ence of the African-American mother in illustrat-
ing these themes. In “Motherhood” she exposes
how the right to motherhood is compromised for
African-American women. The female speaker in
this poem chooses to remain childless rather than
bring a child into the world where he or she will
inevitably be victimized by racism.
Georgia Douglas Johnson died in 1966. By
the time of her death she had contributed a vast
amount of writing to the American and Afri-
can-American literary traditions honoring and
celebrating the lives and experiences of African
Americans.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Honey, Maureen. Shadowed Dreams: Poetry of Women
of the Harlem Renaissance, New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Hull, Gloria. Color Sex, and Poetry: Three Women
Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987.
Perkins, Kathy A., and Judith L. Stephens, eds. Strange
Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Tate, Claudia, ed. The Selected Works of Georgia Doug-
las Johnson. New York: G. K. Hall, 1997.
Deirdre Raynor
Johnson, Helene (1906–1995)
Although Helene Johnson properly belongs in the
group Cheryl A. Wall calls the women of the HAR-
LEM RENAISSANCE, including DOROTHY WEST, ZORA
NEALE HURSTON, NELLA LARSEN, JESSIE REDMOND
FAUSET, and ANNE PETRY, she remains a forgotten
voice of this movement. According to Wall, John-
son was “a poet of great promise, who wrote only
a handful of poems and who, like several other
mysterious women, disappeared from the Harlem
Renaissance leaving barely a trace” (“Chromatic
Words,” x–xi).
Johnson was born in July 1906 in Boston, the
only child of George William Johnson and Ella
Benson Johnson. Johnson grew up with her ma-
ternal first cousin, Dorothy West, with whom she
spent her summers in the village of Oak Bluffs on
Martha’s Vineyard Island. After being educated in
Boston’s public school system, including the pres-
tigious Boston Girls’ Latin School, Johnson took
courses at Boston Clerical School and Boston Uni-
versity. In 1926, Johnson, who together with West
had joined the Saturday Evening Quill Club, an or-
ganization of aspiring black Boston writers, gained
national attention when her poem “Trees at Night”
was published in OPPORTUNITY magazine. That year
both Johnson and West attended Opportunity’s
second annual Literary Award Dinner, where three
of Johnson’s poems received honorable mentions.
West and Hurston shared the second place prize
for fiction.
In 1927, after Johnson and West made New
York City their home, Johnson’s poem “Bottled”
was published in Vanity Fair. Johnson, who was
introduced to Harlem and its celebrated writers by
Hurston, maintained a close friendship with many
of the luminaries, including LANGSTON HUGHES and
WALLACE THURMAN. She married William Warner
Hubbell III, a New York City motorman, and had
one child, Abigail Calachaly Hubbell. Johnson, un-
like West, did not return to her native Boston. She
remained in New York City, where she died in 1995
at 89 years of age, three years before West died in
Boston at age 92.
In 1931, JAMES WELDON JOHNSON wrote that
Johnson “possesses true lyric talent.... She is one
of the younger group who has... the ‘racial bull
by the horns” (quoted in Mitchell, 9) In “My Race”
Johnson alludes to W. E. B. DUBOIS’s The SOULS OF
BLACK FOLK and specifically to its first chapter, “Of
Our Spiritual Strivings,” as well as to declarations
by Hughes in several of his poems:Ah my race,
Hungry race,
Throbbing and young—
Ah, my race,
Wonder race,
Sobbing with song—
Ah, my race,
Laughing race, Careless in Mirth—
Ah, my veiled race
Unformed race,
Rumbling in birth. (24)Johnson, Helene 281