Fall Reading

        In the course of reading Negroland,  a recent memoir by Margo Jefferson,  I followed a trail back through James Baldwin to James Weldon Johnson, who not only wrote  The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, which is fiction, but a true autobiography, Along This Way, which is even more interesting.   Johnson not only trained as a lawyer, founded and served as principal of the first colored high school in his hometown, Jacksonville FL, wrote songs for New York musical theater  with his brother and other friends but was fluent in Spanish and served as a  U.S. Consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua in the early years of the twentieth century after a stint at the fledgling NAACP.  A fascinating life,  written in a conversational style that seems entirely modern. I only knew him as the author of the poem that became the "Negro National Anthem",   "Lift Every Voice and Sing".  His brother set the poem to music.   The autobiography  also gives some context for the recent furor about Woodrow Wilson.  Johnson talks about how Teddy Roosevelt, (before Taft, before Wilson)  appointed many blacks to prominent government posts, so many that they were called his "Negro Cabinet".    The NY Times headline, "Wilson legacy gets complicated" is misleading.   Wilson's legacy has always been complicated.