James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938) is, without exaggeration, the single most accomplished person ever to come from Jacksonville or Florida. Among other things, the LaVilla native was Florida’s first African American lawyer after Reconstruction; the principal of Stanton, which he converted into Florida’s first black public high school; a U.S. Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua; the first African American head of the NAACP; and a respected university professor. But even without these accomplishments, Johnson would have secured a place in history for his literary output.
