Charles S. Johnson : Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow [1 ed.] 9780791486061, 9780791458976

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Charles S. Johnson LEADERSHIP BEYOND THE VEIL IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW

Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman Foreword by David Levering Lewis

“It seems almost inexplicable that the national and international prominence enjoyed by Johnson at the time of his death is only now receiving the well-considered appreciation of Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman’s comprehensive biography.” — from the Foreword by David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois “Gilpin and Gasman have captured the essence of this formal, private, enigmatic man’s work and put it in the context of his times—the tumultuous decades leading up to Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement. This is a welcome and long-overdue addition to the canon of American civil rights history.” — John Egerton, author of Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South After a career as a university history professor for many years, Patrick J. Gilpin was admitted to the Texas State Bar and began practicing law in 1980. His practice is primarily in the area of civil rights. Marybeth Gasman is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Charles S. Johnson

The milestones for blacks in twentieth-century America—the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle for equal education, and the civil rights movement—would have been inconceivable without the contributions of one important but often overlooked figure, Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956). This compelling biography demonstrates the scope of his achievements, situates him among other black intellectuals of his time, and casts new light on a pivotal era in the struggle for black equality in America. An impresario of Harlem Renaissance culture, an eminent Chicago-trained sociologist, a pioneering race relations leader, and an educator of the generation that freed itself from legalized segregation, Johnson was a visionary who linked the everyday struggles of blacks with the larger intellectual and political currents of the day. His distinguished career included twenty-eight years at Fisk University, where he established the famed Race Relations Institute and became Fisk’s first black president.

Gilpin and Gasman

BIOGRAPHY / AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu

Charles S. Johnson

SUNY

LEADERSHIP BEYOND THE VEIL IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW

Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman Foreword by David Levering Lewis

Charles S. Johnson

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Charles S. Johnson Leadership beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow

PATRICK J. GILPIN MARYBETH GASMAN

Foreword by David Levering Lewis

S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y o f N e w Yo r k P r e s s

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Judith Block Marketing by Anne Valentine

Library of Congress Control Number Gilpin, Patrick J. Charles S. Johnson : leadership beyond the veil in the age of Jim Crow / Patrick J. Gilpin, Marybeth Gasman ; foreword by David Levering Lewis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-7914-5897-0 (alk. paper) — 0-7914-5898-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Johnson, Charles Spurgeon, 1893–1956. 2. African American civil rights workers— Biography. 3. Civil rights workers—United States—Biography. 4. African American sociologists—Biography. 5. Fisk University—Presidents—Biography. 6. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 7. Civil rights movement—United States—History—20th century. 8. United States—Race Relations. I. Gasman, Marybeth. II. Title. E185.97.J66G55 2003 323'.092—dc21 [B] 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2003052613

PJG For my wife, Kathy, and my children: Mal-Selika, BoJavai, Sonoma, P. J., and Coretta MBG For my family: Edward and Chloe

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Contents Foreword by David Levering Lewis Acknowledgments

ix xiii

Chapter 1 From Bristol to Nashville

1

Chapter 2 From Riot to Renaissance

11

Chapter 3 The Mentor: Robert E. Park

31

Chapter 4 The Park-Johnson Model

49

Chapter 5 The Johnson Model

61

Chapter 6 Park to Johnson to Myrdal

71

Chapter 7 Internationalism: Between the World Wars

79

Chapter 8 The Department of Social Sciences

93

Chapter 9 Beyond the Classroom: Service Intellectual

109

Chapter 10 The Publications

125

Chapter 11 The Best of Booker T. Washington

141 vii

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Contents

Chapter 12 The Rest of Booker T. Washington

155

Chapter 13 The Department of Race Relations: Confronting de facto Segregation

169

Chapter 14 The Race Relations Institutes: Confronting de jure Segregation

183

Chapter 15 Internationalism: World War II and the Cold War

201

Chapter 16 Conflict over Fisk Leadership

213

Chapter 17 The Basic College: Nurturing Scholars and Leaders

227

Chapter 18 The Red Scare Hits Home

237

Chapter 19 Solomon on the Cumberland

249

Epilogue

257

Appendix I. Interviews Conducted in Preparation of the Text

259

Appendix II. Books Authored by Charles S. Johnson

261

Appendix III. Manuscript Collection Used in Text

263

Notes

265

Index

311

Foreword Charles S. Johnson was the son of a diminutive, small-town Virginia preacher who once tried to stare down a lynch mob. Johnson graduated with honors from his father’s alma mater, Virginia Union University, a historically black, Baptist collegiate institution whose distinguished roster of graduates includes J. Max Barber, militant early-twentieth-century critic of Booker T. Washington, and Douglas Wilder, first African American governor of the state of Virginia. After seeing action as a sergeant major in World War I, Johnson resumed graduate studies in sociology under Robert Park at the University of Chicago. One of the founders of the discipline in the United States, Park would have a profound and lifelong influence upon Charles Johnson. Indeed, after retiring from Chicago, Park would accept Johnson’s invitation to resume teaching at Fisk University, where Johnson served as president from 1947 until an untimely death from coronary disease in 1956. It seems almost inexplicable that the national and international prominence enjoyed by Johnson at the time of his death is only now receiving the well-considered appreciation of Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman’s comprehensive biography. Johnson’s academic precocity and diplomatic finesse were such that he would become one of this country’s most influential scholars in the field of race relations, one of its most significant sociologists, a college president, and premier consultant to the major educational organizations and philanthropic foundations. While studying with Park at Chicago, Johnson’s considerable research abilities proved invaluable to the emergency race relations commission established to study and explain the sanguinary 1919 race riot in that city. Although Johnson’s authorship of the commission’s report was never formally acknowledged, it was widely understood that the two-volume monograph The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot was largely his work. In addition to its rich lode of data on demography, jobs, housing, culture, and politics, what distinguished Johnson’s study was its insistence that racism was ix

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a consequence of misperceived grievances rather than an intrinsic cause of group enmity and conflict. Economic factors, therefore, were to be greatly minimized. Johnson moved to New York in 1921 to become the Urban League’s national director of research and editor of its new monthly publication Opportunity. The magazine’s raison d’être was to feature social science investigations of the color line in America. But Johnson abruptly and cannily shifted the focus of Opportunity to literature, art, poetry, and drama. In collaboration with a small number of African American professionals employed by or closely associated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and his own civil rights organization, Johnson launched the so-called Harlem Renaissance in March of 1924 at New York City’s Civic Club. Until 1928, when Johnson departed the Urban League to become chairman of the Department of Sociology at Fisk University, he played a central role in the recruitment, sponsorship, and propaganda for a movement designed to improve American race relations through the manifestation of unusual talent in arts and letters. Opportunity and the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine held well-publicized annual awards ceremonies attended by white influentials at which new poets and writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Nella Larsen were presented. For a brief, exciting period, Johnson’s guarded hope that social progress could be significantly advanced through the arts was also shared by James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Jessie Fauset, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among other principal members of the so-called black “Talented Tenth” establishment. Johnson would spend the remainder of his life at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, at the time the premier black collegiate institution in the nation. As chair of sociology, Johnson’s Chicago reputation as a serious researcher, contacts made during the Harlem Renaissance, and superlative skills in dealing with powerful personalities and institutions enabled him to win research funds and attract top flight faculty and graduate students. Philanthropies such as the Julius Rosenwald Fund and learned societies such as the Social Science Research Council were especially supportive of Johnson’s research activities. The imprimatur of Robert Park continued to be of great value. Johnson’s Race Relations Institute became a cradle for ideas, investigations, and policy recommendations of seminal importance. The academic and philanthropic establishments found Johnson’s brand of sociology especially congenial as the climate in race relations began to change during the 1930s. Cautious, empirical, appearing to let the facts speak for themselves, Johnson’s pronouncements and writings were never perceived as threatening to the status quo in the manner of a Du Bois, but rather as scholarship that encouraged greater understanding. Johnson was deemed the ideal scholar to

