James Weldon Johnson

"Father, Father Abraham, To-day look on us from above; On us, the offspring of thy faith, The children of thy Christ-like love."

"Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea."

"Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst."

"We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered."

"The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them."

"The glory of the day was in her face, The beauty of the night was in her eyes."

"It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic."

"O black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire? How, in your darkness, did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrels lyre?"

"Whose starward eye Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, “Nobody knows de trouble I see”?"

"How would you have us, as we are? Or sinking neath the load we bear? Our eyes fixed forward on a star? Or gazing empty at despair?"

"You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed Still live,—but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ."

"I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull;—and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong."