- Creator
- Johnson, Helene, 1906-1995
- Call number
- Sc MG 133
- Physical description
- 0.21 linear feet (1 box)
- Language
- English
- Preferred Citation
- [Item], Helene Johnson poems, Sc MG 133, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
Helene Johnson was one a poet of the Harlem Renaissance. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended Boston University and Columbia University, the latter in in New York City in 1926. Johnson was the youngest of the African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance. She published approximately twenty-five poems which appeared in such magazines as Opportunity, Fire!!, and Vanity Fair, as well as in The New Negro. Her writings were mainly concerned with life in the ghetto and a strong identification with her racial heritage. The Helene Johnson poems consist of more than thirty unpublished and undated poems, with corrections and revisions by Johnson. There are also photocopies of articles which mention Johnson as a Harlem Renaissance poet: "Frank Horne and the Second Echelon Poets of the Harlem Renaissance" from Arna Bontemps's The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, 1972; "Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the 20th Century", 1979; and "The Unpublished Poems of Helene Johnson.".
Administrative information
Source of acquisition
Gift, of Helene Johnson, January 1987.
Revision History
Finding aid updated by Lauren Stark. (2021 April 20)
Processing information
Accessioned by Diana Lachatanere, June 1987. Processed through the Schomburg NEH Automated Access to Special Collections Project.
Using the collection
Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Second Floor