This article is adapted from a presentation given at the London Arts and Humanities Partnership postgraduate conference, 21st January 2022
During the Harlem Renaissance period, 1461 S Street, Washington D.C., the home of Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966), represented an important hub of creativity and community for African American women writers. ‘Saturday nighters’ at the S Street Salon, as they came to be known, inspired and informed landmark literary works of the period. The salon established what scholar Treva B. Lindsey describes as ‘an African American women-centred counterpublic,’ also highlighting the under-acknowledged role that Black women in Washington D.C. played in energizing and shaping the Harlem Renaissance period as a whole.
While celebrated male writers of the early twentieth century such as W.E.B Du Bois and Countee Cullen certainly participated, these sessions represented a critical space where African American women playwrights such as Marita Bonner, Mary Burrill, and of course the host, Georgia Douglas Johnson, contributed to the cultural and intellectual development of Washington, D.C.’s literary scene. This article examines the significance of Johnson’s S Street salon in the context of Washington, D.C.’s Harlem Renaissance, also considering its gendered dimensions, and with reference to the playwright’s own works.
Georgia Douglas Johnson may have started hosting Saturday nighters as early as 1922, around the same time the U.S. experienced a rapid expansion of both professional and amateur African American performance. In addition to traditional theatre settings, across the nation a number of libraries, churches, and other community settings—Johnson’s living room included—were transformed into sites where racist tropes and narratives were countered through performance, a movement also known as the “Negro Little Theatre Movement.” Washington, D.C. emerged as an important centre amidst this swell in artistic output. As performance scholar Soyica Diggs Colbert notes, ‘while the Harlem Renaissance bears the name of a neighbourhood in New York City, Washington, D.C. was the locale for drama.’
Johnson was an incredibly important figure and facilitator in this respect; she would encourage Black women playwrights to write and produce works, thus helping to establish the city’s reputation for drama. Scholar Shane Vogel highlights that ‘the original architects of the Harlem Renaissance envisioned a movement that would counter images and representations of black inferiority with more ‘truthful’ representations and evidence of serious black cultural accomplishment.’ Given this emphasis on representation, theatre—a term derived from the Greek word “theatron”, or “a place of seeing”—constituted an especially important vehicle. The ephemeral quality of theatre, as well as the intimacy of the experience for an audience, was paramount for Johnson and peers, whose works also served a political purpose in redressing cultural narratives of Black inferiority.
At gatherings, Johnson’s guests would workshop their new plays, read magazines as a collective, and undertake discussions around topics such as art and politics. While traditional political spheres at this time offered limited opportunities for women’s voices to be heard, the space of the salon as a ‘counter-public,’ as well as the plays created by the salon’s attendees, represented viable, alternative modes of political expression.
Johnson’s one-act folk drama, ‘Plumes’ (1927), exemplifies the political resonance of such works. ‘Plumes’ relates the story of a Black mother, Charity, who faces the dilemma of whether to pay a White doctor for a procedure that may not save her dying daughter or use her savings to honour her daughter’s memory with a beautiful funeral. Charity’s dialogue with her friend, Tildy, drives the play’s narrative progression and highlights the importance of female camaraderie amidst the conditions of poverty that Charity is forced to confront day-to-day, as well as the inefficacy of the doctor’s treatment methods.
A tradition of anti-lynching plays which centred Black women’s experiences also emerged during this period. Plays such as Angelina Weld Grimké’s ‘Rachel’ (1916), Mary Burrill’s ‘Aftermath’ (1919), and Johnson’s ‘Blue Eyed Black Boy’ (c.1930), offered portrayals of Black motherhood, narrating the ramifications of racial terror and violence upon victims’ families and wider communities. This focus on family highlighted the contradiction of national narratives that placed value on the nuclear family, while simultaneously upholding white supremacist practices. Hence, the S Street Salon was pivotal in the development and gendering of this growing genre of anti-lynching plays, presenting a communal space in which counter-narratives of Black survival amidst racial terror could be collectively discussed, or even performed.
Also important to consider in tandem with Johnson’s ‘Saturday nighters’ is a broader network of existing collectives/institutions that contributed toward Washington, D.C.’s vibrant theatre scene. For example, the Dramatic Arts Department at Howard University played a key role in establishing the city’s reputation for drama. Here, scholars Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory were crucial figures, particularly in terms of creating opportunities and outlets for aspiring playwrights and performers. They founded “The Howard Players,” a theatre group which significantly allowed Locke to nurture plays that reflected his vision for African American theatre.
This vision was encapsulated by Locke’s philosophy of ‘The New Negro,’ which asserted that performing and celebrating African folklore and traditions would lead to rediscovery and a flowering of African American arts and culture. Hence, Locke famously encouraged the creation of ‘folk plays,’ an example of which can be found in Johnson’s aforementioned play, ‘Plumes’ (1927), which is in fact subtitled ‘A Folk Tragedy.’ Also important to note is that Johnson expertly incorporates elements of scholar W.E.B Du Bois’s (in many ways competing) call for “propaganda plays” in this work. In this sense, emerging collective discourses around African American theatre during this period were indexed by the very works that drew inspiration from 1920s Washington, D.C.’s intellectual environment.
As a fundamental component of this intellectual environment, the S Street Salon emphasises the important role of Johnson and the ‘Saturday nighters’ community in shaping the trajectory of African American theatre. The salon also secures Johnson’s role as one of the ‘architects’ (to borrow scholar Shane Vogel’s term) of the Harlem Renaissance, alongside other notable figures such as Montgomery Gregory, Alain Locke, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The salon is then especially valuable to consider as part of growing efforts by scholars in recent decades to highlight the contributions of African American women writers in the context of Harlem Renaissance theatre, and to better understand their experiences of living through this tumultuous period.
T.B Lindsey, “Saturday Night at the S Street Salon,” in Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C., Second edition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 102-122
T.B Lindsey, “Saturday Night at the S Street Salon,” in Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C., Second edition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 102-122, 104
Koritha Mitchell, Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 151
Jonathan Shandell, “The Negro Little Theatre Movement,” in The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, ed. by Harvey Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 103-117, 104
Soyica Diggs Colbert, “Drama in the Harlem Renaissance,” in Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, ed. by Harvey Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 85-102, 86
Shane Vogel, The Scene of the Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 3
Koritha Mitchell, Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 151
T.B Lindsey, “Saturday Night at the S Street Salon,” in Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C., Second edition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 102-122
Koritha Mitchell, Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 151-152
Alain Locke, The New Negro . / with an introduction by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Touchstone, 1997)
Georgia Douglas Johnson, ‘Plumes,’ Opportunity, a Journal of Negro Life, 5.7 (NY: National Urban League, 1927), 200-201, 217-218
Shane Vogel, The Scene of the Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 3
About the Author
Jenny Kirton is a PhD student based in the Department of English Literature at the University of Sheffield. Her research project, which is funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities, traces themes of burial and resurrection across texts by Suzan-Lori Parks, Marita Bonner, and Toni Morrison. She is particularly interested in creative approaches to historical absences, which endeavour to revise or rewrite the historical record. Jenny is currently working on 'Women in Lockdown,' a project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and led by community archive group: Sheffield Feminist Archive.