This post is about the James Weldon Johnson stamp. I though of this stamp yesterday when I was part of a #BlackLivesMatter rally in New York City. The event was in protest of police brutality, specifically, the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. During the event, the organizers led the crown in the song “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” As we sang, and many of us wept, I thought of the 1988 stamp featuring the song and its composer, James Weldon Johnson.
One of the first posts on this blog was dedicated to the 1940 series of postage stamps dedicated to American composers. In that post, I lamented that black composers such as Scott Joplin were not featured. The reality is that postage stamps in the United States failed to recognize the contributions of black musicians for far too long. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s that this began to be corrected: Joplin was featured in 1983, Duke Ellington in 1986, and James Johnson in 1988 among many others.
James Weldon Johnson
Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1871, and achieved success in many arenas. As a young man, he served as principal at the Edwin M. Stanton School in Jacksonville. Johnson moved to New York with his brother in 1901 to make their careers in show business. They wrote music for Broadway musicals. Johnson later attended Columbia University where he studied literature. He went on to write many poems, stories, and books. In 1912, he wrote the fictional novel The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man, which featured the black neighborhood in Harlem as well as the black community in Atlanta.
Johnson was a part of the Harlem Renaissance, and knew many of the influential black intellectuals of the period. Theodor Roosevel appointed him to a diplomatic post in Venezuala in 1906 and later in Nicaragua. Johnson returned to New York in 1914. He began working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1917. He served as the executive director of the organization from 1920 to 1930. Johnson was also the first African-American professor at New York University and in later years taught at Fisk University, an historically black university in Nashville.
In 1900, while Johnson was a principal in Florida, he wrote his famous poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” He wrote it to read when civil rights leader Booker T. Washington visited his school to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday. Five years later, Johnson’s brother J. Rosamond Johnson, set the poem to music. The song became popular with African-American communities across the country and ventually adopted by the NAACP as their anthem.
The Stamp
In 1978, the United States Postal Service began a the Black Heritage Stamp series. Every February, a stamp was released featuring a notable Black American in conjunction with Black History Month. James Johnson was selected to be honored on the 1988 stamp, released on February 2nd in Nashville. The stamp features a portrait of Johnson. In addition, it has the opening words and notes of his song “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Scott #2371
Even more than a century after the song has written, it remains powerful. As the organizers of yesterday’s protest understood, it is still a call to dismantle white supremacy and racism in the United States.
