On June 26, 1938, James Weldon Johnson was killed and his wife, Grace Nail Johnson, was badly injured when a train struck the car they were driving in an early morning deluge in the quaint little town of Wiscasset, Maine.
The accident was news in Maine for a while: Johnson was a well-known Renaissance man, "one of the most distinguished Negroes in the country," as the local Lincoln County newspaper put it back then. But time and people move on, and his death was largely forgotten in Wiscasset.
No longer: Almost 84 years after the accident, the state of Maine and Wiscasset itself are now preparing to honor the legacy of Johnson, one of the most accomplished people to ever come out of Jacksonville — and an occasional summer visitor to Maine.
Read the rest of this story at WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.