SOURCE: A Review of Fifty Years and Other Poems, in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. III, No. 2, April, 1918, pp. 202-203.

In the following review, Brawley lauds "the simple, direct, and sometimes sensuous expression" of several poems in Johnson's Fifty Years, and Other Poems.

From time to time for the last fifteen years Mr. James Weldon Johnson has been remarked as one of the literary men of the race. He has now brought together his verses in a little volume, Fifty Years and Other Poems, an introduction to which has been written by Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia University. The task was eminently worth while.

The book falls into two parts. The first is made up of poems in the commonly accepted forms, though there are one or two examples of vers libre; and the second is entitled Jingles and Croons. This second division consists of dialect verses...