Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson.

JOHNSON, James Weldon.

Item Number: 96255

New York : The Viking Press, 1933.

First edition of the American civil rights activist’s autobiography. Octavo, original cloth, engraved frontispiece portrait of Johnson, illustrated with black and white photographs by Carl Van Vechten and Doris Ulmann as well as a caricature of Johnson by Covarrubias. Signed by James Weldon Johnson on the front free endpaper. In very good condition. First editions are uncommon signed.

American author, lawyer, and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he began working in 1917. He additionally established himself as a notable author of the Harlem Renaissance and in 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University.