Foreword

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investigate charges for the League of Nations that the Liberian government delivered young males to Portuguese planters on Fernando Po in exchange for money, a commission he executed with competence and tact in 1930. Johnson’s Negro in American Civilization (1930) was a major contribution to the national discussion of race. The book implicitly embraced Robert Park’s key concepts of marginality and evolution through conflict. It presented a great mass of data across the full range of the African American experience and was cautiously optimistic about the future of the race. In his next book The Shadow of the Plantation (1934), Johnson’s modus operandi of carefully tabulated data and neutral prose proved immensely effective, as the facts of racism and economic deprivation did really speak powerfully for themselves. The follow-on monograph The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (1935) coauthored with Rosenwald director Edwin Embree, had much the same impact. The publication of the classic The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (1937) by Fisk sociology professor Bertram Doyle was a further measure of the fecund scholarship nurtured by a sociology department whose faculty included at one time or another E. Franklin Frazier, Horace Cayton, and Preston Valien. Charles S. Johnson became the first person of color to assume the Fisk presidency, an anomaly explained by the paternalism of the great foundations. Fisk’s sizable endowment owed much to the generosity of the Carnegie Corporation, the General Education Board, and other mainstream philanthropies uneasy about the town-gown symbolism of a black head of a university college in the Jim Crow South. Johnson’s stewardship of the institution was to prove spectacular. Fisk became a rival of nearby Vanderbilt University in the cultural and intellectual vibrancy sustained during the decade after World War II. The famed Race Relations Institute drew notable scholars from Europe and Asia. Fisk pioneered the investigative approach called community studies, a portable research model whose standardized questions and refined methodologies were applicable to any urban situation. The caliber of the general faculty augmented greatly after Johnson obtained a large grant in 1951 from the Ford Foundation to underwrite a scholarship program for academically gifted students of color. This Early Entrants Program permitted students to enter Fisk from their second or third year in high school upon competitive success in an examination that anticipated the later SAT. Johnson’s rationale for the Early Entrants Program was that segregation impaired the instruction received in black southern public schools and, furthermore, that gifted young people were better served by an accelerated, enriched educational experience irrespective of region. The Cold War could be deadly problematic for college and university administrators. A depressingly large number of them failed the test of

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academic freedom during the paranoid fifties. In Charles Johnson’s case, he confronted the twin challenges of civil rights and Cold War intimidation. As liberal white faculty members and increasingly activist students pressed the envelope of Jim Crow in Nashville, Fisk became vulnerable to charges of harboring Communists. The attempt of a professor of mathematics to enroll his white daughter in a black public high school in 1955 raised the policy question of the Fifth Amendment after the professor was subpoenaed to testify by a congressional committee. The authors’ treatment of this painful chapter in Johnson’s career is commendable for balance and perceptiveness. By that time, Johnson had achieved an illustrious standing in academe unrivaled by any contemporary person of color. Gilded by numerous honorary degrees; multiple consultancies and directorships with the Rosenwald Fund, the Ford Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, and the John Hay Whitney Foundation; and the author of staple monographs on race relations, Charles Spurgeon Johnson was recognized as one of the foremost sociologists of his generation. His death in the summer of 1956 occurred just as the progress in race relations he patiently discerned in those “vectors of social change” he regularly adduced had begun to unfold. David Levering Lewis

Acknowledgments The debts incurred by the authors in writing this book are staggering and can never be fully measured nor adequately acknowledged. Nevertheless, some contributions were so outstanding that an attempt must be made at attribution, recognition, and appreciation. Librarians and libraries have been our lifeline. We are especially indebted to the staffs at the Fisk University Library and the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina. In the former, special thanks are due to Dr. Jessie Carney Smith, Ms. Ann Allen Shockley, Ms. Beth Howse, and Mrs. Sue P. Chandler; in the latter, Dr. J. Isaac Copeland and his assistant Mr. Michael G. Martin offered special aid. Other libraries that were valuable and individuals who aided us include the Amistad Collection (formerly located at Dillard University but now residing at Tulane University), with special thanks to Dr. Clifton H. Johnson and his secretary Mrs. Hattie M. Perry; Atlanta University; the Rockefeller Archive Center, with special appreciation to Kenneth W. Rose and Thomas Rosenbaum; the Beineke Library; Yale University; the Indiana University Library; the Ford Foundation Archives, specifically Idelle Nissila; the Chicago Historical Society; the Houston Public Library; the Joint Universities Library, Nashville, Tennessee; the Library of Congress; the Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library, Indiana University-Purdue University; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, with special thanks to Mrs. Jean Blackwell Hutson; the Tennessee State Archives; the Texas Southern University Library; the Tuskegee Institute Archives; the Clark-Atlanta University Library; the University of Houston Library; the Wake Forest University Library; and the Winston-Salem State University Library. Both of us benefited from the encouragement of Fisk University English professor Leslie Collins to whom we owe special thanks. Portions of this manuscript have been published elsewhere. We wish to thank the following journals for permission to use material which

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Acknowledgments

appeared in their publications: American Education Research Journal, International CASE Journal, the Journal of College and Character, Phylon, the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, and the Journal of Negro History. The research was facilitated with grants and stipends to both authors. Patrick J. Gilpin received support from the Southern Fellowships Fund (1970–71), the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Ethnic Studies (1971–72), and the John Hay Whitney Foundation (1974–75). Mrs. Florence E. Dickersion, who knew Charles S. Johnson, and Mr. Hugh C. Burroughs, both of the Whitney Foundation, made additional contributions far beyond the normal activities of foundation personnel. Marybeth Gasman received support from the Rockefeller Archive Center (1998), the Indiana University Archive Fund (2000), and an Indiana University Center on Philanthropy Dissertation Grant (1999). Three significant figures in the life of Charles S. Johnson made major contributions to this book. Mr. Arna Bontemps and Mr. Lewis Wade Jones, both of whom are deceased, and Mrs. Bonita Valien provided a wealth of rare and valuable information filled with the wisdom of participants making meaningful evaluations of the past. Any of these individuals were eminently capable of writing this book. Likely their book would have humbled the present authors. Mr. Lee Lorch also provided candid commentary on his interactions with Charles S. Johnson. His willingness to share his memories is appreciated. Charles S. Johnson’s family was extremely helpful in bringing this work to fruition. Johnson’s daughter Patricia Johnson Clifford and her late husband Dr. Maurice C. Clifford allowed the authors access to the private correspondence of Mrs. Clifford’s parents for the years 1919 through 1956, and otherwise assisted the writers. Jeh-Vincent Johnson shared memories and Charles S. Johnson’s private photography collection with the authors. Several colleagues have kindly read and offered constructive criticism of the manuscript at various stages, including Professors Shelly Jarmon and Calvin L. Reese, both retired from Texas Southern University; Professor Peter J. Kellogg of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; Professor Dorothy Granberry of Tennessee State University; the late Professor Raleigh A. Wilson, who retired in the 1960s from Tennessee State University; historian John Egerton, who read an earlier version of the manuscript and encouraged its publication; and graduate assistant Sibby Anderson-Thompkins at Georgia State University, who spent countless hours reading and rereading the manuscript. In addition, Edward Epstein spent many hours helping the authors to edit and cut what could have been a much longer manuscript given Charles S. Johnson’s full life. While suggestions were welcomed from all readers and often incorporated into the

