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Charles S. Johnson

This article is about the sociologist and university president. For the American football player, please see Charles S. Johnson (football).

Charles Spurgeon Johnson (July 24, 1893 – October 27, 1956) was a distinguished sociologist, first black president of historically black Fisk University, and a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advancement of civil rights for African Americans and all other ethnic minorities. He preferred to work in coalition with liberal white groups in the South quietly as a "sidelines activist" concerned to get practical results. His position is often contrasted with that of the towering figure in this field, W.E.B. DuBois, who was a powerful and militant advocate for his people and who described Johnson as "too conservative." But this contrast should be seen in the context of the 1930s and 1940s, with complete segregation and fierce discrimination pervading the South. He was angry and unwavering in personal terms in his opposition to this oppressive system yet hoped he had the strategy to significantly change race relations in terms of the short term practical gains.

Born in the South in turn-of-the century in Virginia, Johnson went north to Chicago and the University of Chicago where he was part of the Great Migration. After the tragic race riot of 1919 he did much of the research which showed how the riot had deep roots in denial of economic and social opportunity to African Americans. The subsequent book, The Negro in Chicago. became the classic model for comprehensive commission reports.

In the 1920s Johnson moved to New York City where he became research director for the National Urban League and "entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance," the creative upsurge by African American writers and artists of that time.

Johnson yearned to return to the South, not only to study race relations but to change them. He moved to Nashville, taking a position as head of sociology at Fisk University. There he wrote or directed countless studies of the way in which combined economic and social factors produced an oppressive racial structure. Two of these books have become classics: Shadow of the Plantation (1934), and Growing up in the Black Belt (1940). Johnson lived long enough to celebrate the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Johnson played a key role in the effort to implement the decision the face of "massive resistance." Johnson's work and that of his peers helped pave the way for the civil rights legislation of the Sixties.

Johnson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

• Robbins, Richard, Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (University Press of Mississippi, 1996)