{"id":153019,"date":"2025-09-10T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=153019"},"modified":"2025-09-09T18:32:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T22:32:36","slug":"those-who-know-what-it-means-to-be-a-colored-woman-in-1922-know-it-not-so-much-in-fact-as-in-feeling-poet-georgia-douglas-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=153019","title":{"rendered":"“Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in 1922 – know it not so much in fact as in feeling …” — poet Georgia Douglas Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nGeorgia 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. <\/p>\n

Along with everything else, she maintained a weekly column in Crisis<\/i>, the official magazine of the NAACP. <\/p>\n

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\nShe 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<\/a>) to Jean Toomer (my post about him here<\/a>). Harlem was the hub, but the Renaissance didn’t just happen in one location. People like Georgia Johnson, people like Anne Spencer (my post about her here<\/a>) 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 and create communication. Georgia Johnson was mainly interested in opening up her home for women to come together and talk about their creative projects, read their new work out loud, have discussion groups, give lectures on issues that affected women. Men sometimes attended, but Johnson’s focus on women was important! The parade of amazing women who frequented Johnson’s salon is incredible: Alice Dunbar-Nelson (my post about her here<\/a>), Anne Spencer, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset (my post about her here<\/a>), Angelina Weld Grimk\u00e9 (my post about her here<\/a>) … Let’s have a group biopic about this group of women, the world in which they lived, the work they created. <\/p>\n

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Johnson’s life was difficult. After her husband died, she struggled to make a living. Her work and reputation, however, has survived. Any anthology of 20th century poetry will (or should) include her stuff. Here are two of her poems that I really like. “The Heart of a Woman” is her most famous. <\/p>\n

Foredoom<\/strong><\/big>
\nHer life was dwarfed, and wed to blight,
\nHer very days were shades of night,
\nHer every dream was born entombed,
\nHer soul, a bud,\u2014that never bloomed.<\/p>\n

The Heart of a Woman<\/strong><\/big>
\nThe heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
\nAs a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
\nAfar o\u2019er life\u2019s turrets and vales does it roam
\nIn the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.<\/p>\n

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
\nAnd enters some alien cage in its plight,
\nAnd tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
\nWhile it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,39,9],"tags":[2595,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153019"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161286,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153019\/revisions\/161286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}