Acknowledgments

xv

text, the above-mentioned individuals bear no responsibility for the interpretations in this work; such responsibility lies wholly with the authors. Patrick J. Gilpin personally makes the following acknowledgments. I am greatly indebted and obligated to retired Vanderbilt University Professor Dewey W. Grantham, Jr. What began in his class as a seminar paper in 1970 became a dissertation under the tutelage of a mentor. Without Professor Grantham, this book could not have been written. Words cannot express the gratitude I have for Professor Grantham. Likewise, a special debt is acknowledged to Robert L. Tree, my undergraduate professor at Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa, who made a career of developing diamonds in the rough. The memory of Parsons College will always be sacrosanct. Until I die, I shall always bleed kelly green. My former student and later law clerk Arthur Shaw must be acknowledged and thanked for encouraging me to study Robert E. Park in order to understand Charles S. Johnson. Nor can I forget the sacrifices of Mom and Dad, who labored a lifetime attempting to make bricks without straw. Lastly, I want to acknowledge two people, now deceased, who contributed greatly to this book and my life— Betty Adams, who typed several versions of this manuscript in the precomputer age, and Reid Boyd, who served as my intellectual father while I was growing up. Three very special people in my life contributed immeasurably to this manuscript and my life. In the early years when the manuscript was not well developed, Marjorie Smith Prince assisted in the research, drafting, and editing. As well she was a great friend and a good person. Once I met Mal James Harris, my life was never the same. She taught me, insofar as I had the capacity to learn, what it is like to be black in white America. Mal is missed. Kathy Zu-Bolton Gilpin has been my savior for more than twenty years. In the multiple roles of wife, mother, law office manager, editor, and, in recent times nurse, Kathy has excelled. She has functioned as a harsh, demanding, even draconian editor of this manuscript to the benefit of both authors. Most importantly, Kathy and my children give me reason to live. Marybeth Gasman personally makes the following acknowledgments. I am grateful to several individuals for their support and guidance. Much needed motivation and encouragement was provided by B. Edward McClellan, Michael Parsons, and John Thelin during my graduate school experience. I am especially thankful to John Thelin who told me to read James Anderson’s Education of Blacks in the South. Not only did this book spark my interest in African American higher education, but it introduced me to Charles S. Johnson. I might not have pursued Johnson if Andrea Walton had not pushed me to focus my research interests in his direction. I am thankful for all of her constructive criticism and

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encouragement. I am also grateful to Wayne J. Urban, who has mentored me in the ways of educational history over the past several years. Asa G. Hillard, Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, and Anthony Hargrove have also provided motivation in this process. On a personal note, more than anyone else I am honored to have as my partner in life, Edward Epstein, who has challenged and supported me for the past ten years. Without his unending love and encouragement, I might not be able to function as a scholar, wife, and mother to our daughter Chloe. Lastly, I must express my sincere sense of awe. Chloe Sarah Epstein has helped me to keep life in perspective. Regardless of the things left to do at the end of the day, there is and will always be time for Chloe. She is indeed awe inspiring. Patrick J. Gilpin www.gilpinlaw.com Houston, Texas Marybeth Gasman University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Chapter 1

From Bristol to Nashville

I

t was near the beginning of the twentieth century. The decade that Rayford W. Logan characterized as the nadir of American democracy was coming to a close. In Bristol, Virginia, near the Tennessee border, little Charles Spurgeon Johnson had accompanied his mother to the local drugstore for a soda. But he was to be disappointed. Jim Crow in all its ugliness surfaced that day in Bristol. Years later, when he was president of Fisk University and an international figure, Charles S. Johnson recalled that experience and similar ones in some detail.1 One of his childhood treats was riding the trolley to town, helping his mother shop, and then stopping at the soda fountain for refreshments. On this particular day, the security of a child’s world was shattered. The owner of the drugstore told his mother “he could not serve us any more at the counter.” Johnson recalled that, in talking to his mother, the owner “had no defense against my mother’s obvious dismay and sense of humiliating embarrassment. Nor could she explain to me with any more clarity what had happened and why it was happening. We simply went home in silence.”2 Of the reaction to the beginnings of segregation, Johnson would later say, “The Negroes could not believe their ears . . . ; but it was the beginning of a new self-consciousness that burned.”3 Johnson was only seven years old when legalized Jim Crow came to Virginia. Johnson’s traumatic experience and public humiliation with Jim Crow during his early childhood would become the raison d’être of his career. At the soda fountain in Bristol, Virginia, Johnson was confronted in public with what W. E. B. Du Bois described so eloquently in his classic work The Souls of Black Folk as “the Veil that lay between . . . [African Americans] and the white world.”4 As Du Bois so ominously predicted, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”5 Johnson would devote his life to working from beyond the veil with the goal of someday lifting it. When Johnson’s father, Charles Henry Johnson, was emancipated in Virginia, he, like many slaves, did not carry a surname.6 The elder Johnson’s brother, who was freed at the same time, took the name of Jones, but the 1

2

Charles S. Johnson

father of Charles Spurgeon decided upon Johnson. The slaveholder in whose home Charles Henry Johnson’s mother had been a house slave took an interest in the youngster, and during the post–Civil War years educated him along with his white son. Once the home tutoring was done, both youths went off to Richmond. The white child went to Richmond College, and the black child enrolled at Richmond Institute (later part of Virginia Union). In 1883, the latter received the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. For the next two years, Charles Henry Johnson traveled the Virginia hills working as an itinerant preacher. In about 1885, he married Winifred Branch from the mountain city of Lynchburg. For the next forty-three years, the couple struggled to “save” black workers in the raw railroad town of Bristol on the Virginia-Tennessee border. But the young and energetic Baptist minister did not confine himself to the church quarters. Often, he carried the gospel directly into the railroad camps of “sin and riot.” Nor did he restrict his ministry to blacks. On one occasion, he confronted a lynch mob in the streets of Bristol. In writing of the episode almost half a century later, Charles S. Johnson’s colleague Edwin R. Embree recalled that the elder Johnson “. . . stood his ground so that the men had to shuffle around him to get past, while he cursed their evil, quoted Scripture against their violence, and prayed for their change of heart.” Although the victim did not escape, it was the last lynching in Bristol in an era that witnessed nearly one hundred lynchings a year. Even white ministers were shamed into speaking out against the law of the rope. In the tradition of the black ministry, Johnson’s father was called upon by his parishioners from time to time to be “spiritual advisor, legal and business counsel, guardian and banker, nurse and doctor, and social worker.” Gradually, the rowdy railroad camp was turned into an “orderly and thriving community.” Many years later, the local federal housing project for blacks in Bristol was named the Johnson Courts. Despite the trauma of lynching and the rude incursion of Jim Crow at the local drugstore, Charles S. Johnson’s early years were not filled with daily racial confrontation. As Johnson later recalled, “No one seemed to have been racially concerned . . . that our washerwoman was one of the ‘poor whites’ who lived at the bottom of an alley leading off from our street.” In fact, the butcher in the white-owned meat market was a black deacon in his father’s church. Of course, there were signs of what the twentieth century would bring. Located about a block from the red-light district in Bristol were black churches and the concentration of the black business district. And there were enclaves of black homes in the averageto-low-income section of town, with the greatest racial concentration among the poorest blacks. But at the same time, “occasionally a neat little Negro home might be found nestling in the humble pride between two

