“I'm half way between everybody and everything and I bring them together.” — Georgia Douglas Johnson | V2Melody

“I'm half way between everybody and everything and I bring them together.”

Summing up her role as a host who connected writers and communities · Newspaper interview, The Baltimore Afro-American, 28 May 1966

Friendship

Georgia Douglas Johnson

About Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson

10 September 1880–15 May 1966

Georgia Douglas Johnson was a luminous voice in American literature, a poet whose words captured the fluttering heart of womanhood, the weight of racial identity, and the quiet resilience of the human spirit during one of the most vibrant eras of Black artistic expression. Born on September 10, 1880, in Atlanta…

More by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson

More remarks by Georgia Douglas Johnson

“Whenever I can, I forget my special call to sorrow, and live as happily as I may. Perhaps that is why I seldom elect to write racially.”

Explains her frequent turn from race themes as a chosen art of lightness · Letter to Arna Bontemps, 1941

“This book is the child of a bitter earth-wound. I sit on the earth and sing—sing out, and of, my sorrow.”

Presents the racial volume as grief given voice rather than mere protest verse · Author's Note, Bronze (1922)

“There were girls in school whom I would have liked to be associated with but I was too proud to seek them and I had no material offerings to make to attract superior girls.”

Remembering how pride and poverty deepened her youthful isolation · Biographical interview with Theresa Scott Davis and Charles Y. Freeman, 1931