Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966) Georgia Douglas Johnson around the early 1920s. (Courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) Then came drama. I was persuaded to try it and found it a living avenue and yet-the thing left most unfinished, less exploited, first relinquished, is still nearest my heart and most dear. 1 ONE OF THE FIRST black modern female poets of the twentieth century, Georgia Douglas Johnson was an inspiration and role model for the many black women writers who emerged during the 1920s. A prolific poet and playwright, Johnson gained recognition as an established writer with the publication of her collection of poems, The Heart of a Woman (1918). Her Washington, D.C., home was the site of a weekly gathering for many prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance known as the "S Street Salon ." Such writers as Mary P. Burrill, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Marita Bonner, Jessie Fauset, Willis Richardson, May Miller, Randolph Edmonds, Jean Toomer, Carter G. Woodson, and Langston Hughes would frequent Johnson's home to introduce new works. Georgia Douglas Johnson was born September 10, 1877, to George and Laura Jackson Camp in Marietta, Georgia. Her father was a well-educated' and wealthy Englishman of whom Johnson knew very little. Because her mother worked all day away from home, she grew up a very lonely child. She had no brothers or sisters wholly related, but three brothers and one sister through a third marriage of her mother. Johnson began her early education at various private and public schools in Rome and Atlanta, Georgia. She attended Atlanta University, where she experienced her first "real homey sympathetic atmosphere." After completing her edu~ation at the university, she taught in Marietta and later worked as an assistant principal in Atlanta. The late 1890s found Johnson pursuing musical training at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Returning to Atlanta, she married Henry Lincoln Johnson in 1900 and bore two sons, Henry Lincoln, Jr., and Peter Douglas. In 1910 the Johnsons moved to Washington, D.C., where her husband, "Link" senior, established a law practice and later was appointed Recorder of Deeds under President Taft. With the sudden death of Link in 1925, Johnson was forced to provide for her sons. She assumed various jobs with the government and taught periodically as a substitute teacher in the Washington,D.C., public school system. She also furthered her education by taking courses at Howard University. Apoem written by poet William Stanley Braithwaite, about a lone flower and a lonely little girl who tended it, inspired Johnson to write poetry. According to Johnson: "Something in this poem together with the associated idea that he [Braithwaite] had a drop or so of colored blood, gave me a kind of lift and fed my ambition to emulate him.,,2 22 / GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON While they were living in Washington D.C., May Miller's father, Dean Kelly Miller of Howard University, introduced Johnson to Braithwaite, and they developed a long-time friendship. Braithwaite would also be instrumental in assisting Johnson with her early publications. Through a friendship with white playwright Zona Gale, Johnson was encouraged to write plays during the early 1920s. Although Johnson was known to have written close to thirty plays, only a few scripts have survived . Of this small group, five were published-A Sunday Morning in the South (1925), Blue Blood (1926), Plumes (1927), Frederick Douglass (1935), William and Ellen Craft (1935). Only Plumes, Blue Blood, and Frederick Douglass are known to have been produced. Blue Blood, which was staged in New York City, featured the talents of Frank Horne and May Miller. In 1933, at Howard University, along with two other one-act plays, Blue Blood was produced again. Because of the unavailability of many of her works, it is difficult to determine which script was her first. In 1926, Blue Blood, the only tragicomedy she was known to have authored, won the Opportunity contest as one of the four best plays. Plumes, which is about poor, rural blacks, captured first prize in the 1927 competition. Johnson, along with May Miller, was one of the more versatile dramatists . Her works included "folk dramas" as well as "propaganda." Because of Johnson's interracial background, many of her plays such as Blue Blood and Blue-Eyed Black Boy dealt with miscegenation. Lynching was another topic Johnson focused on in her works. As.an active participant in...