From Bristol to Nashville

3

large and imposing dwellings of upper class whites. No one seemed to think seriously about putting them out. . . .” The marriage of Charles Henry Johnson and Winifred Branch brought six children into the world. Charles Spurgeon, born July 24, 1893, was the eldest. He was named after Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), the great Baptist preacher. Robert, who was apparently the second child, died at an early age. Another son, Maurice, and three daughters completed the Johnson family. The three girls were named Sarah, Julia May, and Lillie Ida. Many years later, Julia May Johnson would earn her master’s degree at Fisk University in the department chaired by her brother. In the early years of his life, Charles S. Johnson enjoyed the security of a religious middle-class home. There is little doubt that his formative years were greatly shaped by his stern but loving father. Almost half a century later, the son recalled that his father’s most “notable difference from the typical Negro minister” in southwestern Virginia near the end of the nineteenth century “was in the quality and security of his education.”7 At an early age, the younger Johnson was exposed to the classics of Western literature, theology, and history. By the time he went off to high school, he had sampled, “though not necessarily always absorbing,” such works as The Lives of the Saints, the Sermons of Spurgeon, Greek mythology, and Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, along with Horatio Alger’s boys’ stories and “countless dime novels.”8 Johnson’s childhood can be characterized as stable and wholesome. He was shielded at home from the ugliest aspects of racial discrimination. But, as the oldest of six children, he had to do his share of work. At a young age, he shined shoes in “Mr. Davis’s barbershop.” A black barber in Bristol, Davis catered to white customers. Johnson’s sister Julia recalls that here the young man spent many hours listening to the customers talk.9 He took a keen interest in humankind and society. The sociological skills of a neutral observer, a thorough recorder, and an insightful analyst were first developed in that uniquely American capacity of an “invisible man.” Later, as a student working in hotels and resorts, he saw “modes of white behavior so shockingly at variance with . . . [his] bringing up that what . . . [he] lost in respect for the white race was not wholly compensated for in observations of their prestige in other respects.”10 Bristol had no high schools, and at age fourteen young Charles followed in his father’s footsteps and went off to Richmond. He enrolled in high school at Wayland Academy, then a part of Virginia Union. He entered college with the class of 1913, and by carrying what was then called “over class” (extra courses), he graduated in 1916.11 The entering college class of 1913 at Virginia Union numbered fourteen. Johnson’s classmate John M. Ellison remembers that the young man from Bristol was “active

4

Charles S. Johnson

in all activities . . . but [as one who] did very little socializing.” Johnson was a star member of the university quartet and sang a beautiful tenor. He combined a “jocular . . . sense of humor” with the concerns of a “serious student.” A football injury, which affected his kidney, ended his feats on the gridiron in high school, but he participated on the college tennis team. In addition to serving as manager of the football and baseball teams, Johnson was editor-in-chief of the college journal, president of the student council and a member of the Lyceum Club, participated in the glee club, and was active on the college debating team. During the summers, he worked as a watchman on one of the steamers running from New York to Providence. The job was not very demanding of his time, and he spent many free hours reading. During the school year at Virginia Union, Johnson worked in the library three hours per day, six days a week. Ellison remembers that even when not working, Johnson usually spent his weekends in the library. The talk around campus among both faculty and students was that Johnson “knew more about the library than any other person on the campus.” Such intellectual dedication recommended him to faculty stalwarts George Mellen Prentiss King and Joshua Simpson. In view of Johnson’s later career, the association with King is especially interesting. Prior to coming to Richmond, King had served as principal at Wayland Seminary in the District of Columbia.12 During the academic year 1878–79, one of his students was Booker T. Washington. Although Washington’s reasons for leaving Wayland after only a year are lost in obscurity, he later noted King’s influence. When Wayland Seminary combined with Richmond Institute to form Virginia Union in 1899, King stayed on to teach into his eightieth year. In recalling his teacher, Johnson would remember King for his “confident expectations, and . . . his ability to sense the smallest stirring of comprehension and point them [his students] toward a great and unclosed world.”13 While the white King helped shape Johnson’s thoughts during his years at Virginia Union, it was a black man, Joshua Simpson, “a professor with special emphasis on Greek,” who had the greatest impact upon the young man from Bristol. In reflecting upon their student days together at Virginia Union, Johnson’s classmate Ellison recalls that “Dr. Joshua B. Simpson . . . was a stern disciplinarian stressing accuracy in speech and in writing.” In discussing the influence of the Greek professor, Johnson once wrote of Simpson, “[W]ith all his surface austerity, [he] came closest to understanding the art and meaning of human relations, and it was in his classes that the deepest and most real questions about people and the meaning of life came to articulation.” Especially important to Johnson, who stuttered as a child and whose slowness of speech continued until his

From Bristol to Nashville

5

later years at Fisk, was the fact that “no question was ever considered too clumsy or silly to be treated with dignity and respect.”14 Not only did Johnson graduate from Virginia Union ahead of schedule, but he was chosen to give the valedictory speech.15 When he informed his New England teacher that the topic for his oration at graduation would deal with “certain conflicts in philosophic thinking,” his project was vetoed. The young Virginia Union student did not accept the decision of his teacher gracefully, but rather appealed directly to the president of the institution, George Rice Hovey. After what has been described by Edwin R. Embree as “dogged debate,” Johnson was overruled. Finally, in an attempt to express his indignation, he chose for his valedictory “the dullest subject he could think of: conservation of natural resources.” Ironically, the speech led to an interest in that subject that he would later develop at Fisk University. During his last year at Virginia Union, Johnson had an experience that left a lasting impact upon him.16 While engaged in a project for the Richmond Welfare Association to “investigate needy applicants for Christmas Baskets,” he stumbled into an old rundown shack and “found a girl alone, on a pile of rags, groaning in labor.” His attempts to persuade a doctor to help failed, but he was able to locate a midwife who “saw the girl through.” Next, he set out to secure more long-term care for the mother and infant. He was stunned to learn that her family refused even to speak with the young woman. Other families in the area had a similar reaction, as did community institutions. Some rejected her because she was black; others because she had “sinned.” In the middle of his endeavor, the young woman disappeared. As his colleague Embree was later to write of the episode, Johnson was “never able to get out of his mind that Christmas tragedy, nor to cease pondering the anger of people at human catastrophe while they calmly accept conditions that cause it.” Almost three decades later, Johnson still had a vivid memory of the Christmas of 1916 when he wrote, “Out of this practical experience . . . came a lasting insight and conviction. It was simply that . . . no man can be justly judged until you have looked at the world through his eyes.” Johnson later wrote, “[F]rom this experience came the core of all that I can recognize as a social philosophy.” In 1916, Johnson left Richmond to do graduate work at the University of Chicago. Reportedly, Johnson arrived in Chicago with only $1.95 in his pocket. He immediately sought any kind of employment available. The third “prosperous and kindly looking man he met” led him to a small family hotel on Dorchester Avenue. In less than an hour, Johnson had begun “to earn his board and keep.” By waiting on tables and doing assorted jobs, he received the first wages that would result in his earning “every dollar of his expenses at the University just as he had in school and college.”

