Charles Spurgeon Johnson was a sociologist, a principal member of the Harlem Renaissance, and college administrator. He was the first African American president of Fisk University. Johnson was born July 24, 1893 in Bristol, Virginia, to well-educated parents. He attended a boarding school in Richmond, Virginia. In 1916 after only three years, Johnson earned a B.A. from Virginia Union University in Richmond. In 1917 Johnson moved to Chicago to pursue graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. His study was interrupted by service in France during World War I as a non-commissioned officer with the US army.
After returning to the US, he resumed graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in sociology. Johnson returned to Chicago to work with the renowned sociologist Robert E. Park from 1919 to 1921 as a researcher for the Chicago Urban League. As principal researcher and author for the Illinois Governor's Commission on Race Relations, Johnson wrote his acclaimed “The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and Race Riot” report. This was a sociological study of the race riot in that city during the Red Summer of 1919.
In the 1920s Johnson moved to New York City, where he became research director for the National Urban League. He was an "entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance". In Harlem, he argued for Black artists saying that they must use their own experiences as the basis for their creativity, rejecting European standards. His goal was to improve Negro self-image and character, and he felt that by writing they could achieve this. During his time with the National Urban League, he also founded and edited "Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life", a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the leading publisher of young African-American authors.
Believing that art and literature could lift up African Americans, Johnson launched the careers of promising Black writers in Opportunity. Johnson yearned to return to the South, not only to study race relations but to change them. In 1926 he moved to Nashville, taking a position as chair of the Department of Sociology at Fisk University, which was established by a gift from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. There he wrote or directed numerous studies of how combined legal, economic and social factors produced an oppressive racial structure.
He helped to create the Fisk Institute of Race Relations, which were attended by national leaders and supported by the Rosenwald Fund. Based in ethnographic research, these institutes were renowned for their series of research reports and community studies in the Deep South. They were also credited for their influence on the development of Civil Rights strategies at the Highlander Folk School. The collaborative research teams led by Johnson interviewed formerly enslaved Tennesseans, documenting their life experiences and beliefs.
Their series of reports on counties and individual communities in Tennessee is an important documentary source of rural and African American life in the mid-twentieth century. His book "The Negro in American Civilization" in 1930 became a widely accepted sociological text. Johnson was awarded the William E. Harmon Gold Medal for Distinguished Service by African Americans in the field of science, for this work. In the 1940s, Johnson and his team documented Black folkways in Coahoma County, Mississippi, in collaboration with the Library of Congress.
His later works have become classics: "Shadow of the Plantation" (1934), and "Growing up in the Black Belt" (1940). Charles S. Johnson was elected the first Black vice president of the American Sociological Society in 1937. During World War II, Johnson openly attacked segregation. He examined urban race relations at a moment when Whites fought to preserve their power and privilege, especially in education, employment, and housing. One of his more important works in this period was a 98 page study of San Francisco's African American community. It highlighted the institutional racism throughout the city.
In 1943 with the help of the Rosenwald Fund, Johnson published "The Monthly Summary". It provided 8,000 subscribers with the status of race relations in various parts of the country, documented by several thousand items. Beginning in 1944, also with the assistance of the Rosenwald Fund, Johnson led annual Race Relations Institutes, attended by leaders from all over the country. These meetings at Fisk University were extremely influential in the developing Civil Rights movement. NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall was a frequent speaker at Race Relations Institutes of the 1950s. Johnson provided him with evidence to use in his legal briefs for Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
While there was intense local opposition in the beginning, Ben West, then Nashville’s vice-mayor, spoke to the institute in 1949. Charles Johnson was one of ten United States delegates to UNESCO (1946-47). He was a member of the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships (1947-54), and a delegate to the Assembly of the World Council of Churches (1948). In 1946 Johnson was one of 20 American educators selected to advise on educational reform in occupied Japan. He was also a consultant for several White House conferences related to youth in American society. Johnson applauded the removal of racial barriers in various areas of society. He, like many Black leaders, was particularly interested in ending school segregation.
In 1946, Dr. Charles S. Johnson became the first Black president of Fisk University. He attracted outstanding faculty, including the author Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, James Weldon Johnson and many other Renaissance men and women to work at the college. He served in this capacity until his death. During his tenure, he focused on expanding the university’s academic programs and fostering an environment of intellectual rigor and social responsibility. Johnson’s leadership at Fisk solidified the institution’s reputation as a leading center for Black education and research. Johnson’s impact extended beyond academia.
He was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, advocating for desegregation and equal opportunities for African Americans. The failure of White moderate southerners to embrace the court’s decree quickly bitterly disappointed Johnson. His achievements in the worlds of education and civil rights had finally brought him recognition from various national and international organizations. His work and that of his peers also contributed to passage of federal civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.
Over his long career, he advised three American presidents on education and civil rights, and was awarded five honorary doctorates (Virginia Union, Harvard, Columbia, Howard, and University of Glasgow in Scotland). Charles S. Johnson was a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advancement of civil rights for African Americans and all ethnic minorities. He played a key role in the effort to implement the decision in the face of "massive resistance" in the South. Johnson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was also a charter member of the Zeta Rho chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity, chartered at Fisk in 1953.