With God’s Trombones, James Weldon Johnson ensured the survival of a rich oral tradition. Young adult readers will note that each verse is a scene engagingly employing rhetorical word clusters, winsome sensory images, charming figures of speech, and measured rhythmical beats made for enjoyable reading and dramatizations. Being a mediator between the divine and mortals, Johnson’s preacher is not a trickster figure bent on power, vanity, or lechery. It is not by happenstance that the character of Reverend Shegog in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury (1929), published two years after God’s Trombones, suggests Johnson’s preacher, rather than such earlier characters as Dunbar’s Reverend Parker. The enduring appeal of Johnson’s book resides in its moral suasion.