6

Charles S. Johnson

During the mid-twentieth century, the University of Chicago’s faculty included some of the most prestigious sociologists in the nation. Apparently, Johnson’s first experience was working under Albion W. Small, author of the college textbook he had used at Virginia Union. Small, who gave ponderous lectures, acted in a dignified manner, and sported a trim beard, fit the image that the Virginia Union graduate had of a university professor. But soon, Johnson was to find a different mentor, Robert E. Park. Their relationship would last until Park’s death in 1944. Over the years, Park would serve as teacher, counselor, and colleague. In the process, Johnson’s many contributions to sociology and to the nation came to bear Park’s imprint. The Great War interrupted the student’s work during his second year at the University of Chicago, and he enlisted early in 1918. As a regimental sergeant major in the 103rd Pioneer Infantry, he saw action in the MeuseArgonne offensive and was under fire for twenty-two consecutive days. However, he later recalled, “much of the time in the war zone was whiled away rescuing and preserving the exposed books in shattered libraries of war torn French towns.”17 In 1919, Johnson returned to Chicago to continue his work under Park. But he would soon find himself amidst one of the worst racial confrontations in American history. Eugene Williams, a black youth, was viciously stoned to death on July 27 while attempting to swim in Lake Michigan. Williams’s death was the spark that ignited the Chicago riot of 1919. According to Martin Bulmer, this incident was the event that led Charles Johnson to a deeper interest in “interpreting ‘colored people to whites and white people to Negroes.’”18 Although Johnson attempted for a time to resume his studies, much of his activity for the next three years centered on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, which was created to investigate the riot’s causes. In 1922, the work of the Chicago commission was published as The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. By this time, Johnson had gained a national reputation in the field of race relations. He received offers to do studies in other areas where the Great Migration was making an impact, such as Baltimore, Trenton, Buffalo, and Los Angeles.19 Eventually, he accepted a position with the National Urban League and, in 1921, went to New York as director of the Department of Research and Investigations. For the next seven years, Johnson directed the economic and sociological research of the Urban League. The last five and one-half years of this period were spent editing Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. It was in this environment that he helped spawn the Harlem-Renaissance of the 1920s. As editor, Johnson frequently published short stories and poems and often dedicated an entire issue to black enlightened culture. In addition, he sponsored literary contests on a monthly basis.

From Bristol to Nashville

7

At the same time that Johnson’s career was advancing, he was also nurturing one of the most important relationships of his personal life. This would come to fruition in 1920 when he married Marie Antoinette Burgette. Like her future husband, the young Marie Antoinette Burgette was reared in a secure middle-class family. As a caterer, her father provided the family with a comfortable home. Johnson’s future wife, who in later years was known among her critics as well as her friends as an elegant and gracious hostess, learned early in life to be at ease in the sophisticated world. When she was a child, it was not unusual for her to accompany her father to a party he was catering and to sit on the staircase and observe what, for a child, must have been the enchanted world of society. As she grew older, her father’s contacts allowed her to become the protégée of a number of wealthy patrons in the Milwaukee area. Soon, she would receive conservatory and private training in violin, piano, commerce, drama, and speech. For a time, she attended the Wisconsin Conservatory of Speech and Fine Arts. Her family position and her influential white patrons secured her admission to the Milwaukee Library Training School, and subsequently, she became the first black to work in the public library system in Milwaukee. For about a year, she attended Hunter College in New York. Soon, Marie Antoinette Burgette turned to teaching at a girls’ school in Harvey, Illinois, near Chicago. It is not clear how long she remained in teaching, but apparently it was not long before she moved to the field of social work with South Side Division of Community Service of Chicago. Again, the record is not always clear on the details of the meeting and courtship of Marie Burgette and Charles Johnson, but some inferences can be drawn. Edwin R. Embree records that Johnson first heard of the lady whom he would marry when he was making one of his early studies in Milwaukee.20 At that time, she was away teaching, apparently in Harvey, Illinois. When Johnson got back to Chicago, he looked her up under the pretext that she might have some ideas to offer him on the Milwaukee study. Tradition has it that he was expecting a “dull evening with a stuckup young highbrow.” She proceeded to use her experience in social work and personal knowledge of Milwaukee to devastate his report. While he was recovering his intellectual composure, she said, “Let’s go dance.” She was no more impressed with his dancing than his report, but the relationship continued. Meanwhile, the shy, scholarly Johnson continued to be “baffled by her assurance,” and fascinated by her combination of brains and glamour. Johnson was a man who enjoyed the company of an intellectual equal, which he found in Marie Burgette. Their relationship would grow deeper emotionally as well as intellectually over the years, as evidenced by the content of their personal correspondence.

8

Charles S. Johnson

When Johnson returned from the war, he found Marie Burgette “in the midst of war camp community service and the teaching of dancing.” Whenever possible, he arranged his schedule so he could be with her as she directed a “riot of scantily clad teenage girls in their first play.” She, in turn, “struggled over his reports and tried, in vain, to check his statistical charts.” By autumn of his first year back, they began to talk seriously of marriage.21 But the ever vivacious and beautiful Marie Burgette was popular among the young men, and Johnson found himself competing with at least one and probably two other rival suitors. Johnson triumphed, and on Saturday, November 6, 1920, Charles S. Johnson and Marie Antoinette Burgette were married. Allowing for the problems that confront any marriage, the union of Charles S. Johnson and Marie Burgette seems to have been strong. They gave the world five children. Charles Spurgeon, Robert Burgette, and Patricia Marie were born during the first four years the Johnson’s were in New York. The twins Jeh-Vincent and Jane Winifred were born in Nashville in 1931. The baby girl Jane died less than a week after birth. It is an interesting historical footnote that Robert, the second son who has since passed, took Ouida Fay Buckley, Booker T. Washington’s granddaughter, as his second wife in 1964. On the eve of the Great Depression, Johnson left New York to return home to the South. At Fisk University, he established a nationally known Department of Social Sciences and an internationally known Department of Race Relations. Here, he pioneered the first Race Relations Institutes in the South. During these years, Johnson established himself as a giant in many fields.22 As a sociologist, he published widely. In the field of rural sociology, his seminal works include Shadow of the Plantation (1934) and Growing Up in the Black Belt (1938). His works in race relations are voluminous. Using the survey method, combined with the case study approach, he made impressive use of the human document. For example, one need only look at The Negro in Chicago (1922), Patterns of Negro Segregation (1943), To Stem This Tide (1943), and Into the Main Stream (1947) to see how thoroughly Johnson dissected the racial problems of the times. Johnson’s use of economic and statistical data is exemplified in The Negro in American Civilization (1930), The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (1935), The Negro College Graduate (1938), and Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties (1941). In 1947, Johnson was inaugurated as president of Fisk University. Given his national stature and administrative background, he seemed like a natural choice to lead the Nashville institution. However, many of the alumni, and W. E. B. Du Bois in particular, staged an all-out protest to stop his selection for the position. Johnson’s strong ties to the nation’s leading

