Helen Armstead-Johnson papers

1942-1995

The Helen Armstead-Johnson papers reflect some aspects of the personal life and professional career of this African-American theater historian and educator. The collection consists of personal papers, files from her teaching career, correspondence, lectures, writings, and research material.

The Helen Armstead-Johnson papers are arranged in six series:

• Personal
  1931-1988

  This series consists of biographical information about Johnson, correspondence with her family and friends, and documents pertaining to her parents' death. There is also information about her college education and a women's social and civic group called Moles, to which she belonged. A copy of her Master's thesis, "A Semantic Analysis of [Joseph] McCarthy's Language", is included in this series.

• Teaching career
  1950-1989

  This series reflects Johnson's search for a teaching position pending receipt of her Ph.D. and teaching posts she held prior to her appointment at York College. York College material encompasses some yearly activity reports and bibliographies, examinations she used for general English and African American literature courses, and student evaluations. Of interest is a letter she wrote giving her reasons for rejecting a proposal to initiate a course in "Black English" as well as a subject file for this topic. There is also correspondence with York colleagues planning the spring 1971 meeting of the Greater New York Regional College English Association.

• Correspondence
  1954-1995

  This series includes correspondence pertaining to invitations from publishers and journals for Johnson to submit articles and books, or to serve as a reviewer. Research inquiries consist of requests for information about Black theater history and guidance in interviewing older musicians. Her research relating to African American entertainers overseas is reflected in correspondence with officials in the Soviet Union and in the file for Bobby LeBrun, a white Australian comedian who worked with African American performers. Other correspondents are composer Elliot Carpenter, Oskar Pausch of Austria (about an exhibit in Vienna), and playwright John F. Matheus (regarding staging a production of his play Tambour).

• Professional activities
  1960-1995

  This series consists of information about lectures, consultancies, research grants, and conferences. The files encompass correspondence pertaining to her lectures about various aspects of African American theater history and consultancies, such as one with WNET regarding programs on Black musical theater and another one with Rutgers University concerning a Paul Robeson exhibition. There are files for conferences in which she either attended, gave papers, or helped to coordinate, among them the College Language Association, the College English Association, the Conference on the History of American Popular Entertainment, the Musical Theater in American Conference, and the Société International des Arts du Spectacle. When available, copies of her lectures and conference papers are included. Also included is a copy of Julian Mates's paper, "The Minstrel Show and the American Musical Stage", presented at the American Theatre Association conference.

• Writing
  1954-1979

  This series reflects Johnson's long-standing interest in Black theater history and consists of copies of her published articles, as well as manuscript drafts of unpublished papers. Her adaption of the libretto for In Dahomey, her production files, photocopies of the original libretto and score, and material about the original production also are included. Additionally, her early interest in Edmund Burke is documented with her lengthy manuscript, "Reform and Revolution in the Political Theory of Edmund Burke: His Interpretations of the English, American, and French Revolutions."

• Research material
  1964-1984

  This series consists of Johnson's handwritten notes, news clippings (photocopies and originals), and writing by other researchers. The subjects of her Black theater research have been filed by geographic region, topic, time period and specific entertainer or composer for ease of retrieval (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, the United States, and minstrels, jokes, lyrics, music, etc.). Most of the notes were written on yellow pads, with many on index cards and memo pads. The majority of the notes were taken from nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers and other published sources. Some of the notes were prepared for the Helen Armstead-Johnson Foundation's international exhibition on view at the Austrian Theater Museum in Vienna for three months in 1982.