Saturday Night at the S Street Salon

This chapter introduces one of the most understudied communities of New Negro writers. Commencing in the 1920s, African American writer Georgia Douglas Johnson invited writers to her home on Saturday evenings to encourage the development of a cohesive and supportive community of black writers. With a particular emphasis on the writing of African American women, the S Street Salon evolved into a viable space for African American women writers to workshop their poems, plays, short stories, and novels. Many of the New Negro era literary works produced by African American women participants of the S Street Salon tackled politically significant and contentious issues such as racial and sexual violence and women’s reproductive rights. Most of the well-known New Negro writers participated in a Saturday session at the S Street Salon. The S Street Salon was arguably one of the most significant intellectual, political, and cultural communities of the New Negro era. This community pivoted around African American women’s expressivity. The women of the S Street Salon inserted their stories and their voices into black public culture through creating an African American women-centered counterpublic.