Georgia Johnson
Georgia Douglas Johnson was a notable African American poet, playwright, and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, born in Atlanta, Georgia, with a mixed heritage. Her upbringing was marked by solitude, which influenced her artistic expression. Johnson graduated from Atlanta University Normal School and pursued music studies at the Oberlin Conservatory and Cleveland College of Music. She married Henry Lincoln Johnson in 1903, who supported her literary ambitions despite conventional expectations of gender roles.
Her poetry collections, including *The Heart of a Woman* and *Bronze: A Book of Verse*, explored themes of love, loneliness, and the complexities of race and gender dynamics. Johnson's plays were often politically charged, addressing issues such as racial violence, yet faced challenges in publication. She fostered a vibrant cultural community in Washington, D.C., with her salon attracting prominent writers and thinkers of the time. Throughout her life, Johnson contributed significantly to literary discourse through her published works and radio broadcasts, although much of her oeuvre remains lesser-known due to destruction after her passing in 1966.
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Georgia Johnson
Poet
- Born: September 10, 1886
- Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia
- Died: May 14, 1966
- Place of death: Washington, D.C.
Biography
Georgia Douglas Johnson was born on September 10 in either 1866 or 1877, based upon conflicting records of her birth. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Laura Jackson Camp, who was of African American and Native American heritage, and George Camp, whose ancestors were white and African American. The light-complexioned girl was solitary and lonely during her public school years in Rome, Georgia.
Johnson graduated from Atlanta University Normal School in 1893 and became a teacher and assistantprincipal. In 1902, she enrolled in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and she later studied harmony, piano, voice, and violin at the Cleveland College of Music. In 1903, she married Henry Lincoln Johnson, a staunch Republican son of former slaves whose career path led them to Washington, D.C., in 1910 when President William Howard Taft appointed him recorder of deeds. He died suddenly in 1925, leaving his wife with two young sons to raise and educate. Henry, Jr., eventually graduated from Bowdoin College and Harvard Law School, and Peter graduated from Dartmouth University and earned a medical degree at Howard University.
By the time of her husband’s death, Johnson had already published two volumes of poetry and was considered one of the premiere writers of the day, certainly the most widely known black female poet. Though her husband had hoped for a traditional wife, mother, and housekeeper, he supported her endeavors, keeping his resentments at bay and even quoting from some of her works in his political speeches.
Johnson’s first book of poetry, The Heart of a Woman, and Other Poems, touched on nature, love, sorrow, loneliness, and difficulties experienced by women in a time of white and masculine supremacy. At the time of their publication in 1918, some critics found these poems safely sentimental, but in later years reviewers noted hints of quiet sedition and feminist discontent in Johnson’s work. Complaints that she had not directly dealt with racial matters led her to publish a second volume, Bronze: A Book of Verse, in which she examined interracial relationships and the problems of raising children in a racist society.
Her plays also dealt with racial issues, containing plots that were so realistic and unsettling that she had difficulty getting them published or produced. The Federal Theater Project’s selection committee rejected five of her submissions, maintaining her plays about rape, slaves seeking freedom, and a mother strangling her newborn son to spare him any future threats of lynching were too politically charged. However, her play Blue Blood, about the rape of black women by white men in the South after the Civil War, eventually was produced in 1927. The play earned her an honorable mention in a competition sponsored by Opportunity magazine. Her next play, Plumes, was produced in 1928 and won first prize in the magazine’s contest.
Johnson was an instrumental figure in the Harlem Renaissance, reflecting the fact that the literary movement was not limited to New York City. She established a salon at her Washington, D.C., home where writers, artists, and intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston, gathered on Saturday nights to discuss their works and issues of the day and enjoy lavish refreshments. For forty years, these gatherings, called Saturday Nighters, were an important feature of the Washington cultural scene.
From 1926 to 1932, Johnson wrote a weekly column, “Homely Philosophy,” that was published in newspapers across the country. During World War II, she read her works on radio broadcasts. Much of her poetry was either unpublished or was written under the pseudonyms Paul Tremaine or John Temple. Upon her death on May 14, 1966, much of her work was destroyed by workers and possibly family members.