The generations of African Americans who grew up in the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-1865) had very different experiences depending on whether they grew up in the North or the South. Many Southern African Americans from this time held memories of their parents’ or grandparents’ enslavement. Some of the Southern Black artists who rose to prominence around this time were even formerly enslaved themselves. Though slavery was abolished following the American Civil War, many emancipated African Americans had few employment options and were forced back into slave-like conditions. Many of the poets and artists who later became part of the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson included, experienced concomitant hardship.

Johnson grew up in the South and was born only six years after the end of the Civil War. Though his family originally lived in the Northern United States after moving there from the Bahamas, Johnson himself was born in Florida. Coming from an educated and cultured middle-class family, however, Johnson had many standard American privileges that were not typically afforded to Black people at the time—particularly those in the South. Johnson’s engagement with traditional literary forms, language, and symbols in “Sonnet” reflects the uncommon cultural education in his youth. Not only were many Black people barred from higher education, but they were also not often introduced to classic literature.