God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson

First published: New York: Viking Press, 1927

Genre(s): Poetry

Subgenre(s): Lyric poetry; sermons

Core issue(s): African Americans; Creation; death; preaching

Overview

Although God’s Trombones carries the subtitle Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, it actually comprises nine sections: a preface, in which the author, James Weldon Johnson, explains the origins of his project and the logic behind it; a brief poem whose speaker is a prayer leader, perhaps a woman, calling on God to give wisdom to the preacher; and the sermons themselves. Each sermon is presented as both an authentic transcription of an oral performance and a lyric poem, capturing as much of the passion, the rhythm, and the pacing of “the old-time Negro preacher” as Johnson can capture with words, punctuation, and line breaks alone.

Johnson was a renowned teacher, newspaper editor, musician, politician, anthologist, and writer, perhaps best known as the composer of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known also as the Negro National Anthem. In 1927, when he wrote God’s Trombones, he was general secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and he had edited three landmark anthologies of African American poetry and spirituals. It had long been his intention to demonstrate to both white and black America that African Americans were capable of producing great intelligence, great wisdom, and great art. In God’s Trombones, written at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson honors the contributions of African American preachers and demonstrates the artistry of their preaching.

In his preface, Johnson recalls the sermons he heard as a child. In the African American church, he explains, many preachers delivered a series of basic sermons, using common themes and biblical texts but adapted and embellished with each preacher’s idiosyncratic imagery and oral skills. These preachers are compared to “trombones” rather than to other musical instruments, because the trombone, of all the wind instruments, most closely resembles the human voice in its range. One popular sermon that Johnson often heard began with the Creation and the fall of man, detailed the suffering of the Hebrew children during the Exodus, continued with the Passion of Christ and its promise of redemption, and concluded with the Judgment Day. It is this broad arc, with some diversions that Johnson traces through his seven sermons.

“The Creation” tells the Genesis story of Creation, from God’s making light out of darkness through the creation of the Sun, the Moon, land, water, and so on. It describes the creation of man from a lump of clay but ends before the creation of woman. After an opening that introduces God, the poem presents each day in the biblical creation story in roughly one poetic stanza. The language of the poem’s second stanza is typical of the whole work:

And far as the eye of God could seeDarkness covered everything,Blacker than a hundred midnightsDown in a cypress swamp.

The language is simple, clear, and solemn. Johnson uses line breaks to guide the reader, who he hopes will “intone” rather than simply read the sermons, to re-create the rhythm of the oral presentation. The imagery, of a cypress swamp, comes not from Genesis but from the southern rural experience of many in the supposed preacher’s congregation. Thus, Johnson’s preacher artfully infuses the biblical story with African American culture and experience to create a uniquely African American folk sermon.

Johnson steps out of his chronological pattern with the second sermon, “The Prodigal Son,” which opens with what has become a well-known line, “Your arm’s too short to box with God.” This sermon takes more liberties with the biblical story than did the first, combining elements of the Gospel accounts with language from other parts of the Bible and with more contemporary references. The prodigal son in the poem makes his way to Babylon, the city equated with sinfulness in Revelation but not mentioned in the Gospels. The temptations he finds there include women, drink, dice games, and “Brass bands and string bands a-playing.” In the original Viking edition, the illustration for “The Prodigal Son,” by Aaron Douglas, sets the parable clearly in a nightclub in 1920’s Harlem.

The third sermon is “Go Down Death: A Funeral Sermon,” spoken at the death of one Sister Caroline of Savannah, Georgia. Seeing her suffering, God summons Death to his Great White Throne and sends Death down to Earth to release Sister Caroline from her labors and bring her to her heavenly rest. “Noah Built the Ark” and “The Crucifixion,” sermons four and five, are stirring and lively accounts of the traditional stories. For the sixth sermon, “Let My People Go,” Johnson breaks his chronology again, looking back to the story of Moses and Pharaoh. The final sermon, “The Judgment Day,” the most raucous of the seven, is addressed to sinners, exhorting them to turn to God while there is still time.

