Joe Johnson papers

1961-2018

Joe Johnson was born January 18, 1940, in Harlem. As a young man, he became involved in the Umbra Poets Workshop, a group of young Black writers who met on New York City's Lower East Side from 1962 to 1965 to conduct readings and discuss writing and politics. Johnson's writing appeared in various periodicals, including Umbra, Black Creation, and Yardbird Reader, as well as anthologies including Poets of Today (1964) and The Poetry of Black America (1973). His published books of poetry include At the West End (with Bliem Kern, 1976), Hot (1977) and Tight (1978).

In 1973, Johnson formed a publishing company with two other former Umbra members, Ishmael Reed and Steve Cannon. The group, Reed, Cannon & Johnson Communications, published works by authors of color, including Francisco by Alison Mills, Black Picture Show by Bill Gunn, and Medicine Man by Calvin Hernton, for which Johnson wrote the introduction.

Johnson attended Hunter College in the early 1960s, then Columbia University, earning a bachelor's degree in art history and English in 1970 and a master's in linguistics from Columbia Teachers College in 1973. He worked at the Harlem Education Project (1962-1963) and City College (1971-1972), before joining the faculty of Ramapo College in New Jersey, where he taught literature from 1971 until his retirement in 2017. He lived in New York until his retirement, after which he moved to Virginia.

Johnson died on February 17, 2019.

Sources: Rush, Theressa Gunnels, Carol Fairbanks Myers, and Esther Spring Arata. Black American Writers Past and Present: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Shockley, Ann Allen, and Sue P. Chandler. Living Black American Authors: A Biographical Directory. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1973.