had a daughter, Abigail Calachaly Hubbell, who
would later graduate from Bard College, pursue a
life in the theater, and become the owner of the
Off-Center Theatre in New York City. A working
mother, Johnson was employed at the Mount
Vernon–based Consumers Union, where one of
her coworkers was GWENDOLYNBENNETT. Johnson
and Hubbell eventually separated, and Johnson re-
located to Boston. She later returned to New York
to live with her daughter and died in Manhattan in
July 1995.
Johnson’s writing career began while she was
a college student. She placed first in a Boston
Chronicleshort story competition. While still in
Boston, she began to submit work to the OPPOR-
TUNITYliterary contests when they first began in
- That year, she earned an eighth-place hon-
orable mention for her poem “A Tree at Night.”
In 1926 her cousin Dorothy West tied for second
place with ZORANEALEHURSTONin the short
story division. Johnson’s work, a poem called
“Fulfillment,” won a first-place honorable men-
tion. In 1927, the year in which she and West
relocated to New York, Johnson won second
prize in the Holstein literary and art competition
sponsored by Opportunityfor her poem “Summer
Matures.”
When she married, Johnson continued to
write but withdrew from public life. Her daughter
recalled that Johnson wrote “for herself because
she enjoyed writing” and that Johnson “wrote a
poem every single day, sometimes tossing out yes-
terday’s piece, sometimes rewriting” (NYT,11 July
1995, D19).
Despite her popularity and early visibility in
the Harlem Renaissance circles, Johnson later
slipped into obscurity. In addition to her decision
to focus on her family, this may have been due in
part to the fact that she did not publish a collected
volume of her work. Scholars also propose that the
universality of Johnson’s work, rather than an
overwhelming set of racially specific writing, may
have led to her being overlooked. Critics have cel-
ebrated the diverse range of her writings and her
compelling portraits of life, love, the natural world,
and creativity. She engaged matters of race and de-
veloped poems that demonstrated her ability to
craft insightful accounts of racial pride and social
history.
New York City was Johnson’s home for more
than 50 years. During her time there, she devel-
oped a lively and caring friendship with Zora
Neale Hurston, the Columbia anthropology stu-
dent and dynamic prizewinning writer. Johnson,
with her cousin Dorothy West, lived in the same
West 66th Street apartment building as Hurston.
In 1927, shortly after her first marriage, Hurston,
who on various occasions addressed the writers as
“Dear Little Sisters D & H” and “Dear Children,”
invited them to sublet her apartment. Hurston
held the women in high regard and told them so.
“I trust you and Helene more than anyone else in
this world,” she told West in a 1928 letter. “You
are the fine gold in New York’s show and shine,”
she declared. Johnson also enjoyed close friend-
ships with Wallace Thurman and counted
LANGSTON HUGHES and COUNTEE CULLEN
among her friends. Zora Neale Hurston responded
heartily to Johnson’s work, even reading six of her
poems at a 1929 lecture on poetry at the Univer-
sity of New Orleans.
Johnson published primarily in Opportunity
and in other well-known magazines such as THE
MESSENGER,CHALLENGE, and Vanity Fair. In
1926 she contributed “A Southern Road,” a
forthright, unflinching poem about lynching to
the ambitious but short-lived journal Fire!!that
her friend WALLACE THURMAN founded with
Zora Neale Hurston, BRUCENUGENT, Langston
Hughes, and AARONDOUGLAS. Johnson’s work
was anthologized in major publications such as
CAROLINGDUSK(1927), THEBOOK OFAMERI-
CANNEGROPOETRY(1931), and Golden Slippers:
An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers
(1941). Her popularity continued after the
Harlem Renaissance closed. Her works continue
to be republished in collections of writings by
African Americans and women. In 1967 her
poem “Sonnet to a Harlem Negro” was part of
“Poetry and Folk Music of American Negroes,” a
festive program sponsored by the New York
Shakespeare Festival. Performers at the Delacorte
Theatre in Central Park included Cicely Tyson
and Roscoe Lee Brown on a night that was dedi-
cated to an absorbing set of readings that, accord-
ing to New York Times reporter Thomas Lask,
reminded readers that “the patience of the op-
pressed is not endless” (Lask, 32).288 Johnson, Helene