While Georgia Douglas Johnson has been heralded as one of the most lyrical and rhythmic poets of the Harlem Renaissance, her work as a playwright has received less recognition. One cannot ignore, however, her significant contributions to African American theater. Johnson's social-protest dramas are related from the perspectives of a series of female characters, according to Gloria T. Hull, Johnson's biographer. Further, Johnson helped to establish less rigid and cooperative black artistic communities. In her introduction to Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present (1990) theater scholar Elizabeth Brown-Guillory maintains that "Johnson was instrumental in developing the tradition out of which such notable black women dramatists as Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange have come."

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp was born to Laura Jackson Camp and George Camp on 10 September 1877 in Atlanta, Georgia. There is debate surrounding Georgia Camp's...