James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938)

 
  (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938)

He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University.^[2] Later in life, he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University, a historically black university.