I lived from 1905-1995.
I was from Canada, and am in the Americas category.
Helen (Helene) Johnson was born to William and Ella Johnson in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 7, 1906. Her father left shortly after her birth, leaving her to be raised by her mother and her grandfather, Benjamin Benson. Benson and his wife were born into slavery in Camden, South Carolina, and had three daughters together, Ella, Minnie, and Rachel. Johnson grew up with her two aunts, Minnie and Rachel (one of whom gave her the nickname Helene), along with their children, in a four-story house in the Brookline section of Boston. She grew up surrounded by strong women, the influence of which shows up in her poetry. While living in Brookline, Johnson participated in the Saturday Evening Quill Club and won a short story contest sponsored by the Boston Chronicle. She also attended classes at Boston University, though she never earned a degree.
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During the Harlem Renaissance, Helene Johnson’s primary sources for publication were magazines and journals. Having not published a book, she published her poetry in African American magazines such as the NAACP’s Crisis, founded in 1910 and edited by W.E.B. DuBois. She gained most of her exposure from publishing in the Urban League’s Opportunity, founded in 1923 and edited by Charles S. Johnson. Her recognition as a poet is primarily due to her numerous submissions of poetry to Opportunity. In 1925, 19 year-old Johnson won an honorable mention in Opportunity’s first literary contest, and in 1926 the journal published six of her poems. Her work was in the first and only issue of Fire!!, edited by the novelist Wallace Thurman, poet Langston Hughes and artist Richard Bruce Nugent. Fire!! was an influential publication that served to strengthen the barriers that separated the first generation of black artists—C. Johnson, Du Bois and others—from the next generation of innovative, angry, talented younger artists—Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas and others.
Johnson and her cousin Dorothy West, who would become a successful Harlem Renaissance novelist, were drawn to the vibrancy of Harlem and moved to New York in 1927. The two women enrolled in Columbia University where they took classes to develop their writing skills. Johnson was once praised as one of the most-talented voices of the Harlem Renaissance and was compared in form and style to Langston Hughes. However, her dreams of motherhood and family became her priority when she married William Hubbell in 1933. In 1935, Johnson’s last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly. Once she completed her courses at Columbia, her life consisted of focusing on her marriage and family. Johnson’s contribution to published poetry declined, and her presence was practically erased from the public’s eye. Johnson died in 1995.
My poetry
You are disdainful and magnificant—
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
14 lines, 1 comment
Yolk- colored tongue
Parched beneath a burning sky,
17 lines
All day she heard the mad stampede of feet
Push by her in a thick unbroken haste.
14 lines
A nation's hearty welcome take,
Heir to a mighty throne;
21 lines
To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,
To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,
8 lines
Little brown boy,
Slim, dark, big-eyed,
32 lines
Ah my race,
Hungry race,
19 lines
He's about 22. I'm 63
110 lines
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