Dorothy Vena Johnson

Dorothy Vena Johnson (May 7, 1898 – 1970) was an American poet and educator based in Los Angeles, California. In 1939, she was co-founder of the League of Allied Arts, an African-American women's arts organization.

Personal life Dorothy Vena was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of James Vena and his wife Namie (née Plum). He was a postal clerk, an editor, and a founding member of the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Southern California and a teaching certificate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

She married a lawyer, Ivan Johnson III, before 1932. She died in 1970, after a cerebral hemorrhage. Her works still appear in anthologies of black women's poetry.

Johnson and social worker Juanita Ellsworth Miller (the wife of publisher and judge Loren Miller) worked to promote poet Langston Hughes when he was in Los Angeles, and from that experience they co-founded the League of Allied Arts, an African-American women's arts organization, in 1939. Johnson was the League's president from its founding until the mid-1950s. During her tenure the League began offering scholarships to black artists and writers, and promoted dancers, theatrical presentations, and readings by writers, and supported the Migration Series paintings of Jacob Lawrence. In 1962, Johnson was named "Woman of the Year" by the California Alpha Psi Zeta chapter of Zeta Phi Beta sorority.

Johnson taught journalism to junior high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District for more than forty years.

She was the first black principal of a Los Angeles secondary school.

Legacy The Dorothy Vera Johnson High School was dedicated in December 1980.

The black history collection at the Vernon Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library was named for Johnson in 1971.

The League of Allied Arts is still active in Los Angeles; its papers are archived at UCLA.