We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
James Weldon JohnsonBut I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
James Weldon JohnsonMy love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage
James Weldon JohnsonThere are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.
James Weldon Johnson