James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. Both his father James,
a resort hotel headwaiter, and his mother Helen Dillet Johnson, a schoolteacher, had lived in the North as free
blacks. James and his brother John grew up in cultured and economically secure surroundings that were unusual
among Southern black families at the time. Since high schools were closed to blacks in Jacksonville, Johnson
left home to attend both secondary school and college at Atlanta University, where he took his bachelor's
degree in 1894. -- more
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