Johnson, Charles S.

Charles S. Johnson

Charles S. Johnson (1893-1956), an African American sociologist and Fisk University president, also served as a key editor and catalyst of the literary Harlem Renaissance.  After earning a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago, Johnson was hired as the research director of the National Urban League, contributing to the influential commission report The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (1922).  Relocating to New York City, he assumed the editorship of the Urban League’s journal, Opportunity, which he crafted into a major outlet for Harlem Renaissance writing, nearly as important a venue for New Negro authors as The Crisis and The Messenger.  Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston were among the Opportunity literary contest winners who went on to significant careers.  According to historian David Levering Lewis, Johnson moved readily from sociology to literature because he calculated that while “the ballot box” and “the union hall” might be closed to many African Americans, “there remained two paths that had not been blocked”: arts and letters.  Despite this pragmatic bet on black artistic advancement, Johnson remained close enough to his original discipline to write two classic sociological studies: Shadow of the Plantation (1934) and Growing up in the Black Belt (1940).  The FBI amassed a 422-page personal file on Johnson during its Cold War boom years.  With some irony, his grandson, Jeh Johnson, was named the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in 2013.   

C.S. Johnson Part 1

C.S. Johnson Part 2

C.S. Johnson Part 3

C.S. Johnson Part 4

C.S. Johnson Part 5

C.S. Johnson Part 6

C.S. Johnson Part 7