Born in Caddo, Texas, and raised on a farm,
Johnson completed undergraduate studies in soci-
ology at Baylor University in 1921. He then earned
his master’s degree from the UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGOin 1922 and his Ph.D. in sociology from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He taught at Ohio Wesleyan University and at
Baylor College for Women before joining the Insti-
tute for Research in Social Science established by
HOWARDODUM. He worked as a research assis-
tant at the Institute and taught at Chapel Hill for
38 years. Johnson was highly respected for his work
on the folk culture of African Americans in the
south and taught the first anthropology courses of-
fered at the university.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson pub-
lished studies on African Americans and South-
ern black folk culture including THENEGRO AND
HISSONGS (1925) and Negro Workaday Songs
(1926) with Howard Odum, Folk Culture on St.
Helena Island (1929) and John Henry: Tracking
Down a Negro Legend(1930). His writing on John
Henry was selected for inclusion in EBONY AND
TOPAZ:A COLLECTANEA(1927), edited by OP-
PORTUNITYeditor and fellow sociologist CHARLES
S. JOHNSON.
Guy Johnson continued to work on significant
sociological projects and studies of race in the
years after the Harlem Renaissance. His research
analyses were instrumental to Gunnar Myrdal’s An
American Dilemma, a 1944 landmark study of
American race relations.
Johnson, who was awarded the Anisfield
Award for Research in Race Relations in 1937,
continued to publish through the 1980s.
Bibliography
DuBois, W. E. B., and Guy B. Johnson. Encyclopedia of
the Negro: Preparatory Volume with Reference Lists
and Reports.New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1945.
Johnson, Guy B., and Guion Griffis Johnson. Research in
Service to Society: The First Fifty Years of the Institute
for Research in Social Science at the University of
North Carolina.Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1980.
———, and Howard Odum. The Negro and His Songs;
A Study of Typical Negro Songs in the South.1925,
reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press,
1968.
Johnson, Helene(1907–1995)
Born Helen Johnson in July 1907, this precocious
BOSTONpoet and short story writer was raised in
Brookline, Massachusetts, and in the Martha’s
Vineyard island community of Oak Bluffs. She was
the only child born to William and Ella Benson
Johnson and was named after Helen Pease Benson,
her maternal grandmother. Later in life, at the sug-
gestion of her aunt Rachel Johnson West, she
changed her name to Helene. She lived with her
mother, who worked as a domestic for prominent
Boston and Cambridge families, and with her ex-
tended maternal family including her aunts Rachel
and Minnie. Johnson never met her father and
knew little about him except that he might have
been a Greek man from CHICAGO. Her maternal
grandfather, Benjamin Benson, was a formerly en-
slaved man from Camden, South Carolina. He and
Helen Pease Benson had three daughters, and
when they migrated north, he and his wife relo-
cated to Martha’s Vineyard. Johnson’s grandfather
was a successful builder on the island but eventu-
ally returned to the South. Johnson’s ties to the is-
land off the coast of Massachusetts continued
through the 20th century because her cousin
DOROTHYWEST, also a successful Harlem Renais-
sance writer, lived there for many years in the
decades of the Harlem Renaissance.
Johnson attended several Boston schools be-
fore going to college. She was a student at the
Lafayette School and the Martin School and grad-
uated from the prestigious Girls’ Latin High
School. Her high school years included piano
lessons with Bessie Trotter, the daughter of
WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER, the fiery, radical
Boston Guardiannewspaper editor. Her mother,
Ella, took great pains to broaden Helene’s hori-
zons, and the two attended lectures and events
featuring celebrated figures such as the Wright
brothers. Johnson attended BOSTONUNIVERSITY
before moving to NEWYORKCITYand enrolling at
COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY. While in Boston, she also
participated in the SATURDAY EVENING QUILL
CLUB, an active literary group that saw many of its
members go on to publish in mainstream journals
and magazines.
In 1933, Johnson married William Warner
Hubbell III, a motorman who encouraged his wife
to continue writing. In September 1940 the coupleJohnson, Helene 287