One Hundred Sixty Years

A response to “Fifty Years” by James Weldon Johnson

FIFTY YEARS, 1863–1913

That for which millions prayed and sighed,
That for which tens of thousands fought,
For which so many freely died,
God cannot let it come to naught.

James Weldon Johnson, Fifty Years & Other Poems (available from Project Gutenberg)

One Hundred Sixty Years, 1863–2023

That for which untold millions fought
That for which their descendants cried
May we make good wrongs which foulness wrought
And honor our debt to those who died.

• Tom Tordillo, © 2023. All rights reserved.

James Weldon Johnson, poet, lawyer, and early leader of the NAACP.

Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces by Addie Hunton and Kathryn Johnson was published by Project Gutenberg on March 6, 2023, after originally being released in 1920.

I’ll share a few choice morsels from the book in the next few stories, since unlike some Project Gutenberg publications, I’m actually reading through this one.

Portions resonate with me. The authors opened their book with an incendiary the foreword, the authors state:

This volume is written at a time when, after the shock of terrific warfare, the world has not yet found its balance — when, in the midst of confusion, justice and truth call loudly for the democracy for which we have paid.

Hunton and Johnson, Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Force.

And then excerpt the portion from Johnson’s poem.

Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” is informally regarded as “the” Black National Anthem, but this piece from “Fifty Years” resonated with Hunton and Kathryn Johnson (no relation, so far as I’m aware).

The women who wrote Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Force spent months trying to rectify illiteracy among many of the Black troops who fought during World War I.

Whatever curriculum they developed, surely they adapted poems and songs available to them — including perhaps works by James Weldon Johnson. But I haven’t read through the book yet to the chapters in which they describe the operations of the literacy program they developed quite yet.

I have to confess though, in my imagination, I hear Oprah Winfrey’s and Viola Davis’ voices reading passages like the following in a sort of duet — mixing sass, spit, and snark with a knowing smile:

THERE are many American boys now who are quite familiar with the Louvre, Boulevards, Notre Dame and Napoleon’s Tomb at Paris but who know absolutely nothing of the Metropolitan Museum, Fifth Avenue and its Cathedral, or Grant’s Tomb.

Hunton and Johnson, “First Days in France,” from Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Force

Probably so. Perhaps the French were a bit more grateful toward those “American boys” than the New York City elites who preferred to keep them working behind the scenes at each of those locations. Grant’s Tomb in New York City is only a 5 minute walk or so from Harlem.

The many ports of France were particularly the home of the colored soldiers, so that landing at Bordeaux it did not seem strange to be greeted first of all by our own men. But it did seem passing strange that we should see them guarding German prisoners! Somehow we felt that colored soldiers found it rather refreshing — even enjoyable for a change — having come from a country where it seemed everybody’s business to guard them. (emph. added)

Hunton and Johnson, “First Days in France,” from Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Force