Helene Johnson

Helen Johnson was born on the seventh of July 1906 at Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of George William Johnson — a Boston Black-and-mixed-race waiter of the principal post-Great-Migration Boston Black community — and Ella Benson Johnson, a domestic. She was raised in the principal Boston Black West-End-and-Roxbury community of the principal early-twentieth-century post-Great-Migration period.

She completed her secondary education at the Boston Latin Academy in 1924 — and attended Boston University from 1924 to 1926 in the principal English-and-creative-writing programme.

She was a principal first-cousin of the principal Harlem Renaissance novelist Dorothy West — and was raised with West in the principal Boston West-End-and-Roxbury household of their grandmother. She relocated with West to Harlem in 1926 at the principal post-1926 Boston-to-Harlem younger-Harlem-Renaissance generation migration period.

She was a principal founding member of the principal Harlem Renaissance Wallace Thurman Niggerati Manor literary salon at 267 West 136th Street at Harlem in 1927 — alongside Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West, Aaron Douglas, and Bruce Nugent.

She was awarded the principal Opportunity magazine of the National Urban League first prize for poetry in 1926 — and the principal Opportunity magazine first prize for poetry in 1927 — for the principal poems 'Magalu', 'The Road', 'Mother', and 'Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem'.

She published approximately thirty-five poems in the principal Harlem Renaissance literary magazines across the late 1920s and early 1930s — including the principal poems in Opportunity magazine, Saturday Evening Quill, Vanity Fair, and the principal Harlem Magazine.

She was the principal younger-generation Harlem Renaissance poet of the principal late-1920s post-Hughes-and-Cullen poetic-canon — and the principal Harlem-Renaissance-influenced sonnet-and-lyric Black-female poet of the principal post-1926 Harlem-Renaissance-literary-magazine period.

She was married in 1933 to William Hubbell — a Harlem Black motor mechanic — and was married from 1933 to her separation in 1937. She gave birth in 1934 to her daughter Abigail McGrath.

She withdrew from the principal Harlem Renaissance literary community after the principal 1937 separation and lived in the principal post-1937 New York Greenwich Village and Long Island Black-and-Bohemian community across the principal post-1937 New York period.

She published no further poetry across the principal post-1937 New York period — and worked across the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s as a Manhattan and Long Island Black-and-Bohemian community typist and secretary.

She died at Manhattan, New York on the sixth of July 1995 of complications of a long illness, at eighty-eight.

She is honored here as the principal younger-generation Harlem Renaissance poet.