Johnson, Charles S.

WORKS BY JOHNSON

WORKS ABOUT JOHNSON

Charles Spurgeon Johnson (1893–1956) was a sociologist who did pioneering work in the field of human relations, a prolific writer, an editor, an adviser to governmental and philanthropic groups, and the president of Fisk University from 1946 to 1956.

A graduate of Virginia Union University, he received his sociological training at the University of Chicago, primarily through an unusual apprenticeship which he served under Robert E. Park. At the University of Chicago men such as Park, W. I. Thomas, and Ellsworth Faris were seeking to study race relations with the techniques of sociology, that is, as a specific problem in social interaction and collective action. They wished to study the character of racial and cultural contact in all cultures with heterogeneous populations, rather than just as a particular aspect of American society.

In view of the nature of his training at Chicago, it is not surprising that one of Johnson’s major sociological contributions was his demonstration that the emotion-ridden subject of race relations could be studied by sociologists from an objective and scientific point of view. His first major research in this field resulted in the classic work The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (1922). This work effectively combined personal documents and statistical data; it documented in an objective fashion the riot itself, the events leading up to it, and the misconceptions, misinformation, and attitudes upon which the events were based.

The bulk of Johnson’s sociological contributions was made during that period in which he served as chairman of the department of social sciences at Fisk University, 1928–1947. His sociological studies covered a wide range of Negro life, but he was perennially concerned with the depressed status of the Negro within American society and the implications of this status for the Negro’s personality development and for the nation’s image of itself as a democratic society. Johnson excelled in his ability to document the reactions of Negroes of varying socioeconomic classes to their racial status.

In Shadow of the Plantation (1934) Johnson related the social and cultural influences of the plantation to the social patterns and personality development of Negroes who lived in this type of agricultural situation. In The Negro College Graduate (1938), for which he received the Ainsfield award, he attempted to synthesize the social as well as the educational philosophy of the Negro college graduate. In Patterns of Negro Segregation (1943) he attempted to delineate the class structure of the Negro community and to describe the differential behavioral responses of the various classes.

Johnson’s concept of the “folk Negro” as a social category cutting across class lines was new, as was his critical view of the caste theory of race relations. In Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941) Johnson took issue with the then current view of some social scientists that race relations in America constituted a caste system. Unlike a caste system, the Southern race system lacked both religious sanctions and the mutual acceptance of a fixed status; it was also highly unstable, with Negroes constantly changing and redefining their own status in relation to whites.

Johnson was also noted for his ability to marshal facts effectively as an aid to the solution of practical problems. From 1943 to 1948 he edited the Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations (later called Race Relations), a report that carried an interpretive account of the month’s events; it had developed out of a confidential assignment from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to write a monthly report on race relations.

Perhaps Johnson’s most influential practical contribution was his development of the “community self-survey of race relations,” a technique for allowing the people of a community to discover for themselves facts about human relations in the community. [SeeRace relations.]

Johnson rendered important services to the American government, and to various philanthropic foundations, social agencies, and international organizations. In 1930 he served as the American member of an international commission of the League of Nations that inquired into the existence of forced labor in Liberia. In 1946 he went to Japan as one of the advisers on the reorganization of the Japanese educational system. He also served as one of the social science consultants to the legal staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the time of the historic United States Supreme Court decision on school segregation in 1954.

Before becoming chairman of the social sciences department at Fisk University, Johnson served as director of research and investigation for the National Urban League. At that time he established Opportunity, a journal of Negro life. This magazine, which contained sociological research, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, and graphic art, became during the 1920s a leading medium of expression in what has come to be called the “Negro Renaissance.”

In 1946 Johnson was appointed president of Fisk. Under his leadership the university became a national and international center for research and study, attracting some of the nation’s foremost teachers and scientists. It became the first predominantly Negro institution to meet Phi Beta Kappa’s qualification criteria.

Johnson was a prolific writer. At the time of his inauguration as president of Fisk, a bibliography compiled by the Fisk University library (1947) listed 17 books of which he was author or coauthor, 14 other books to which he had contributed chapters, and more than 60 articles. Although Johnson was not primarily a textbook writer, one of his major sociological contributions, The Negro in American Civilization (1930), became an influential textbook in the field of race relations.

