Bibliography
“Charles Johnson of Fisk U. Is Dead.” New York Times,
28 October 1956, 88.
Johnson, Charles, ed. Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea.
1927; reprint, North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer Com-
pany Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.
Robbins, Richard. Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson
and the Struggle for Civil Rights.Jackson: University
of Mississippi, 1996.
Hauke, Kathleen. “Charles S. Johnson.” In Dictionary of
Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the
Harlem Renaissance to 1940,edited by Thadious
Davis. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1987,
146–152.
Johnson, Dorothy Vena(1898–1970)
A Los Angeles, California, poet and teacher. John-
son graduated from the University of Southern
California and the Teachers College of the Univer-
sity of California at Los Angeles. The daughter of
James and Namie Plumb Vena, Johnson became a
teacher of journalism and creative writing in the
Los Angeles public schools. She encouraged her
students to publish as well, and the bimonthly chil-
dren’s magazine Nuggetsfeatured their work.
Johnson was one of the 29 poets featured in
the 1941 anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of
Negro Poetry for Young Readers.ARNABONTEMPS,
editor of the volume, selected “Palace,” a poem
about sea shells, and “Twinkling Gown,” a medita-
tion on stars, for inclusion in the book section enti-
tled “Sky Pictures.” Also included in the section
were poems by LANGSTONHUGHES,MARYEFFIE
LEENEWSOME, and GEORGIADOUGLASJOHNSON.
Despite her West Coast residence during the
Harlem Renaissance, Johnson did establish friend-
ships with active and visible members of the move-
ment. She corresponded with Bontemps and
Hughes in the years following the publication of
Golden Slippers.In a fall 1941 letter to Hughes,
Bontemps praised Johnson’s scholarly thesis on “in-
fluencing race attitudes in children,” noted that
she cited their collaborative children’s story POPO
ANDFIFINA,and concluded that the project was
“very good.” In May 1949 Hughes wrote to Bon-
temps asking whether or not Dorothy Johnson ever
shared with him her story of having “a youngster in
her school whose first names are Langston Arna.”
Johnson also received copies of Hughes’s work
from time to time.
Johnson was one of the many educators who
contributed to the Harlem Renaissance through
their own writing and their important outreach to
children.Bibliography
Bontemps, Arna. Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro
Poetry for Young Readers.New York: Harper & Row,
1941.
Nichols, Charles H., ed. Arna Bontemps–Langston Hughes
Letters, 1925–1967. New York: Paragon House,
1990.Johnson, Fenton(ca. 1886/88–1958)
A poet, playwright, short story writer, and maga-
zine publisher whose works appeared in THECRISIS
and in well-regarded anthologies, such as THE
BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY (1922)
edited by JAMESWELDONJOHNSON. Johnson was
born in CHICAGO. He was an only child, whom his
supporter ARNABONTEMPSremembered as an ex-
tremely well-dressed young man who enjoyed mo-
toring around Chicago in the early 1900s. Johnson
attended both the UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGOand
Northwestern University and also studied at the
School of Journalism at COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY.
He was a reporter for the New York Newsand the
Eastern Press Association.
A talented playwright, Johnson was only 19
years old when the drama company at the Pekin
Theatre located on South State Street in Chicago
performed some of his works. He later became an in-
dependent publisher of magazines that he founded,
Correct Englishand the Champion Magazine.
Johnson published three volumes of poetry in
the decade leading up to the Harlem Renaissance.
A Little Dreamingappeared in 1912 and was fol-
lowed in quick succession by Visions of Dusk(1915)
and Songs of the Soil(1916). A number of Johnson’s
poems appeared in The Book of American Negro Po-
etry(1922) and in the 1949 Bontemps-Hughes an-
thology, The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949
(1949). In 1922 James Weldon Johnson lamented
the fact that the man whom he regarded as “one of282 Johnson, Dorothy Vena