking about the NAACP at a number of black churches, and during his fifth service of the day, well on toward midnight, he was particularly moved by the stirring words of that day's final preacher.
This is how Johnson describes that experience in his preface to God's Trombones: "[The preacher] strode the pulpit up and down in what was actually a very rhythmic dance, and he brought into play the full gamut of his wonderful voice, a voice—what shall I say?—not of an organ or a trumpet, but rather of a trombone, the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voice—and with greater amplitude. He intoned, he moaned, he pleaded—he blared, he crashed, he thundered.... [T]he emotional effect upon me was irresistible. Before he had finished I took a slip of paper and somewhat surreptitiously jotted down some ideas for the first poem, 'The Creation.'"
The seven poetic "sermons" that constitute God's Trombones are written in free verse, and they make use of African rhythms and the intonations of southern folk idioms. That free-verse style enables Johnson to focus attention on the metaphoric and ironic creativity of the African-American oral tradition.
Each of the seven poetic "sermons" connects the world of Bible-based ideas to the everyday reality of the congregation, and it does so in a style that is a mixture of vibrant folk idiom, King James version grandeur, and splendid metaphor.
As for the role of the preacher in African-American society, Johnson goes on to say this in his preface: "It was through [the old-time Negro preacher] that the people of diverse languages and customs who were brought here from diverse parts of Africa and thrown into slavery were given their first sense of unity and solidarity. He was the first shepherd of this bewildered flock.... It was the old-time preacher who for generations was the mainspring of hope and inspiration for the Negro in America." And Johnson concludes his preface by saying: "The old-time Negro preacher is rapidly passing. I have here tried sincerely to fix something of him."
Today, as a central feature of our observance of Gifts of Men Sunday, Mr. Ruben Santiago will share with us two of the seven poetic "sermons" found in God's Trombones: the first, entitled "The Creation," and then the fourth, entitled "Noah Built the Ark."