Throughout his career Johnson received many honors, including honorary degrees from Virginia Union University and the University of Glasgow, as well as from Columbia, Harvard, Howard, and Lincoln universities. Edwin R. Embree in Thirteen Against the Odds said of him: “Charles Johnson has one of America’s great careers in scholarship and statesmanship” (1944, p. 70). His former teacher, Ernest W. Burgess, placed him as a social scientist of the first rank (1956, p. 321).

Preston Valien

[See also the biographies ofParkandThomas.]

WORKS BY JOHNSON

1922 The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1930 The Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research. New York: Holt.

1934 Shadow of the Plantation. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1938 The Negro College Graduate. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.

1941 Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South. Washington: American Council on Education.

1943 Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper.

WORKS ABOUT JOHNSON

Burgess, Ernest W. 1956 Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Social Scientist, Editor and Educational Statesman. Phylon 17:317–321.

Embree, Edwin R. 1944 Charles S. Johnson: A Scholar and Gentleman. Pages 47–70 in Edwin R. Embree, Thirteen Against the Odds. New York: Viking.

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., Library 1947 Charles Spurgeon Johnson: A Bibliography. Nashville: The Library.

Gardiner, George L. (compiler) 1960 A Bibliography of Charles S. Johnson’s Published Writings. With an Introductory Note by Anna Bontemps. Nashville: Fisk Univ. Library.

Charles Spurgeon Johnson

African American educator and sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson (1893-1956) gave outstanding leadership to Fisk University and conducted important research on human relations and the problems of blacks in America.

Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born on July 24, 1893, in Bristol, Va., the son of a Baptist minister. His father's books on philosophy, history, and religion were sources of inspiration. He completed college at Virginia Union University in 1917, having been a student leader. Johnson received his bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Chicago and pursued graduate work in sociology there. He married Marie Burgette in 1920; they had four children.

Johnson's distinguished and extraordinarily productive career as a sociologist began when he organized the Department of Research and Investigation of the Chicago Urban League in 1917. He was a member of the Committee on Race Relations, which reported on the Chicago race riot of 1919 in The Negro in Chicago (1922). In 1920, as director of research and investigation for the New York Urban League, he established the magazine Opportunity, a leading periodical during the "Harlem Renaissance" that inspired many young blacks. In 1928, he went to head Fisk University's sociology department; with unmatched vision, he made it internationally famous. He was president of Fisk from 1947 to 1956.

Meanwhile, Johnson published books, articles, book reviews, pamphlets, and chapters in books. His research and writing centered on African American life and culture and on race relations. Among his most outstanding books are The Negro in American Civilization (1930), The Shadow of the Plantation (1934), A Preface to Racial Understanding (1936), The Negro College Graduate (1938), Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941), Patterns of Segregation (1943), To Stem This Tide (1943), and Into the Mainstream (1947).

Johnson's profound grasp of sociology was recognized in his numerous positions: as member, International Commission of the League of Nations; secretary, Commission on Negro Housing of President Herbert Hoover's Conference on Homebuilding and Home Ownership; member, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Farm Tenancy; member, White House Conference on Children in a Democracy; president, Southern Sociological Society; one of 10 American delegates to the first session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; one of 20 educators sent to Japan in 1946 to reorganize the educational system; and member, Conference on Science, Religion, and Philosophy. From 1944 to 1950 Johnson was director of race relations of the American Missionary Association of the Congregational and Christian Churches. In 1948 he served as a delegate to the World Council of Churches Assembly. He also lectured widely in America and Scandinavia.

In addition to the Harmon Award (1930) and the University of Chicago Alumni Citation for distinguished public service (1945), Johnson received honorary degrees from Virginia Union, Howard, Columbia, Harvard, and Lincoln universities, from Central State College, and from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He died on October 27, 1956.

Further Reading

A short autobiography of Johnson is in Louis Finkelstein, ed., American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits (1948). An account of him is in W.S. Robinson, Historical Negro Biographies (1968). Edwin R. Embree, 13 against the Odds (1944), contains a chapter on Johnson.

Additional Sources

Robbins, Richard, Sidelines activist: Charles S. Johnson and the struggle for civil rights, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. □