A frequently discussed aspect of God’s Trombones is Johnson’s decision not to use conventional African American dialect in his sermons. As he makes clear in the preface, he knows that his readers expect the sermons to be written in this dialect. However, he explains, the “Old-time Negro preacher” was generally among the most educated members of his community, and preaching was an occasion for formal speech. The language of the sermons Johnson grew up hearing, and the language of the seven poems, is steeped in the language of the King James Bible. Because Johnson wished to capture his memories as accurately as possible and because he did not believe that dialect could express the range of emotion and power he needed for his sermons, he rejected dialect for God’s Trombones.

Christian Themes

Johnson’s preface to God’s Trombones traces the historical importance of the “old-time Negro preacher.” During and just after slavery, the preacher was a unifying focus for illiterate people who had come from different countries. As African American culture became more and more church-centered, the “narcotic doctrine” that worldly suffering is less significant than rewards in the afterlife was delivered and reinforced by preachers. Although during the eighteenth century whites and African Americans more frequently worshiped and preached together, Johnson writes that the creation of separate churches for African Americans presented new opportunities for leadership and for the development of art forms, including spiritual music and a distinct style of preaching.

Although Johnson was re-creating an African American art form, and although he was a leader in racial politics and the call for social justice, he avoided using the sermons as allegories to shame or accuse white readers or to call African American readers to action. For example, it would have been easy in “Let My People Go” to hint—subtly or not—at the parallels between the enslavement of the Hebrew children of God and the slavery of the African children of God in the United States. That parallel was already firmly drawn, established in spirituals and tales. In this sermon, however—unlike some of the others—Johnson uses little contemporary language or imagery, setting his Hebrew children solidly in Egypt and Israel and referring to weapons, crops, and plagues that clearly did not arise from the American South. In the entire eight-page poem, the longest in the volume, only the single word “overseers” echoes the language of the American slave experience. The language and imagery specific to African American culture in God’s Trombones is there for artistic and religious, not for political, purposes.

Sources for Further Study

Carroll, Anne. “Art, Literature, and the Harlem Renaissance: The Messages of God’s Trombones.” College Literature 29, no. 3 (Summer, 2002): 57-82.

Fleming, Robert E. James Weldon Johnson. Boston: Twayne, 1987. An overview of Johnson’s life and work, with a chronology and an annotated bibliography.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Gates argues that Johnson’s assessment of the power of dialect is too negative.

Haskins, James, ed. Keeping the Faith: African American Sermons of Liberation. New York: Welcome Rain, 2002. This anthology presents “Go Down Death” and eighteen sermons by other preachers, including the old-style train story, “The Sermon,” that Johnson cites as a model.

Kostelanetz, Richard. Politics in the African American Novel: James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Levy, Eugene. James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. The first full-length biography of Johnson. Levy’s analysis of God’s Trombones focuses on Weldon’s avoidance of racial and socioeconomic themes or references in the sermons.

Marren, Susan, and Robert Cochran. “Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.” The Explicator 60, no. 3 (Spring, 2002): 147-149.

Price, Kenneth M., and Lawrence J. Oliver, eds. Critical Essays on James Weldon Johnson. New York: G. K. Hall, 1997. Seven of the essays in this volume briefly analyze God’s Trombones, particularly Johnson’s use of dialect.

Rottenberg, Catherine. “Race and Ethnicity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and The Rise of David Levinsky: The Performative Difference.” MELUS 29, nos. 3/4 (Fall/Winter, 2004): 307-321.

Ruotolo, Cristina L. “James Weldon Johnson and the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Musician.” American Literature 72, no. 2 (June, 2000): 249-274.

Sacher, Jack. “James Weldon Johnson and the Poetry of God’s Trombones.” The Choral Journal 40, no. 1 (1999): 25.

Schulz, Jennifer L. “Restaging the Racial Contract: James Weldon Johnson’s Signatory Strategies.” American Literature 74, no. 1 (March, 2002): 31-58.