"Charles Spurgeon Johnson" (July 24 1893- October 27 1956)

Sociologist and college president,was born in Bristol,Virginia,the eldest of six children of Charles Henry Johnson,a Baptist minister,and Winifred Branch.Because there was not a high school for African-American in Bristol,he moved to Richmond and attended the Wayland Academy.In 1913 Charles entered college at Virginia Union in Richmond,and graduated in only three years.While at college,he volunteered with the Richmond Welfare Association,and one incident there had a profound impact on his future career.During the holiday season,while delivering baskets to needy people,he came across a young woman lying on a pile of tags,groaning in labor.None of the doctors in the area would help the young woman,Charles persuaded a midwife to deliver the baby.He then tried to locate a home for the young woman,those he approached shut the door in his face.Some families rejected the young woman because she was African-American and others because,in their eyes,she had sinned.Edwin Embree,Charles longtime time friend,once noted that Charles could not get the image of the young woman out of his mind and could not "cease pondering the anger of people at human catastrophe while they calmly accept conditions that caused it." In 1916 Charles moved north to pursue a PhD at the University of Chicago,which at that time employed some of the world's most prominent sociologists.It was thee that he would meet his lifetime mentor,Robert E.Park.As a result of this relationship,many of his writings and approaches to race relations bear the mark of the eminent of Chicago researcher.He interrupted his studies to enlists in the military in 1918,upon returning to Chicago a year later, he found himself in the middle of one of the most horrific race riots in U.S. history. This incident sparked His involvement with the Chicago Race Relations Commission;as associate executive secretary for that body, he was largely responsible for the writing of The Negro in Chicago:A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot(1922).With this publication Charles spearheaded a tradition of social science research that described changes in race relation as cycles of tension and resolution,largely caused by outside forces.Partly based on the work of Robert,Charles version of this sociological model envisioned a wider role for human intervention;in particular,he believed that government could influence this process.Charles work with the Chicago Race Relations Commission also introduced him to Julius Rosenwald,the Sears and Roebuck tycoon and creator of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (which assisted with the establishment of African-American schools in the South and provided scholarships to talented African-American intellectuals).Charles married Marie Antoinette Burgette on November 6 1920.He moved with his wife to New York City,where he became the director of research and investigations for the National Urban League.During this period he also edited the league's journal,Opportunity,and published short stories and poems by several prominent Harlem Renaissance authors,including Langston Hughes,Countee Cullen,Aaron Douglas,and Zora Neale Hurston.Charles also used his well-established connections to white philanthropists to secure financial support for African-American literature and art.In his view,promoting culture was a way of combating racism.The sociologists Blyden Jackson,his colleague while he was attending Fisk University in Nashville,Tennessee,credits him with helping to "ease the transformation of more than one neophyte in the arts,like Zora Neale Hurston, from a nonentity into a luminary of the Renaissance."Indeed,both Blyden and Alaib Locke, point to a 1924 dinner Charles hosted in New-York as one of the most important contributions to the Renaissance.With more than three hundred people from both the white and African-American worlds in attendance (including Alain,James Weldon Johnson, William Baldwin III,Jessie Fauset,Countee Cullen,Albert Barnes,and W.E.B. Du Bois),the event helped many African-Americans poets,artists,and writers find mainstrain publishers and venues for their endeavors.For Charles,events like this dinner were part of a carefully planned effort to improve opportunities for African-Americans in the 1920s in ways that had not been possible during the nadir of race relations before World War I.Near the close of the Renaissance in 1928,Charles returned south to Nashville to chair the department of social sciences at Fisk University,Supported by a grant from Lauren Spelman Rockefeller Memorial,the department was set up with the idea that he would be its leader. Armed with solid connections and ample funding,he brought many important individuals to the Fisk campus,including Sterling Brown,James Weldon Johnson,Horace Mann Bond,Robert E.Park,E. Franklin Frazier,Arn Bontemps, and Aaron Douglas.Along with with his colleagues in the social sciences,Charles published widely.It was during this time that he produced some of his best known works, such as Shadow of the Plantation (1934),Growing Up in the Black Belt (1938),and Patterns of Negro Segregation(1942).He also created an internationally renowned race relations institute at Fisk,which brought together leaders,scholars,and ordinary citizens from throughout the U.S. and the world to discuss race relations in an integrated setting.Despite suffering extensive criticism locally,especially from the segregationist Nashville Banner,the institute and Charles leadership drew great prominence to Fisk and to Charles as an individual.In 1946,at at time when Fisk,was experiencing a leadership crisis, its board of trustees considered selecting the first African-American candidate to lead the institution.Given his international stature and administrative skills,he seemed like the most obvious candidate,several of the alumni,including Fisk's most prominent graduate,W.E.B. Du Bois,spoke out vehemently against his selection.Charles close ties to philanthropy,including the Whitney, Ford, and Rosenwald foundations,made him suspect in their minds.For this group,the foundations were forever tainted by their previous efforts to promote and industrial curriculum at African-American colleges.Despite the opposition,the financial needs of Fisk prevailed over ideology,and Charles was inaugurated president in 1947;the board of trustees had recognized his success in advancing and improving Fisk's race relations institute through his fund-raising efforts and believed that he might similarly ensure progress for the university as a whole.In his role as president,he created the Basic College Early Entry Program.Charles was a proponent of integration,he doubted that it would occur quickly and thus was inspired to initiate a program to nurture young African-American minds within the African-American college setting.The Basic College offered students a cohesive learning environment in which they benefited from the knowledge and experience of literary,artistic,and political, figures that Charles invited to campus in the years before his death.The program produced such figures as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis;Hazel O'Leary,energy secretary during the administration of President Bill Clinton;and Spelman College College president Johnette Cole.In addition to his university-releated service,Charles served as a trustee for the Julius Rosenwald Fund from 1933 to 1948,working specifically as the codirector of the fund's race-relation's program.From 1944 to 1950 he acted as the director of the race relations division of the American Missionary Association.Concurrently with his foundation work,he conducted research for the federal government and worked as a cultural ambassador.Asa member of the New Deal's Committee on Farm Tenancy,Charles supported President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to end poverty and racism in the rural south.After World War II,under the direction of President Harry Truman,Charles was one of ten U.S. delegates for the first United Nations Educational,Scientific,and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference in Paris.And he assisted President Dwight Eisenhower by serving on the Board of Foreign Scholarships under the Fullbright-Hays Act.Charles spent a lifetime cultivating African-American scholarship,creativity,and leadership and used research and culture as tools to fight racism.As he grew older,the pressure generated by his many obligations began to take its toll:his migraine headaches worsened,and he developed a heart condition. Charles died of a heat attack on the train platform in Louisville,Kentucky.