J. Rosamond Johnson

John Rosamond Johnson (August 11, 1873 – November 11, 1954), most often referred to as J. Rosamond Johnson, was an American composer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson is most notable as the composer of the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing" which has come to be known in the United States as the "Negro National Anthem". His brother, the poet James Weldon Johnson, wrote the lyrics of the famous piece. It was first performed live by 500 Black American students from the segregated Stanton School (elementary/middle/junior high-level), Jacksonville, FL, in 1900. The song was published by Joseph W. Stern & Co., Manhattan, New York (later the Edward B. Marks Music Company).

He was born on August 11, 1873. He was the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and James Johnson. John's maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including (John Rosamond Johnson's grandfather), Stephen Dillet (1797-1880). Although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were brought to Nassau, Bahamas instead. There they permanently settled. Stephen Dillet was the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature in 1833 (ref. Along this Way, James Weldon Johnson's autobiography).

Johnson was trained at the New England Conservatory and then studied in London. His career began as an interesting public school teacher in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. Travelling to New York, he began his show business career along with his brother and Bob Cole. As a songwriting team, they wrote works such as The Evolution of Ragtime (1903). Among the earliest works by the group, this was a suite of six songs of "Negro" music. They produced two successful Broadway operettas with casts of black actors: Shoo-Fly Regiment of 1906 and The Red Moon of 1908. Johnson also performed in them. He played a Tuskegee soldier that enlists in the Spanish American War in The Shoo Fly Regiment and portrayed African American Plunk Green opposite Abbie Mitchell’s Minnehaha, a mixed Indian/black woman, in The Red Moon. These performances went beyond theatre. Rosamund, alongside his brother and Cole, evoked a political presence in their inclusion of other races in their musicals. In The Red Moon, Cole and Johnson broke racial lines as they included a love scene between Rosamund’s Green and Mitchell’s Minnehaha. This spotlight on Native Americans was so well received that Rosamund was inducted as a ‘sub-chief’ into the Iroquois tribe of Montreal’s Caugnawago Reservation.

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