Georgia Douglas Johnson (Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson) Biography

African-American poet, born in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was educated at the University. After teaching in Alabama, she moved to Washington, DC in 1909 and subsequently served with numerous government agencies. The passionate lyricism of The Heart of a Woman (1918), her first collection of verse, established her as one of the first black woman poets to achieve recognition in the USA. Her concern with racial issues was clearly stated in Bronze (1922), which displayed her accomplishment in making inventive use of traditional verse forms. An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), in which she began using free verse extensively, marked a return to the more private concerns of her earlier work. A final collection entitled Share My World appeared in 1962. During the 1920s a number of her plays were produced, most notably Blue Blood (1927), which controversially dealt with the rape of a black woman by white men.