Georgia Douglas Johnson was the author of four books of poems, six plays, and 32 song lyrics, making her the best-published woman author of the Harlem Renaissance. She worked for the DC Public Schools and the U.S. Department of Labor, as well as being a freelance journalist, and performing as the organist at her Congregational church.
Johnson’s books of poems are The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World (1962). Her newspaper column, “Homely Philosophy,” was syndicated to twenty newspapers between 1926 and 1932.
This house was the site of the “Saturday Nighters,” a literary salon Johnson hosted from the 1920s into the 1940s, and one of the most important extant sites of the Harlem Renaissance era. Regular attendees at the Saturday Nighters included: Kelly Miller, May Miller, Alain Locke, Carter G. Woodson, Angelina Weld Grimké, Richard Bruce Nugent, Marita Bonner, Alice Dunbar Nelson, William Waring Cuney, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Johnson lived here from 1901 until her death in 1966.
The Homes
1461 S St. NW, Washington, DC (Half-Way House)
Marked with an historic plaque.