Maine has made every June 17 James Weldon Johnson Day, noting state's link to his death

On June 26, 1938, James Weldon Johnson was killed and his wife, Grace Nail Johnson, was badly injured when a train struck the car they were driving in an early morning deluge in the quaint little town of Wiscasset, Maine.

The accident was news in Maine for a while: Johnson was a well-known Renaissance man, "one of the most distinguished Negroes in the country," as the local Lincoln County newspaper put it back then. But time and people move on, and his death was largely forgotten in Wiscasset.

No longer: Almost 84 years after the accident, the state of Maine and Wiscasset itself are now preparing to honor the legacy of Johnson, one of the most accomplished people to ever come out of Jacksonville — and an occasional summer visitor to Maine.

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The state has declared June 17, the date of his birth, to be James Weldon Johnson Day, which will be an annual commemoration. This year there are three days of activities, including the preview screening of a documentary on Johnson and his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, with whom he wrote "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," first performed by Stanton School students in Jacksonville in 1900.

After the documentary there will be a panel discussion featuring two Jacksonville men who traveled to Maine to try to make this all happen.

The effort began in the fall of 2020 when Tony Hill, a former state senator from Jacksonville, traveled to Wiscasset to see where Johnson had died. It was something he felt compelled to do, he said: He just wanted to stand on the spot where his hero was killed.

That quickly led to an introduction to Maine Rep. Rachel Talbot Ross, a ninth-generation Mainer who is the first and only Black woman elected to that state legislature. She soon introduced legislation to make June 17 James Weldon Johnson Day in the state.

'Embraced his story'

Hill — who's now running for U.S. representative in a newly redrawn Northeast Florida district — returned to Wiscasset in the fall of 2021.

This time he went with Jacksonville developer Tony Allegretti, a self-described "James Weldon Johnson zealot" who, when he was head of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, had in his office a big mural depicting Johnson. He too had made a pilgrimage to Wiscasset, a few years earlier.

On their return trip, they met with locals to try to figure how best to commemorate his life, a meeting that made the local newspapers.

Both Jacksonville men say they've been impressed by the actions of the largely white state, where less than 2% of residents are Black.

"People up there have embraced his story," Allegretti said. "They’ve dug in and really made it a thing."

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"They've been outstanding," Hill said.

Hill and Allegretti serve on Maine's James Weldon Johnson Day Task Force, created by a group that Talbot Ross co-chairs, Maine's Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous and Tribal Populations.

“A true Renaissance man, Johnson was a novelist and poet, a songwriter, an educator, an attorney and a diplomat," Talbot Ross said in a statement. "He was also a leader in the NAACP during its early years and an outstanding voice in combating racism in our country. During his decade as executive secretary of the organization, he led the fight against racial discrimination, segregation, violence and lynching.”

In Maine there has been some opposition to creating a monument to someone who wasn't from the state, said Meadow Dibble, who guides the Johnson task force and is director of community-engaged research for the commission headed by Talbot Ross.

“The reality is, here in Maine, so many of us are from away, as they say," Dibble said. "And the fact that James Weldon Johnson chose Maine as a destination, as a Black man in the ‘30s, that he felt this was a place where he could find solace and respite from his very active career, both in the arts and as a leader in the civil rights movement, is something to celebrate.”

The June 17 commemoration, coming just two days before the new federal holiday of Juneteenth, is also a chance, she said, for Maine to reflect on its past and on New England's involvement in the slave trade. "We know that Maine has a Black history," she said. "It simply has been obfuscated over the centuries."

A meaningful life

Johnson, who grew up in Jacksonville, was the first Black lawyer in Florida since Reconstruction, the U.S. consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua, a poet and novelist, a professor, a political activist and an influential muckraking journalist and editorial writer.

He also was a leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which adopted "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" as its official song. It's often called the Black national anthem and was sung before kickoff of at every NFL game on opening day in 2020.

That same year, Jacksonville renamed downtown's Hemming Park, which bore the name of a Confederate soldier, after him. That decision came two months after Mayor Lenny Curry ordered the removal of a towering bronze statue of a Confederate soldier from the center of the park across from City Hall.

The city is also developing Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing Park in LaVilla, close to downtown, where the Johnson brothers were born.

J. Rosamond Johnson's granddaughter, Melanie Edwards, is traveling from her home in New York City to Wiscasset, where she will make remarks. She too is aware that not everyone in Maine was in favor of celebrating someone from out of state. But she's heartened by the support the effort has received.

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"I'll be pointing out that the things that he stood for are always relevant and timely. By them memorializing him, I'm grateful," she said. "In his death they have an opportunity to keep the conversation about rights and civil rights and social activism front and center."

'Something that meant something'

The spot where James Weldon Johnson was killed is now next to Red's Eats, a popular seafood shack on the Sheepscot River that on summer days is often the site of big traffic bottlenecks on Main Street.

“A couple of Trailways will roll up, park, and a couple of hundred people will line up for an hour-and-a-half around the block," said Wiscasset resident Terry Heller. "It’s supposed to be the number one lobster roll in the world.”

Heller is on the town's board of selectmen, and one of the locals on the James Weldon Johnson task force. In 1938, she said, buildings came right up the street where the railroad line — which is still in operation — crossed Main Street. That would have made it difficult for the Johnsons to see a train in the dark of early morning in heavy rain. A later investigation also found that the crossing arm had not gone down as it should have.

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Heller said the state is looking into putting a plaque in Wiscasset to note Johnson's death there. For now, there will be a tree planted in his name near a new bench, made by Dusty Jones, an experienced woodworker and fellow board of selectmen member.

They'll be on the town common, which looks down toward the Sheepscot River and the railroad tracks where Johnson was killed.

Heller likes the symbolism of the location. It's near the Lincoln County courthouse and the town's historic public library, and behind the bench is a Congregational church, "a quintessential New England white-steepled church."

“It’s an intersection of three major parts of his life — a lawyer, a writer and a spiritual man," she said.

Heller was enthusiastic about honoring Johnson as soon as she found out Wiscasset's connection him. "I wanted people to know of our interest in linking his life with our community and the Jacksonville community," she said.

Last fall at the meeting in the community center where plans for James Weldon Johnson Day were discussed, Heller played piano while "the Tonys" — Hill and Allegretti — read the lyrics to the Johnson brothers' "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

It was a moving moment, she recalls. "In measuring how something can impact people, you look at their faces. Their eyes were misting, they had tears in their eyes," she said. "It really meant a lot to us that we were going to do something that meant something."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Maine to honor Jacksonville's James Weldon Johnson every year