News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: December 18, 1999
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Director

PROMINENT CLERGY GATHER AT EMORY FEB. 28 TO PERFORM JAMES WELDON JOHNSON'S "GOD'S TROMBONES" TO HONOR U.S. REP. JOHN LEWIS

Emory University will honor U.S. Rep. John Lewis with a performance of Johnson's God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28 in Glenn Memorial Auditorium. Lewis will be presented with the President's Medal on this occasion in recognition of his contributions to Georgia and the civil rights movement. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 404-727-2245.

The readings will be delivered by the Rev. Teresa Fry Brown, the Rev. Gerald L. Durley, the Rev. Barbara L. King, the Right Rev. Othal H. Lakey, the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, the Rev. Joseph L. Roberts Jr., the Rev. C.T. Vivian and the Right Rev. McKinley Young. Dwight D. Andrews, associate professor of music at Emory and senior minister of First Congregational United Church of Christ, will preside. Carol R. Mitchell, director of theater at Clark Atlanta University, is consulting director. Music selections will be performed by members of the Ben Hill United Methodist Church choir, with Johnetta Johnson Page directing.

Johnson's collection of poems, published in 1927, was inspired by both his childhood memories of sermons he had heard and a remarkable sermon he witnessed as an adult. "An electric current ran through the crowd. It was in a moment alive and quivering; and all the while the preacher held it in the palm of his handBefore he had finished I took a slip of paper and somewhat surreptitiously jotted down some ideas for the first poem," wrote Johnson in the preface to God's Trombones. "These poems would better be intoned than readBut the intoning practiced by the old-time preacher is a thing next to impossible to describe; it must be heard, and it is extremely difficult to imitate even when heard," he wrote.

Lewis will be presented with the President's Medal by Emory President William M. Chace. The medal was commissioned in 1995 by Chace to honor individuals whose impact on the world has enhanced the dominion of peace or has enlarged the range of cultural achievement. Previous recipients are His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama (1995); His Excellency Carlos Saul Menem, president of Argentina (1996); and His All Holiness Bartholomew, ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Christian Church (1997).

The occasion also marks the opening of the James Weldon Johnson Collection, recently acquired by the special collections department of Emory's Robert W. Woodruff Library, making the material available for scholarly research.

The complete program is as follows:

God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse

A tribute to the Honorable John Lewis

"Listen, Lord­­A Prayer"

Read by the Right Rev. Othal H. Lakey, presiding bishop, sixth Episcopal district, CME Church

Song: Let It Breathe on Me

The Creation"

Read by the Rev. Barbara L. King, founder/minister of Hillside Chapel and Truth Center, Inc.

"The Prodigal Son"

Read by the Rev. Joseph Echols Lowery, president emeritus, Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Song: Sinner, Please Don't Let Dis Harves' Pass

"Go Down Death­­A Funeral Sermon"

Read by the Rev. C.T. Vivian, chairman, Basic Action Strategies and Information Center

Song: Death's Gwineter Lay His Cold Icy Hands on Me

"Noah Built the Ark"

Read by the Rev. Teresa Fry Brown, assistant professor of homiletics, Emory's Candler School of Theology

"The Crucifixion"

Read by the Rev. Gerald L. Durley, pastor, Providence Missionary Baptist Church

Song: Were You There When They Crucified My Lord

"Let My People Go"

Read by the Right Rev. McKinley Young, ecumenical and urban affairs officer, AME Church

Song: Go Down, Moses

"The Judgment Day"

Read by the Rev. Joseph L. Roberts Jr., senior pastor, Ebenezer Baptist Church

Choir and audience: Lift Every Voice and Sing