Georgia Douglas Johnson, one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance, was born on this day. She grew up in Georgia, attended college, and then became a teacher and vice principal. Her time of activity was somewhat concentrated: her major books were all published within a 10-year period (the late teens to the late 20s). She was very well-known as a playwright, a pioneer in the black theatre movement. Some of her plays were given radio productions, although many were never published or produced. Her plays were mostly attached to her anti-lynching activism, and she refused to coddle the audience with happy hopeful endings. Then and now, this was not a “commercial” attitude to have, and so her work suffered as a result. Contemporary historians have done a very good job of putting together a list of all of the plays she wrote – full-length, one-acts, etc. – and tracking down copies (although she clearly wrote more plays than have been found). Now, though, we get a better idea of her output (regardless of whether or not something was produced). She was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, AS central, if not MORE central, as many of the more well-known names.
Along with everything else, she maintained a weekly column in Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP.
She lived and worked in Washington DC, and opened up her home to visiting writers, activists, artists. She turned her house into a vibrant salon, which she kept up and running for 40+ years. Her salon was THE place to be, and THE place to visit if you were passing through DC: they all showed up: from Langston Hughes (my post about him here) to Jean Toomer (my post about him here). The Harlem Renaissance is associated with New York but that’s a category error in a way: Harlem was the hub, but its influence was felt around the world. People like Georgia Johnson, people like Anne Spencer (my post about her here) – didn’t live in New York but opened up their homes to artists from all over the country – and these salons helped build up connections between people, helped create communication between cities. The “Harlem Renaissance” didn’t just happen in New York, and salons were a huge part of helping to spread the word. Georgia Johnson was mainly interested in creating a safe space for women to come together and talk about their creative projects, read their new works out loud, have discussion groups about it, give lectures on issues that affected women. Men sometimes attended, but Johnson’s focus on women was very important! The parade of amazing women who frequented this salon is just incredible: Alice Dunbar-Nelson (my post about her here), Anne Spencer, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset (my post about her here), Angelina Weld Grimké (my post about her here) … Let’s have a group biopic about these women, this group of people, about the world in which they lived, and the work they created.
Georgia Johnson had a difficult life: after her husband died, she struggled to make a living – not just with writing, but in general. Her work and reputation has survived. Any anthology of 20th century poetry will include her stuff. Here are two of her poems that I really like. “The Heart of a Woman” is her most famous.
Foredoom
Her life was dwarfed, and wed to blight,
Her very days were shades of night,
Her every dream was born entombed,
Her soul, a bud,—that never bloomed.
The Heart of a Woman
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
