Little David Play Upon Your Harp
1933
Black-and-white lithograph
10” x 13” plate
One of the more striking men from the Eastern Shore is honored in this lithograph. Samuel Julius Johnson was a celebrated hoodoo, human pump, and singer. His place within the black community was sacred to the memory of many, a glass eater, metal bender, mind reader, and hoodoo. Johnson’s family had been on the Eastern Shore for centuries, and his manner spoke of a person who knew his origins and inherent strength. Johnson traveled to China, Scandinavia, and South America as a kind of human marvel working in the circus.
To the oppressed colored people, Goliath was the symbol of ruthless power. David, the shepherd boy, strolling through the fields making music, lives today in the countless musical marvels of the Negroes. On the Eastern Shore was Samuel Julius Johnson. He roamed the deep-ditched roads of Talbot County, dug deep by slave labor years ago to drain the flat land.
Samuel Julius Johnson was a genius of his kind. With a battered top hat and a banjo and his gift of ventriloquism he was received with mingled fear and joy into the kitchens of the manor houses. He sang and danced and made everyone laugh and frightened the Negro maids with his sudden animal noises coming out of dark corners, pantries or pies talking from inside the oven. No one knows if he is living or not—people still claim to have seen him on some sunny road. But in his songs, Samuel Julius Johnson the wandering minstrel lives forever.