- Helene Johnson (Hubbell) (b. 1906), like her cousin Dorothy West, was one of the youngest of the Harlem Renaissance poets. Born in Boston, she first visited New York in 1926 to accept Opportunity’s First Honorable Mention prize for her poem “Fulfillment.” After moving to New York in 1927, she met prominent Harlem Renaissance literary figures, including Zora Neale Hurston, who became her close friend, and Wallace Thurman. Thurman published one of her poems, “A Southern Road,” in the only issue of his journal Fire!! About one-third of Johnson’s poems treat themes of youthful sensuality and the joy of life; racial themes dominate many others. From 1925 through the mid-1930s, Helene Johnson’s poems appeared regularly in periodicals such as Opportunity, The Messenger, Palms, Vanity Fair, Harlem, Challenge, and the Boston Saturday Page 417 →Evening Quill. Anthologists of the Harlem Renaissance have continued to include her works in their collections of Black American literature.
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