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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.

As performance scholar Soyica Diggs Colbert notes, ‘while the Harlem Renaissance bears the name of a neighbourhood in New York City, Washington, D.C. emerged as an important centre amidst this swell in artistic output. 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. experienced a rapid expansion of both professional and amateur African American performance. Georgia Douglas Johnson may have started hosting Saturday nighters as early as 1922, around the same time the U.S. 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. 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. played in energizing and shaping the Harlem Renaissance period as a whole.

Lindsey describes as ‘an African American women-centred counterpublic,’ also highlighting the under-acknowledged role that Black women in Washington D.C.

The salon established what scholar Treva B. ‘Saturday nighters’ at the S Street Salon, as they came to be known, inspired and informed landmark literary works of the period.

This article is adapted from a presentation given at the London Arts and Humanities Partnership postgraduate conference, 21st January 2022ĭuring 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.