From Bristol to Nashville

9

philanthropists were seen as a reason to mistrust him. Regardless, the necessity of raising money won out over ideology, and Johnson took over the reins as acting president in 1946. In this role, he was able to realize one of his goals—creating a center for black scholarship. By providing a nurturing environment for talented black students, he passed on to a new generation his legacy of “activism through scholarship.” The Basic College early entry program is perhaps the best example of Johnson’s overall philosophy pertaining to students and student learning. Unsure of the possibility of integrated black education in the South, Johnson created the Basic College to give promising black students the opportunity to learn in a nurturing, stimulating environment. Students were taught in cohesive learning groups and benefited from the presence of artistic, literary, and political figures that Johnson invited to the Fisk campus. In spite of his accomplishments, Johnson’s ten years as president were sometimes rocky. In particular, a Red Scare incident in 1954 would pit his civil rights goals against the civil liberties of one of his faculty members. As a service intellectual and world citizen, Johnson’s role was varied and impressive. In 1930, he was appointed by the State Department as the American member of the International Commission of the League of Nations to investigate slavery and enforced labor in Liberia. The work he did on this commission would be published posthumously as Bitter Canaan, one of his most controversial works. In 1931, he received the William E. Harmon gold medal for “distinguished achievement among Negroes in the field of science.” During the next two and one-half decades, he served on a number of governmental commissions. During the Depression, he wrote the volume on Negro housing for President Herbert C. Hoover’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. During the New Deal, he served President Roosevelt as a member of the Committee on Farm Tenancy. At the end of World War II, Johnson accompanied General Douglas MacArthur as a member of the American mission of twenty educators to Japan. Later, he served President Truman as one of ten United States delegates for the first United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) session in Paris. As mid-century approached, he served as a delegate to the Conference on Indian American Relations in New Delhi in 1949. Finally, he served President Dwight D. Eisenhower in many ways, including membership on the President’s Board of Foreign Scholarships under the Fulbright-Hays Act. Perhaps Johnson was most successful as an entrepreneur in race relations. He was able to use his influence on the various boards and foundations in hopes of ameliorating racism and poverty in America. For years, he was associated with the Julius Rosenwald Fund, serving as trustee from 1934 to 1948 and as codirector of the race relations program from 1943 to

10

Charles S. Johnson

1948. From 1944 to 1950, he was director of the Race Relations Division of the American Missionary Association of the Congregational and Christian Churches of America. And in 1948, he was a delegate to the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, Holland. Johnson’s international reputation was best acknowledged in the fall of 1955, when he was invited by the Social Sciences Section of UNESCO to participate in, and later to chair, a conference of world experts on race relations. Following this honor, on the invitation of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Universities of Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, he made a lecture tour of the Scandinavian countries. Johnson paid great personal dues for his continuing involvement in the struggle for freedom. His contemporaries recall his suffering through interminable conferences in his multiple roles as scholar, service intellectual, and entrepreneur of race relations.23 As the years moved on, the migraine headaches that developed early in his career worsened. By the mid-1950s, this wise, but shy, almost aloof, figure was nearing the end. The Fatima cigarettes that he chain-smoked amplified his quiet nervousness. The pressures on him came to a head on October 27, 1956, when he died of a heart attack. Although he had had a full and brilliant career, he did not live to see the fruition of the freedom movement or the black liberation movement. But this man, born during the nadir of American democracy and race relations, had, along with his generation, laid the groundwork upon which the Martin Luther Kings, Malcolm Xs, Fannie Lou Hamers, and others would lead the way. Despite the fact that Johnson’s professional training and early practical experience in race relations were in the urban North, he chose to address race problems in the South. In this way, he differentiated himself from Du Bois and other black intellectuals. He was not a radical, but a diplomat who, through his collaborations, realized many of the ideas of thinkers more radical than himself. From the education of a “Talented Tenth” to the establishment of a center for black social science to the funding of Harlem Renaissance artists, Johnson’s accomplishments paved the way for the advancement of African Americans later in the century.

Chapter 2

From Riot to Renaissance

T

he career of Charles S. Johnson was almost ended during the first tension-filled day, in July 1919, of the Chicago riot. As he walked toward his office at the Urban League on Wabash Avenue, “he saw a man stabbed to death on the steps of the building. He himself was shot at.”1 He was blocked from his room near the University of Chicago, and as he made his way from the Loop to the Midway, he “ran into fresh bursts of rioting all the way.” He spent the remainder of the day trying to aid the victims. When the riot was over, fifteen whites and twenty-three blacks would be killed and more than five hundred wounded. Johnson never expected that less than three months after this narrow escape from death, he would be one of the candidates under consideration for the post of executive secretary for the Chicago Commission on Race Relations.2 During the fourth day of the rioting, “while men were still dying in the streets,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hastily assembled a committee and called on the governor of Illinois, Frank O. Lowden, to appoint a commission “to study troubles & formulate [a] definite programme of race relations for [the] state.”3 Two days later, on August 1, the Urban League in Chicago repeated the call. Governor Lowden acquiesced and announced that he was appointing a “mixed” commission. He then turned the task of actually forming the committee over to Francis Shepardson, his cabinet member for education and a former professor of history at the University of Chicago. Shepardson drew from his own experiences in Illinois to select most of the white members. He was less secure in his knowledge of the black community and turned to Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Co. for help. The former supporter of Booker T. Washington and longtime philanthropist played an important but inconspicuous role in the activities of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations during its lifetime. On August 20, 1919, Governor Lowden appointed twelve members, six white and six black, to the commission. It was composed of five lawyers, 11

12

Charles S. Johnson

two editors, two realtors, one doctor, one merchant, and one minister. During the long illness of Edgar Addison Bancroft, a white attorney who was named chairman, Shepardson was added to the original membership. Thus, the commission had seven white members and six black. Apparently, Shepardson and Rosenwald carried the brunt of the work until the staff and executive directors took over in the fall of 1919. Finances were always a problem, and Rosenwald was called upon personally to bail the commission out on several occasions. Even then, the commission “kept only one month ahead of its bills.” By October, the commission began its substantive work by searching for an executive director. Many names had been suggested, including whites like Robert E. Park and Will W. Alexander and blacks like Mordecai W. Johnson. Finally, the selection was narrowed down to seven men, among whom was Charles S. Johnson. Johnson was well qualified to react to the aftermath of the violence in Chicago. Not only did he have the training and middle-class skills necessary to analyze the riot systematically, but also, despite his middle-class origins, he had paid his dues as a black man in white America. It was not easy to forget the many experiences typified by the childhood encounter in the Bristol drugstore. On the other hand, he had proven himself to the impressive sociology department at the University of Chicago, which included Robert E. Park. As early as 1917, Johnson had headed the Department of Research and Investigations for the Chicago Urban League, of which Park was president. At about the same time, he had helped Emmett J. Scott conduct a study of African American migration for the Carnegie International Peace Foundation. For this service, Scott had written him “you have been of incalculable benefit to me.”4 As was typical of Johnson, when presented to the commission, he was prepared. Immediately, he “presented a tentative outline for investigating the riot.” Unfortunately, the white-dominated Chicago commission, like the Kerner commission a half century later, was not ready for a black man to be executive secretary of an interracial commission. The impressive Johnson, however, could not be overlooked, and he was named associate executive secretary at a salary of $3,500, which was $1,500 less than the white executive director. Years later, the widow of the executive secretary, Graham Romeyn Taylor, acknowledged that Johnson actually “‘set up the study’ and was by far the stronger researcher of the two men. . . . Her husband, on the other hand, was ‘skilled in writing but not in research.’”5 From this time on, the two directors of the interracial staff, now numbering eighteen, were the heart of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. As in the case with most reports issued by an agency, commission, or committee, the authorship of The Negro in Chicago was not clear. All

