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Johnson, Georgia Douglas

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966), a poet and salon hostess, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but came to epitomize the black literary culture of Washington, D.C.  What she named “Half-Way House,” her longtime home at 1461 S Street, N.W., was one of the key feeder salons of the Harlem Renaissance.  When in Washington, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and many other African American writers attended weekly Saturday night gatherings there; years later, Half-Way House attracted less artistic visitors from the FBI.  Like Fauset, Johnson was practically a generation older than Hughes and Toomer, and did not publish her first poems until her mid-thirties.  Yet she ranks as the most-published female poet of the Harlem Renaissance, the author of the collections The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), and An Autumn Love Cycle (1928).  Recent critics of Johnson’s verse have discovered a quiet sedition in her careful lyrics set in traditional forms.  Literary historian Gloria Hull has uncovered a trove of plays Johnson wrote in the 1920s, including Plumes, the winner of a 1927 literary contest sponsored by Opportunity magazine.  FBI agents questioned Johnson in 1945 on the basis of “War Department regulations regarding soliciting communications between persons in…the military service and unknown individuals.”  

G.D. Johnson - All

Title
Johnson, Georgia Douglas

Description
FBI documents studying Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Creator
FBI

Publisher
FBI

Date
1945

Rights
Material is in the public domain.

Format
text, 6 PDFs, 400 ppi

Language
English

Type
text

Coverage
1945