Charles Spurgeon Johnson, one of the leading 20th Century black sociologists, was born in Bristol, Virginia on July 24, 1893. After receiving his B.A. from Virginia Union University in Richmond, he studied sociology with the noted sociologist Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago where he earned a Ph.D. in 1917. Initially a friend of historian Carter G. Woodson, he did collaborative work with the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History until his relationship with Woodson deteriorated.
Johnson, however, was able to attract research funding from white philanthropic organizations such as the General Education Board, Phelps-Stokes Fund, Rosenwald Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation which allowed him to study the social condition of Black communities suffering under Jim Crow. That research ensured that Johnson would emerge by the 1920s as the nation’s foremost scholar in the field of Black Sociology.
Surviving and being a witness to the race riots during the Red Summer of 1917, Johnson investigated the causes of the riots and produced an assessment for the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. His research ultimately became The Negro in Chicago, the first of numerous published 20th Century studies of the cause’s urban riots and their consequences. This highly acclaimed study led in 1921 to Dr. Johnson being appointed director of research for the National Urban League. In 1923 Johnson founded its professional magazine, Opportunity, and became its first editor. Opportunity published a wide variety of social science research and popular essays which revealed the impact Jim Crow on the African American community at that time.
In 1928, Dr. Johnson decided to move to Fisk University to continue his research and to become its first chairman of the newly established Department of Social Sciences. He viewed the move to a black institution as strengthening his scholarly work by enabling him to acquire more white philanthropic research funding. Upon receiving the funding he expected Johnson established the Fisk Institute of Race Relations, first “think tank” at a predominately black institution. In recognition of his efforts to place Fisk University on the academic map, the institution’s board of trustees, in 1948, appointed him the first black president of Fisk University. Dr. Johnson served in this capacity, did further innovative research, and received many accolades and honors until his death in Nashville on October 27, 1956.
Notable works
Some of Johnson notable works include:[1]
Editor, Opportunity: a Journal of Negro Life, the official publication of the National Urban League[2]
Editor, Ebony and Topaz, 1928
The Negro in American civilization; a study of Negro life and race relations in the light of social research. NY: H. Holt, 1930.
The collapse of cotton tenancy. Summary of Field studies & statistical surveys, 1933-35 by Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree [and] W. W. Alexander. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1935.
Shadow of the plantation Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966, c1934.
Growing up in the Black Belt; Negro youth in the rural South. With an introd. by St. Clair Drake. Prepared for the American Youth Commission, American Council on Education. NY: Schocken Books, 1967, c1941.
“The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance.” (1954) Remembering the Harlem Renaissance. Ed. Cary D. Wintz. NY: Garland, 1996. 226-34.
The Negro college graduate NY: Negro Universities Press, 1969.
Education and the cultural process; papers presented at symposium commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of Fisk University, April 29-May 4, 1941. Edited by Charles S. Johnson. NY: Negro Universities Press,1970. LC2717 E36
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