From Riot to Renaissance

13

of Johnson’s contemporaries and students, however, from Arna Bontemps and Lewis Wade Jones to Bonita H. Valien and Vivian W. Henderson, credit Johnson with doing the yeoman task of preparing The Negro in Chicago. In a bibliography of Johnson’s work compiled a few years after his death, George L. Gardiner noted that although authorship “is credited to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, the compilation of materials and writing . . . was mainly the work of Charles S. Johnson.”6 Gardiner supported his judgment by citing an old Johnson manuscript entitled “Public Opinion and the Negro,” and by noting the acknowledgment to Johnson for the chapter entitled “The 1919 Chicago Race Riot,” in Social Problems in America, edited by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Friant Lee. Whatever Johnson’s role, it appears to have been a major one, and much that the commission did foreshadowed Johnson’s later career. For example, a year after The Negro in Chicago appeared, Johnson addressed the National Conference of Social Work in Washington, D.C. In his speech, and in the printed version in the July 1923 issue of Opportunity, Johnson used many of the ideas expressed in the report as his own.7 The inferential evidence, at least, of the testimony of Graham Romeyn Taylor’s widow, Johnson’s contemporaries and students, and Johnson’s publication in Opportunity strongly supports the position that he wrote The Negro in Chicago. By March of 1920, the staff of the commission was operating at full capacity. The next eleven months were spent in “compiling and presenting the data of the report.”8 Insofar as the limitations of the age and the political realities of Chicago would allow, Taylor, Johnson, and their staff attempted to do a comprehensive study of race relations in Chicago. They began their investigation with the premise that the riot was only a “symptom of serious and profound disorders lying beneath the surface of race relations in Chicago.” In searching for the root cause of the riot, they investigated black migration from the South, the composition of the black population in Chicago, the housing situation as it related to blacks, crime, blacks in industry, and other matters, including racial contacts and public opinion in racial relations. In the mid-1960s, the scholar Arthur I. Waskow examined The Negro in Chicago in the context of the civil rights revolution. He noted that it was ineffective in bringing about significant public policy changes in Chicago’s race relations.9 But, Waskow wrote, “The Negro in Chicago may . . . be said to have exerted considerable influence among scholars.” To accomplish the former would have taken a political and economic power base. Neither was available to the commission. It was hoped that by disseminating the information from the report to the “best white people,” the practices that led to the riot would somehow be alleviated. The Negro in

14

Charles S. Johnson

Chicago served as a model in the study of urban race relations for years to come. In fact, as late as the mid-1940s, Robert C. Weaver found the document extremely valuable in his work in Chicago with various city and national race relations organizations.10 As Waskow notes, some assumptions made by the commission are no longer held in high esteem by many scholars. For example, the possible values of a pluralistic racial-cultural structure in the United States were not seriously examined. Black Nationalism was generally dismissed, although Marcus Garvey’s movement is briefly treated in a neutral tone. The commission saw little value in any contribution that black culture might offer the larger American culture. Finally, The Negro in Chicago “avoided the problem of power relations in the city.” Instead, it chose to stress public opinion and the press as instruments of change. However, two ideas were introduced that are unmistakably progressive in their tone. According to the report, “[N]either biological inequality of the races nor instinctual hostility between the races existed.” Rather, the case was that “social pressures and institutions . . . could either reinforce or eliminate inequality.” The one exception to this orientation is the preface entitled “The Problem.” In these two pages, which Waskow suspects was the responsibility of the governor’s men—either Edgar Addison Bancroft or Francis Shepardson—the old traditional assumptions and phrases are evident. For instance, one reads of “the instinct of each race to preserve its type,” and of the need for “the Negro race to develop as all races have.” One would assume from the preface that white folks were discussing a problem among themselves. Scholars, however, unlike politicians, usually read beyond the preface. Apparently, Johnson and the staff of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations allowed the racist preface to stand. In so doing, they had quietly but importantly incorporated what were then radically new ideas into a document that had the veneer of the status quo and the blessings of the “best white people”—including the governor. Charles S. Johnson and his colleagues had not produced Myrdal’s An American Dilemma, but they had moved considerably beyond the consensus of opinion among white scholars reflected in such works as Howard W. Odum’s Social and Mental Traits of the Negro (1910).11 In 1921, the recently married twenty-seven-year-old Johnson joined the headquarters of the National Urban League in New York City. Founded in 1911 in response to the needs of the increasing number of blacks who were migrating into the cities, the League was essentially elitist in membership, with significant financial support from the business and industrial community. In effect, the League attempted to perform the function for blacks that the settlement houses did for white immigrants.12 But unlike the leaders of the settlement houses of the 1920s, the Urban League

From Riot to Renaissance

15

avoided any attempt to lobby for changing public policy. It preferred to work toward changing private behavior on an employer-to-employer basis. Historian Nancy Weiss suggests that despite its drawbacks, this policy may have been both tactical and practical. By leaving the more controversial questions to organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League “had a better chance of securing foundation and community chest support for its own, milder, social service programs.”13 In addition to providing the black community with social services, the Urban League devoted considerable time to research and education in race relations. Johnson’s title with the Urban League was that of director of the Department of Research and Investigations. Apparently, it was first thought that he would devote his time to making studies of race relations in the nation’s urban centers, similar to the one he had done in Chicago. This seems to be the basis upon which the Carnegie Corporation of New York began making annual grants of $8,000 to the Department of Research and Investigations in 1921.14 During his five-and-one-half year tenure, Johnson conducted race relations surveys in Baltimore, Trenton, Hartford, East St. Louis, Fort Wayne, Buffalo, and Los Angeles.15 The surveys followed the model first developed when he and Graham Romeyn Taylor were directing the Chicago Survey under the guidance of Robert E. Park.16 Questionnaires, personal interviews, government statistics, case histories, and other familiar techniques were used to gather and compile information on the cities being studied. According to Nancy Weiss, for those years, the surveys “in comparison to later community studies, . . . were strong on description, but unsophisticated in methods and analysis.”17 Nevertheless, she adds “they succeeded in creating an important body of data that, in many cases, no one else bothered to collect.” Within two years Johnson was not contented with the conventional duties imposed upon him in his position. With the support of Urban League member John T. Clark, later executive secretary of the St. Louis Urban League, Johnson persuaded the organization to expand the Urban League Bulletin started in 1921 into a formal publication “with advertisements and second class mailing privileges.”18 In 1923, he began editing this new publication, which appeared as Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. It was decided that part of the annual Carnegie Corporation grant would be allotted to fund the new magazine.19 The first issue of Opportunity, which sold for fifteen cents, was published in January 1923. Eugene Kinckle Jones, executive secretary of the National Urban League, suggested in the first issue that Opportunity would be a house organ for the Urban League when he wrote, “We shall try to set down interestingly but without sugar-coating or generalization the findings of careful scientific surveys and the facts gathered from research” while continuing

