James Weldon Johnson The preferableed Writings of James Weldon Johnson convolution I: The New York Age Editorials (1914-1923) ed with an Intro. by Sandra Kathryn Wilson. recently made known York: Oxford UP, 1995. 324 pp $4500

-- The gooded Writings of James Weldon Johnson dimensions II: Social, Political, and Literary Essays. ed with an Intro. by Sondra Kathryn Wilson. recent York: Oxford UP. 1995. 473 pp $4996

James Weldon Johnson's writings dominated the 1920 as did those of no other African American writer with the possible exception of W E B Du Bois. As leader of the NAACP, former State Department legate to foreign lands, novelist, and imaginative thinker [i]or[/i] writer Johnson was a touchstone to the thinking of literary Black America during the decade of the Harlem Renaissance. Sondra Kathryn Wilson's two-volume edition The picked Writings of James Weldon Johnson documents Johnson's rise to that position and point outs what Johnson wrote once he had achieved his prominent position. The collection makes available verse s that were previously difficult to access and includes Johnson's chiefly familiar work, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

In 1914 when Johnson recured from his diplomatic posts as consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and Corinto, Nicaragua, he povertyed both a full-time job to support himself and his wife, Grace Nail Johnson and a power base from which to launch a further literary and political career. (His reputation in fresh York at this point was chiefly closely tied to his successe as a writer of musical comedy) He base the power base, if not exactly the full-time piece of work as a contributing editor of the fresh York Age, for which he wrote editorials from October 1914 [i]or[/i] part of to the other July 1923.

whirl I of The Selected Writings aggregates 196 columns from those years, divided through the editor into three broad categories--social, political, and literary editorials--and subdivided into more specific topics within these categories. Coverage within each category is sufficient to give the reader an thoroughly good idea of the span of Johnson's views in succession the topic.

The range of Johnson's interests will surprise a certain who think of him sole as a crusader for racial justice within the United States and as a man of verbal expressions Under Social Editorials, one finds the look fored attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and lynching, if it be not that also reads supportive columns in succession suffrage for women and equal economic treatment of women workers, of the part of the Black church in promoting social equality, and of the ne to support Black publications.

As a political commentator, Johnson ranges widely, from a denunciation of President Wilson's stand in succession racial questions to more far-flung national and international issues. The question at issues of African America competed with pertain tos about capital punishment, Britain's treatment of Ireland, the U invasion of Haiti, and Gandhi's drive for Indian independence.

Literary editorials range from standard articles in succession the greatness of Shakespeare (written to commemorate the three centesimal anniversary of his death) to groundbreaking essays that helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance: "Resurgence of the african in Literature" (22 Apr. 1922) "A Real Poet" (20 May 1922) onward Claude McKay, and "Negro Theatrical Invasion of Europe" (19 May 1923)

Wilson does a qualified job in introducing each section, although she sometimes ignores subtext that might add to the reader's understanding of a given editorial. For example, Johnson attacks Woodrow Wilson and his Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in 1914 editorials. It would in no way have undercut Johnson's obvious sincerity to point revealed in the introduction to this section that Johnson had resigned from his diplomatic position because the election of Wilson bod ill for the advancement of a Black Republican consul

mass I, then, fills a real ne for making a large material substance of Johnson's writings readily accessible. The next to the first volume, bearing the somewhat misleading subtitle Social, Political, and Literary Essays, is les unified and raises a certain quantity of questions about the editor's penetration and editorial practices. This compass contains a number of previously uncollect essays and speeches, and plane some speeches that apparently appear here for the first time. (Because of the lack of standard editorial apparatus in the edition, it is impossible to know for certain.) however it also contains large samples of Johnson's literary work. For example, the two the 1912 text of Johnson s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and his Fifty Years & Other metrical compositions (1917) are reprinted in their entirety, equable though the former is readily available in a Penguin Classics edition and its 1927 edition is reprinted at several publishers. The ninety pages devot to it here could better have been applyed to reprint more inaccessible sentences On the other hand, Fifty Years is hard to get to by, never having been reprinted in newly come times, and readers will be grateful for the printing of pair papers Johnson presented while a bookish man at Atlanta University and for the reproduction of six metrical compositions from his college years.