Maggie Pogue Johnson
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Maggie Pogue Johnson | |
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| Born | 1883 Fincastle, Virginia |
| Died | 1956 (aged 72–73) Clifton Forge, Virginia |
| Alma mater | Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute |
| Occupations | Poet, composer |
Maggie Pogue Johnson (1883-1956) was an American composer and poet. She wrote verse in both standard English as well as in the dialect and speech patterns of Black Americans at the time,[1] which still retained the influence of their speech from when they were enslaved.[2]
Johnson was born in Fincastle, Virginia, and educated in the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg, Virginia.[3] Her parents, Lucie Jane Banister Pogue and Rev. Samuel Pogue made sure their children were well-educated. This was important, considering the fields that she and her siblings ended up in, such as teaching, physics, pharmacy, and ministerial work.[4] Johnson taught for two years and was also the president of the Literary and Debating Society in Covington, Virginia.[5] She was the composer of "I Know That I Love You" and other songs, as well as the author of Virginia Dreams.[3] Her poem The Story of Lovers Leap was inspired by a famous resorts in the South, Greenbrier White Sulpher Springs in West Virginia.[6] Johnson's early poetry was part of a larger movement by Black women poets to create a model of womanhood that was an alternative to the dominant model of "True Womanhood" as a white, middle-class experience.[7] Examples of her alternative model of womanhood can be seen in Old Maid's Soliloquy[6] and Meal Time[6] from Virginia Dreams. Her poem Poet of Our Race[6] is dedicated to the late poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
She married Doctor Walter W. Johnson of Staunton, Virginia in 1904, with whom she had one child, Walter W. Jr..[3] She married Dr. J.W. Shellcroft of West Virginia in 1938.[8]
