Helene Johnson

Johnson's literary career began when she joined the Saturday Evening Quill Club and won first prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Boston Chronicle.

Johnson published many poems throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. She published poetry in many African-American magazines included the NAACP'S The Crisis, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. She gained most of her notoriety from her work published in the journal of the National Urban League the Opportunity, that was a leading showcase for the talents of African-American artists. In 1925, Johnson received an honorable mention in a poetry contest organized by Opportunity and in 1926 six of her poems were published by the journal. Her poetry also appear in the first and only issue of Fire!!, a magazine edited by Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, and Richard Bruce Nugent.

She and Dorothy West moved to Harlem in the 1927, where they began taking classes at Colombia University to improve their writing and became friends with such writers as Zora Neale Hurston.

She reached the height of her popularity in 1927 when her poem "Bottled" was published in the May issue of Vanity Fair. In 1935, Johnson’s last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly.

She continued to write a poem a day for the rest of her life.

She was born Helen Johnson on July 7, 1906 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Her mother, Ella Benson was a domestic worker. Her father, George William left soon after her birth. She was raise by her mother, Ella, and her grandfather, Benjamin Benson.

Johnson was named after her maternal grandmother, Helen Pease Benson, who with her maternal grandfather, Benjamin Benson, were born into slavery in Camden, South Carolina. The pair had three daughters together, Ella, Minnie, and Rachel.

During her formidable years Johnson lived with her two aunts, Minnie and Rachel, one of which gave her the nickname Helene. Johnson was raised with her cousin and Harlem Renaissance novelist and short-story writer Dorothy West in Brookline, Massachusetts. The two spent summers together in Oak Bluffs.

Johnson attended both Boston University and Colombia University but did not graduate.

In 1933, Johnson married William Warner Hubbell III. Together, they had one child, Abigail, before divorcing.

Johnson died in Manhattan at the age of 88.[1]

• Shockley, Ann Allen. African-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide. New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books.
• Patton, Venetria K.; Maureen Honey. Double Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology. Rutgers University Press (2001). ISBN 0-8135-2930-1
• Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Helene Johnson | Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/helene-johnson
• Esparza, Crystal; Klohs, Caroline; Cyprian, Camille. (2005). Helene Johnson. Voices from the Gaps. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/166238.

• Review of This Waiting for Love by Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance
• Article by poet Rita Dove, 2000
• AA Registry Entry for Helene Johnson.
• Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With) by Daisy Goodwin (contains Helene Johnson's poem, "Futility")
• Article by Linda Lewis