The Tale of a Kitten

By James Weldon Johnson

Annotations by Karen L. Kilcup

Beatitude, by Henriette Ronner-Knip, 1899. Public domain.
Courtesy thegreatcat.org.

 Louie! Louie! little dear!
 Louie! Louie! Don’t you hear?
 Don’t hold the cat up by her tail;
 Its strength might of a sudden fail.
 Then, oh, what a pity!
 You would have a little kitty,
 Wandering around all forlorn,
 Of her pride and beauty shorn,
 And not knowing what to do,
 But to sit alone and mew;
 For like a ship without a sail,
 Would be a cat without a tail.

Cat sitting on a pillow Henriette Ronner-Knip 1904. thegreatcat.org — Cat sitting on a pillow. Henriette Ronner-Knip, 1904.
Public domain. Courtesy thegreatcat.org.

Johnson, James Weldon. “The Tale of a Kitten.” The Brownies’ book 1, no. 1 (January 1920): 32.

Contexts

Johnson’s poem appeared in the first issue of the Brownies’ Book, joining poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, William I. Wallace “(Aged twelve),” Robert Louis Stevenson, and the magazine’s poetry editor Jessie Fauset. World War I, in which many Black soldiers served—despite segregation in the military and terrible discrimination at home—had recently ended. Johnson was 48 years old when he published this poem, around the time he began serving as the NAACP’s (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Executive Secretary. Prominent in politics and the arts, he published Fifty Years & Other Poems in 1917, a collection for adults, three years before “The Tale of a Kitten” appeared. According to Rudolph P. Byrd, “From his father, James Johnson, born a freeman in 1830 in Richmond, Virginia, Johnson developed a love of reading. James Johnson gave his first-born a library comprised of children’s literature, which he kept until his death” (xvi).

Resources for Further Study

Byrd, Rudolph P., ed. The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson. New York: Modern Library, 2008. See Byrd’s introduction, xv-xvi.

“James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938.” Poetry Foundation.

“James Weldon Johnson, 1871-1938.” Poets.org.

Morrissette, Noelle. James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013.

Songwriters Hall of Fame, “James W. Johnson.”

Pedagogy

Listen to Johnson read “The Creation” at Fisk University on December 24, 1935.

Contemporary Connections

Blight, David W. “James Weldon Johnson’s Ode to the ‘Deep River” of American History: What an old poem says about the search for justice following the Capitol riot.” The New Republic, March 2, 2021.

Johnson authored “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a song that became known as “the Negro National Anthem.” Its many contemporary contexts include Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing, Beyoncé concerts, and President Barak Obama’s inauguration in 2009.