Grace Nail Johnson was a civil rights activist and patron of the arts, and wife of writer James Weldon Johnson.
Background
Grace Elizabeth Nail was born in New London, Connecticut, the daughter of real estate developer John Bennett Nail and his wife, Mary Frances Robinson. Her father was the first life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Career
Her brother was developer John East. Nail, head of the Harlem branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Grace was raised in New York City. Grace Nail Johnson is usually associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was a hostess, mentor, and activist on behalf of civil rights causes.
Nella Larsen recalled traveling with Grace Johnson in the South in 1932, and passing as white patrons at a restaurant in Tennessee, as a "stunt." In 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt invited Mistress
Johnson to the White House along with Mary McLeod Bethune and Numa P. G. Adams, to discuss race relations. During World World War II Mistress
Johnson publicly resigned from a committee of the American Women"s Voluntary Services because of racial discrimination in their work projects. The following year she spoke on an National Broadcasting Company radio program about equal pay: "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."
She donated her husband"s papers to Yale University, working with Carl Van Vechten to create the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of American Negro Arts and Letters.
Her papers are now also part of that collection.
Membership
She was the only black member of Heterodoxy, a feminist group based in Greenwich Village.