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Grace Nail Johnson (February 27, 1885 – November 1, 1976) was a civil rights activist and patron of the arts associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and wife of writer James Weldon Johnson.

Grace Nail Johnson bridal photo in Panama 1910 JWJ MSS 49

Early life and Family[edit]

Grace Nail was born on February 27, 1885 in London Connecticut as the second child of John Bennett Nail and Mary Frances Robinson. The Nails raised their children in New York City, New York. By the time Grace was born, the Nails had become prominent members of the African American New York elite. Their family business began with a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, later including the Shakespeare House in Washington D.C., and eventually growing into a large real estate business. By the time John Bennett Nail died, the Nails owned five apartment complexes in Harlem. Her older brother John E. Nail eventually became the head of the NAACP’s Harlem Branch.

Career[edit]

Grace Nail Johnson was involved in the Harlem Renaissance as hostess, mentor, teacher, and activist in various civil rights causes. She was known for hosting the African American political and artistic elites of the time. She was also an active participant in the civil rights movements of the time herself. Johnson was also a founding member of the NAACP Junior’s League, which was organized in 1929. She was also at one point the only black member of a feminist group based in Greenwich Village known as Heterodoxy. Nella Larsen, the American novelist, once recalled traveling with Grace Nail Johnson through southern states in 1932. The two of them passed as white patrons at a restaurant in Tennessee, as a "stunt." Notably, in 1941 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Grace Nail Johnson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Numa P. G. Adams to the White House to discuss the current state of race politics. Later, during World War II, Grave Nail Johnson publicly resigned from a committee of the American Women's Voluntary Services because of racial discrimination she and others experienced in their work projects. She submitted her resignation on February 19 1942, following the example of other African American members of the organization. She wrote to the AWVS criticizing their unwillingness to state their stance on the involvement of African-Americans in the organization, accusing them of admitting African-Americans to the organization solely to save face. One year later she cited the experience as she spoke on an NBC radio program about equal pay. On that program she stated, "We should not have two wage scales for the same job--one for men and one for women, one for Negroes and one for whites." Notably, Johnson was part of a network of prominent Harlem women who fostered the development of African-American children’s literature. Grace Nail Johnson has even been referred to by scholars of the subject as “the unsung hero of children’s literature."

Personal life[edit]

James Weldon Johnson

She first met her future husband, James Weldon Johnson while he was visiting New York. James Weldon Johnson courted her through correspondence while he was working as the United States consul to Venezuela and later Nicaragua. Grace Nail married James Weldon Johnson shortly after meeting him on February 3, 1910, in her family's New York home. The couple then moved to Corinto, Nicaragua in the first years of their marriage where James Weldon continued to work as the US consul. When the Johnsons arrived in Nicaragua, Grace was gifted a yellow parrot which she kept as a pet for the rest of her life. They eventually resettled back in New York City, in Harlem where they both became ingrained into the Harlem Renaissance. They spent summers in a comfortable home they owned in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. James Weldon Johnson’s involvement in the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movements made it possible for Grace’s father John Bennett Nail to be the first life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On June 26, 1938, she was seriously injured in an automobile accident while she was driving in Wiscasset, Maine. The accident resulted in the death of her husband. The Johnson’s had been married for 28 years yet had no children. Her protegee, Ollie Jewel Sims Okala, was her companion for several decades. Even after her husband’s death, Johnson continued to participate in discussion circles of Harlem literature. She was part of a circle of important Harlem figures who worked to promote African-American literature, especially children’s literature. This circle included herself, Langston Hughes, Ellen Tarry, and Charlemae Hill Rollins. Notably, she had a unique voice compared with younger members of her community. For example, she praised the criticized children’s book The Snowy Day by Ezra Keats. While some found issues with the book, particularly in its portrayal of a young African-American boy, she wrote that it “fits the time” and that “James Weldon Johnson would have loved The Snowy Day”. In February of 1942, her father died of pneumonia leaving his real estate to her older brother John E. Nail. Grace died in 1976, aged 91. She was cremated and her ashes were buried with her husband's in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

Johnson's apartment located at 187 West 135th Street, Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York.

Legacy[edit]

While much of her own impact on the Harlem Renaissance has been forgotten, Grace Nail Johnson did kept a paper record of newspaper clippings that mentioned her husband and herself and their work. She donated her husband's papers to Yale University in 1963 and worked with Carl Van Vechten to create the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of American Negro Arts and Letters. She would later receive additional pieces of literature from other Harlem authors to add to the collection. Her own papers would also later become part of the collection.