and enjoyed a productive collaborative relationship
with composer Lillian Evanti, a Washington, D.C.-
born opera singer who became the first African
American to perform with a formally organized Eu-
ropean opera company. Evanti, who also founded
the National Negro Opera Company in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, published at least three pieces with
Douglas and worked on many more. Published
songs such as “Beloved Mother” (1952) and “Hail
to Fair Washington” (1953) included patriotic songs
and loving tributes to mothers.
Johnson was active in civic, cultural, and po-
litical circles. A member of the League for the
Abolition of Capital Punishment, she participated
in the American Society of African Culture and
the Writers’ League Against Lynching. She also
was a member of the Poet’s Council of the Na-
tional Women’s Party, the Poet Laureate League,
the Poets League of Washington, and the League
of American Writers.
Her literary and political life continued to
thrive after the Harlem Renaissance ended. She
published her last book in 1962, just four years
before her death. In 1965, Atlanta University be-
stowed an honorary degree upon her. Johnson
suffered a stroke in May 1966 and was cared for
in the Washington, D.C., Freedman’s Hospital,
the same facility in which her husband had been
treated before he died. One of the most poignant
images associated with Johnson emerged when
her longtime friend May Miller, who used to visit
her often, sat by her bedside, held her hand, and
whispered repeatedly “Poet Georgia Douglas
Johnson” (Fletcher, 163). Johnson was a vibrant
and talented writer who felt constantly the pres-
sure of daily responsibilities and her creative
goals. Her close friends and colleagues were fully
aware of the projects that she left unfinished.
She clearly wanted to see more of her work pub-
lished, confessing in a 1950 letter to Harold
Jackman that she was “so eager to get to this
writing before the taper is snuffed out. Am afraid
of dying before I get the things done I hope to
do” (Hull, CSP,191).
Unfortunately, much of her massive collec-
tion of personal papers, including manuscripts in
progress and completed works, was discarded hap-
hazardly immediately after her death. Her friend
OWENDODSONwas one of many close friends
who lamented the sight of Johnson’s papers
heaped unceremoniously as garbage outside her
home shortly after her funeral service. The
Howard University Archives, however, did acquire
a good amount of Johnson materials, and these in-
clude a rich variety of work and correspondence.
Johnson’s reputation and influence have been in-
creasingly restored in the wake of absorbing schol-
arship and more frequently anthologized versions
of her work.Bibliography
Fletcher, Winona. “Georgia Douglas Johnson.” In Dictio-
nary of Literary Biography.Vol. 51: Afro-American
Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940,edited
by Trudier Harris. Detroit: Gale Research Inc.,
1987, 153–163.
Georgia Douglas Johnson Papers, Atlanta University,
Oberlin College Archives, and Harmon Foundation
Records, Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
Other Johnson materials: Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture, New York Public Li-
brary; Amistad Research Center, Tulane University;
and Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard
University.
Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writ-
ers of the Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
Hull, Gloria, ed. Give Us This Day: The Diary of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson.New York: W. W. Norton & Com-
pany, 1984.
Johnson, Georgia. The Selected Works of Georgia Douglas
Johnson.Introduction by Claudia Tate. New York:
G. K. Hall & Company, 1997.
Kaplan, Carla. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.New
York: Doubleday, 2002.
Shockley, Ann Allen. Afro-American Women Writers,
1746–1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide.
Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988.Johnson, Guy Benton(1901–1991)
A Texan anthropologist, scientist, and sociologist
who developed influential studies of race relations
and contributed much to the American civil rights
movement. In the 1930s Johnson worked alongside
W. E. B. DUBOISon the Encyclopedia of the Negro
project.286 Johnson, Guy Benton