STATE OF MAINE
_____
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD
TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-FOUR
_____
JOINT RESOLUTION RECOGNIZING JUNE 17, 2024 AS JAMES
WELDON JOHNSON DAY
WHEREAS, James Weldon Johnson was a novelist and poet, songwriter, educator,
attorney, journalist, diplomat and civil rights leader; and
WHEREAS, Johnson began his career as an educator in rural Georgia, where he taught
the descendants of former slaves and eventually became principal of Stanton, a school for
African American students, where he was paid half of what white colleagues were paid; and
WHEREAS, while working as a teacher, he studied law, becoming the first African
American to be admitted to the Florida Bar since Reconstruction; and
WHEREAS, Johnson's gifts in poetry and music led him to join his younger brother's
popular music trio in New York City in 1901, where he helped to write many of their songs;
and
WHEREAS, Johnson entered the United States Consular Service in 1906 and served for
7 years as a diplomat, beginning in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and then in 1909 taking a post
in Corinto, Nicaragua, where he successfully navigated an attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan
government through skilled negotiation; and
WHEREAS, Johnson became the first African American professor to be hired at New
York University in 1934, and he later served as a professor of creative literature and writing at
Fisk University, a historically Black university; and
WHEREAS, Johnson was involved with the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, NAACP, from 1916 through the end of his life, serving as field secretary,
executive secretary and as a vice president, helping to lead the fight against racial
discrimination, segregation, violence and lynching; and
WHEREAS, Johnson became a key artistic figure in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s,
continuing to publish notable collections of poems and spirituals, and is known in particular
for writing the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which he wrote to celebrate the 50th
anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and which became known as the Black National
Anthem due to its enormous importance to African Americans; and
WHEREAS, in 1938, Johnson's life was cut short when he and his wife, Grace Nail
Johnson, were returning from visiting a friend on Islesboro to their home in Florida and their
car was struck by a train in Wiscasset, killing him and grievously injuring his wife; and
WHEREAS, following his death, his wife donated her husband's papers to the Yale
University Library and helped to establish the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of
African American Arts and Letters in the Yale Collection of American Literature, which joins
other national commemorative landmarks and institutes; and
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 WHEREAS, in the 130th Legislature, June 17th was designated as James Weldon Johnson
Day, a result of a joint effort of those in his home state of Florida and the State of Maine; now,
therefore, be it
RESOLVED: That We, the Members of the One Hundred and Thirty-first Legislature now
assembled in the Second Regular Session, on behalf of the people we represent, take this
opportunity to recognize June 17, 2024 as James Weldon Johnson Day and to honor his
remarkable achievements and his ongoing commitment to racial equity and progress.
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