Georgia Douglas Johnson
“Georgia Douglas Johnson has as many aliases as Lon Chaney had faces,” wrote Alice Dunbar-Nelson in her column in the May 13, 1927 issue of Opportunity magazine, “One is always stumbling upon another nom de plume of hers” (quoted in Hull, 202).
Poet, playwright, mother, and friend, Johnson has long been considered a minor figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Though more recent scholarship seeks to reclaim Johnson’s work as more than minor and not relegated to Harlem (where she never actually lived), she remains relatively obscure.
Not much is known about Johnson. Even her birthdate is unclear: either September 10, 1877 or September 10, 1880, born as Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp. Johnson was raised in Atlanta where she received the bulk of her early education before continuing on to Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio followed by Howard University in Washington, D.C. (Roses & Randolph 201). In 1903, she married Henry Lincoln Johnson, a leading African-American figure in politics at the time, who was appointed Recorder of the Deeds for the District of Columbia by President William Howard Taft. Johnson gave birth to two children, Henry Lincoln Johnson, Jr. and Peter Douglas Johnson.
Recent Comments