Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 14, 1966) was an African-American poet and playwright, who was an important member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966). Courtesy Amazon.com.

Life

Youth and education

Johnson was born in Atlanta to Laura (Douglass) and George Camp (her mother's last name is listed in other sources as Jackson). Her mother was of African- and Native American descent, and her father was of African-American and English heritage.

Much of Johnson's childhood was spent in Rome, Georgia. She received her education in both Rome and Atlanta, where she excelled in reading, recitations and physical education. She also taught herself to play the violin, which developed into a lifelong love of music.

Johnson graduated from Atlanta University's Normal School in 1896. She taught school in Marietta, Georgia for a time, then returned to Atlanta to work as an assistant principal. Johnson then traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to study piano, harmony, and voice. From 1902 to 1903, she attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Marriage and family

On September 28, 1903, Johnson married Henry Lincoln Johnson, an Atlanta lawyer and prominent Republican party member. They had 2 sons, Henry Lincoln Johnson, Jr. and Peter Douglas Johnson (d. 1957).

Career

The former residence of Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1461 S St. NW, Washington, D.C. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Johnson's husband accepted an appointment as the Recorder of Deeds from United States President William Howard Taft, and the family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1910. It was during this period that Johnson began to write poems and stories. She credits a poem written by William Stanley Braithwaite, about a rose tended by a child, as her inspiration for her poems.

She began to submit her poems to newspapers and small magazines. She published her earliest poem in 1916 when she was 36. She published 4 volumes of poetry, beginning in 1918 with The Heart of a Woman. Johnson also wrote songs, taught music, and performed as an organist at her Congregational church.

Johnson's husband died in 1925. She struggled at first with some temporary jobs. As a gesture of appreciation for her husband's loyalty and service to the Republican party, President Calvin Coolidge appointed her as the Commissioner of Conciliation in the Department of Labor.

Soon after her husband's death, Johnson began to host what became 40 years of weekly "Saturday Salons", for friends and authors, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Anne Spencer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Alain Locke, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimke and Eulalie Spence— all major contributors to the New Negro Movement, which is better known today as the Harlem Renaissance. She was especially close to the writer Angelina Grimke. Johnson called her home the "Half Way House" for friends traveling, and a place where they "could freely discuss politics and personal opinions."

She died in Washington, D.C., in 1966.

Recognition

In September 2009, it was announced that Johnson would be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Publications

Poetry

• The Heart of a Woman and other poems. Boston: Cornhill, 1918; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971; New York: AMS Press, 1975; Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010.
• Bronze: A book of verse.. Boston: B.J. Brimmer, 1922; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971; New York: AMS Press, 1975.
• An Autumn Love Cycle. New York: H. Vinal, 1928; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.
• Share My World: A book of poems. Washington, DC: Halfway House, 1962.

Plays

• Blue Blood: A play. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2001.
• Blue-Eyed Black Boy. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2001.
• A Sunday Morning in the South. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2001.
• Safe. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2001.
• Frederick Douglass. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2002.
• William and Ellen Craft. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2002.
• Plumes. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2003.
• The Starting Point. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2004.
• The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson: From the new Negro renaissance to the civil rights movement (edited by Robert E Williams & Judith L Stephens). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Collected editions

• The Selected Works of Georgia Douglas Johnson (edited by Claudia Tate). New York: G.K. Hall / London: Prentice Hall, 1997.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Harold Bloom, ed., Black American Women Poets and Dramatists (New York: Chelsea House, 1996).
• Gloria T. Hull, Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
• Judith Stephens, "'And Yet They Paused' and 'A Bill to Be Passed': Newly Recovered Lynching Dramas by Georgia Douglas Johnson", African American Review 33 (autumn 1999): 519-22.
• Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, 1989. ISBN 0-452-00981-2
• Judith Stephens, The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson:From The New Negro Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,2006)

External links

Poems

• Georgia Douglas Johnson at the Academy of American Poets: "Black Woman," "The Heart of a Woman," "I Want to Die While You Love Me," "Old Black Men"
• Georgia Douglas Johnson 1880-1966 at the Poetry Foundation

About

• "Georgia Douglas Johnson (ca.1877-1966)" in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• "Georgia Johnson" at ThoughtCo
• Georgia Douglas Johnson, poet and playwright of Harlem Renaissance at African American Registry
• Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966) at Modern American Poetry.