LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Sample Student Final Exam Answers 2005

Research Report

Adrian Holden

Research Report

Georgia Douglas Johnson

The Harlem Renaissance saw the blossoming of African-American literature, music, dance, art, and social commentary in the neighborhood newly transformed by the Great Migration of African-Americans to the North during World War I The Harlem Renaissance transformed African-American identity and history, but it also transformed American culture in general. Never before had so many Americans read the thoughts of African-Americans and embraced the African-American community's productions, expressions, and style. 

As an African American and a student of literature, I have read, studied, and reported on many of the era’s writers.  The voices of Alan Locke, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, James W. Johnson, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay fill my mind when I think about the Harlem Renaissance.  But as literary critic Cheryl Wall so frankly expresses, “The Harlem Renaissance was not a male phenomenon” (Wall 9).  This statement may seem pedestrian or even overstated, but it by no means lessens its truth.  Georgia Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston , Jessie Faucet, Nella Larsen, Marita O. Bonner, Dorothy West, and Gwendolyn Bennett are just a few of the ladies who produced some of the brilliant poetry, prose, and art that not only spoke for their generation, but paved the way for current female authors like Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, and Sonia Sanchez.  The focus of this report is to examine the work and criticism of one of the most influential women of this period.

Georgia Douglas Johnson was born September 10, 1886, in Atlanta, Georgia. Three of her four grandparents were of different races -- Native-American, English, and Black.  She received her education in the public schools of Atlanta and also in New England.  She attended the Atlanta Normal School where she taught herself to play violin. (Shockley 347). 

By the time of the Harlem Renaissance, she had already been published several times in The Crisis (the literary organ of the NAACP), Voice of the Negro, and other periodicals.  Her first book, The Heart of a Woman, was published in 1918.  Although her early poems do not focus on the themes of race or politics, she was still characterized by some critics as a black feminist poet (Bloom 120).  Some critics, such as William Braithwaite, felt her poems were “intensely feminine and for me this means…that they are deeply human,” and he goes on to say that “…it is a kind of privilege to know so much about the secrets of a woman’s nature” (Shockley 348).  Conversely, some African American critics criticized her because the book did not address racial issues.

In response, Johnson published Bronze, A Book of Verse, her second book of poetry in 1922, and it had a marked difference in its tone, emphasizing racial consciousness and focusing on Black history. An interesting point to note is W.E.B. Dubois’s comments in the foreword of Bronze:  “Much of it will not touch this reader and that, and some of it will mystify and puzzle them as a sort of reiteration and over emphasis…her word is simple, sometimes trite, but…as a revelation of the soul struggle of the women of a race it is invaluable” (Bloom 124).  With such rousing admiration in the foreword, it is a wonder how she was able to sell any books.  This was from a Black man, and not just any Black man – an illustrious Black scholar who was one of (if not the) leading voices of the entire movement.  DuBois is a man of great words and convictions, but the word he uses to describe the work if his Sister is “trite.”  Why is this?  Consider this poem from Bronze:

            The right to make my dreams come true

            I ask, nay, I demand of life,

            Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband

            Impede my steps, nor countermand

Too long my heart against the ground

Has beat the dusty years around

And now, at length I rise, I wake!

And stride into the morning-break!

                                                (Roses 177)

The power of this poem is obviously plain to the reader and, perhaps in this vein, it can be considered simple; but which part is “trite?”  Fellow writer Jessie Faucet prefers to intone that with powerful poems such as these, “Mrs. Johnson has come to her own—if not in a peculiar way, come into her own” (Shockley 348).  Much more than trite, Johnson’s poetry speaks to the duality of being both black and a woman (Roses175).

Probably one of the best barometers of Georgia Douglass’s success during this era was the distance from which she affected the social climate of the members of this fraternity – that is to say she never lived in Harlem.  When her husband, Henry Lincoln Johnson, was appointed recorder of deeds by William Howard Taft in 1920, her family of four moved to Washington D.C.  Upon his sudden death in 1924, she was given a position in the Department of Labor (Shockley 348).  It was from here in Washington that she wrote Bronze and her third collection, An Autumn Love Cycle (1928).  She also wrote columns for various newspapers, award-winning plays, and many unpublished short stories.  One of her most important contributions was her dinner parties that she held in her home, which was called Half-way House.  She named it thus because she considered herself “halfway between everybody and everything, and I bring them together” (Shockley 350).  Her guests included W.E.B. Dubois, Angelina Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Vachel Lindsay, Waldo Frank, Zona Gale, Richard Bruce Nugent, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and many other literary figures of the early 1900s.  Interestingly enough, she also invited freed prisoners to whom she had written and they would also bring samples of their writing to read in front of literary masters. Her “Literary Salon” was the only one of its kind in Washington and served to give many of the young writers of her day what she called “contactual inspiration” (Shockley 350).

Georgia Douglas Johnson was truly one of the pioneers her art among African American women.  Much of her work expresses “a longing to resolve the gender color duality by speaking about women in the context of race” (Roses 175). In doing the research for this endeavor, I encountered several women like Jessie Faucet, the “Black Jane Austen,” and Nella Larsen whose novel, Passing, I cannot wait to read.  As an aspiring teacher with designs on teaching African American literature as a staple in the classroom, taking previously learning and combining it with this new knowledge of other African-American female writers will only enrich the lives of students, male and female alike.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold.  Black American Women Poets and Dramatists.  New York:  Chelsea House Publishers, 1996.

Roses, Lorraine and Ruth Randolph.  Harlem’s Glory:  Black Women Writing  1900-1950.  Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1996.

Shockley, Ann Allen.  Afro-American Writers 1746-1933.  G.K. Hall and Company, 1996.

Wall, Cheryl.  Women of the Harlem Renaissance.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1995.