This selection of more than forty poems from a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance includes both uncompromising indictments of racial injustice and celebrations of the triumphs of African-Americans.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and...

2000 marks the centenary of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," James Weldon Johnson's most famous lyric, which is now embraced as the Negro National Anthem. In celebration, this Penguin original collects all the poems from Johnson's published works Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), God's Trombones (1927), and Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day (1935) along with a number of previously unpublished poems.

Sondra Kathryn Wilson, the foremost authority on Johnson and his work, provides an introduction that sheds light on Johnson's many achievements and his...

The autobiography of the celebrated African American writer and civil rights activist
Published just four years before his death in 1938, James Weldon Johnson's autobiography is a fascinating portrait of an African American who broke the racial divide at a time when the Harlem Renaissance had not yet begun to usher in the civil rights movement. Not only an educator, lawyer, and diplomat, Johnson was also one of the most revered leaders of his time, going on to serve as the first black president of the NAACP (which had previously been run only by whites), as well as write the...

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) would have been judged a successful man had he merely remained the principal of Stanton School in his hometown of Jacksonville, FL. Destiny led him, however, to become the first African-American to pass the Florida Bar exam, to win international acclaim as a songwriter, poet, novelist, diplomat, playwright, journalist, and champion of human rights. Since that time, though, his life and contributions have gone virtually unnoticed, except for his well-known song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

Johnson's dual role as civil rights leader and literary artist was...

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance
In 1923, the Urban League's Opportunity magazine made its first appearance. Spearheaded by the noted sociologist Charles S. Johnson, it became, along with the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis magazine, one of the vehicles that drove the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. As a way of attracting writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Johnson conducted literary contests that were largely funded by Casper Holstein, the infamous Harlem numbers gangster, who contributed
several essays in addition to money.
Dorothy West, Nella Larsen, and...

A selection of writings from The Messenger, a magazine of the Harlem Renaissance which reflected socialist ideology, includes works by Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

A "brassy yet deeply respectful book" (Publishers Weekly), this is a lively social history based on first-hand accounts of the legendary Hotel Theresa--one of the New York landmarks that established Harlem as a mecca of black culture.

In mid-twentieth century America, Harlem was the cultural capital of African America, and the Theresa was the place for black people to see and be seen. The hotel was known to have the hottest nightlife in the world and to be the only grand hotel in Manhattan that welcomed nonwhites. The thirteen-story building still stands on the historic corner of...