16

Charles S. Johnson

to report on conventional race relations and research.20 In addition to conducting and reporting on surveys, as, for example, the race relations surveys he did in the cities mentioned above, Johnson used Opportunity to confront the spurious body of literature characterized by its critics as pseudoscientific racism. Although the first major work by Johnson, The Negro in Chicago, was conceived and written from the premise that the issue of racial inferiority was dead, Johnson knew better. He devoted over a decade after the Chicago study making sure that the spurious claims of the pseudoscientific school of racism were removed from the area of respectability among scholars. Johnson was not an ethnologist, but that did not restrain him from discussing race in the columns of Opportunity and elsewhere. While he would, on occasion, offer his readers the results of scientific inquiry in this field, he contended that science had seldom been the criterion used by those who studied race. Rather, the study of race had been conducted for “political ends.”21 Johnson challenged such an approach on two counts. In the first place, it was “a prostitution of science” and, second, it was “poisoning the springs of racial accord by trying to make Negroes feel unnecessarily debased and the whites impossibly inviolate.” Such a disingenuous approach led to many scientifically untenable conclusions. It was, for example, argued that “mulattoes in the United States . . . [were] an inferior product.” But from the same premise it was also claimed that white Americans, who were a blend of the “Huns, from the border of China, . . . the Celts, Romans and AngloSaxons in England, the Irish, . . . [etc.] are either forgotten or regarded as representing an actual improvement of stock.” Race crossing in the United States was not objected to, therefore, for biological reasons. In Johnson’s view, the heart of the matter was “not biological at all, but sociological.” So-called race crossing had introduced into the “social pattern conflicting problems which are, on the basis of existing customs and institutions, difficult[ies] of adjustment.” The real problem was that “the environment in which hybrids grow up is disastrously oppressive.” For the serious student of ethnology, Johnson offered the readers of Opportunity scientific evidence of the distorted use of data on race by those seeking political, economic, and social gains. World War I had popularized the use of tests to determine intelligence. Culturally biased, uninformed, and in many cases unscrupulous use of such tests by whites as a new way to discredit blacks became common in the 1920s. In response, numerous editorials in Opportunity discussed the use and misuse of testing to determine intelligence. Since the discussion was often repetitious and at times very technical, it will suffice here merely to try to capture the flavor of the debate from Johnson’s treatment in the pages of Opportunity of two such distortions, by Virginia Taylor Graham and Paul Popenoe.

From Riot to Renaissance

17

The December 3, 1926, weekly report of the United States Public Health Service carried a study by psychologist Virginia Taylor Graham made in cooperation with the Georgia State Board of Health and the Atlanta Board of Education. Tests were given to “Negro children from the second to sixth grades.”22 The results had reaffirmed the expectations of white social scientists. For example, blacks had scored, on the average, lower; the discrepancies in test scores increased with age; blacks seemed to do better at “rote and practical tests than at those that involved behavior”; and the results seemed to confirm previous studies. Johnson noted that, on the surface, this seemed “sufficiently dispassionate to convince any Negro, finally, that the impressions abroad about the intelligence of his children, are sound.” But the young editor went on to say that “a few loopholes, for the still skeptical Negro remain.” He then listed some of the fallacies of the purported scientific inquiry. First, the white norm used for the comparison was not from white Atlanta but “very probably California, where frequent testing is done.” Hence, white children in the North and West, from which the norm was taken, have many more educational advantages than the white children of Atlanta, and furthermore, the Negro children’s “facilities . . . [were] inferior to white children in Atlanta.” Second, Johnson argued that the testers might have influenced the tests. That is, the “little Atlanta Negro children, unaccustomed to white probers into their intelligence,” might have been stimulated “to resistance, or subterfuge.” In short, Johnson suggested that the young children “failed to grasp the scientific import of this mission and continued to play at their game of survival.” Nor was Johnson content merely to criticize the norm used for comparison and the external influence of the testers upon the testing environment; he noted other discrepancies. He wrote, for instance, that on the “Koh’s test in which Negro children showed up so ridiculously, Chinese children surpassed native white (and probably Protestant) children to such a degree that Dr. Graham could draw no other conclusion than that ‘the Chinese apparently show a special facility in handling this type of problem.’” In a sarcastic vein, Johnson remarked, “As a measure of racial difference it can be hoped that it will mean no more for Negroes, under the circumstances than it will be accepted to mean for whites.” A careful examination of the work of Paul Popenoe produced similar fallacies. Whites often argued that mulattoes were producing an inferior stock. A non sequitur to the argument, but one frequently used, was that the “intelligence of a ‘colored man’ depends to a marked degree on the amount of white blood he has.” Popenoe, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Heredity, had tried to use the Army intelligence tests to support this premise. He reasoned that northern blacks scored higher than southern blacks because the “northern contingent represents

18

Charles S. Johnson

a larger infusion of white blood than those who remain in the South.” Johnson lampooned this conclusion by pointing out that “although Ohio with 35.2 per cent mulattoes has the highest percentage of ‘superior’ Negroes, it does not have the highest percentage of mulattoes. This latter record goes to Michigan with 47.0 per cent mulattoes.” The real question, for Johnson, was not the amount of white blood found in blacks but the fact that the tests demonstrated that “states with the poorest showing invariably are those with fewest schools, worst paid teachers and the greatest amount of illiteracy.” In support of this judgment, he observed that blacks in Ohio scored higher than whites in Tennessee. Johnson frequently expanded, in his Opportunity editorials, upon his criticism of the biased interpretation of testers. For example, northern blacks tested higher than southern poor whites, but the Army only drafted blacks for labor and was often careless in testing and classifying them. Again, the difference in the scores of Massachusetts and Georgia whites was kept secret. And the tests themselves were culturally biased. To test southern blacks, for example, about film stars, when they were denied the use of southern theaters, did not lead to a fair evaluation. Finally, Johnson pointed out that if the differences in scores and ability were “fundamental, distinctly and definitely racial, the fact that Negroes live in Ohio instead of Georgia would not alter the relation of difference.” Although Johnson was capable of devastating so-called scientific arguments supporting the racial inferiority of blacks, he often treated them for what they were—poorly formulated propaganda for racism in America. In the latter approach, he employed the deadly weapon of satire in the style of Jonathan Swift. He was at his best in pasquinading the tortured logic of the racist. In the Archives of Psychology, edited by Robert S. Woodworth, for instance, there appeared a contribution by Sante Naccarati of Columbia University, entitled “Morphologic Aspects of Intelligence.”23 In reporting on Naccarati’s findings, Johnson wrote that the professor’s research “lends its weight to the remarkable theory that there is a definite correlation between bodily and mental traits, and that the long limbed persons tend to be more intelligent.” In evaluating this article, Johnson remarked, tongue in cheek, that “in view of the otherwise established fact that Negroes are longer limbed than any other group, the deductions of this study are unusually interesting.” In support of this proposition, Johnson referred Naccarati to the “very explicit data of the Army anthropological reports.” Johnson concluded, “Dr. Naccarati will probably have to explain to the Ku Klux Klan.” Again Johnson found himself puzzled over the whole question of mulattoes. It was difficult for him to understand how “Dr. [Robert R.] Moton is a natural leader because he is of unmixed origin and Dr. [Booker

From Riot to Renaissance

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T.] Washington was a great leader because of his white blood.” Nor could Johnson understand how the “mulatto is superior to the black but inferior to the white.” The real key to his puzzlement was, “[W]here pray, is the naturally greater white father of Dr. Washington?”24 In Tennessee there was the explosive issue of evolution, which also concerned Johnson. Suddenly white men had “legislated against teaching the theory in any of its institutions of learning.”25 But why was this? It must be that “strange emotions enter into the controversy which have little relation to the idea of Divine Creation.” For Johnson noted, “No such protests were heard when, in the first shallow grasp of this hypothesis, they admitted so willingly the biological relationship of Negroes to lower forms of animal life.” While conducting and reporting on race relations surveys and confronting pseudoscientific racism, Johnson expanded Eugene Kinckle Jones’s narrow definition of the role of the newly hired sociologist. In the second issue of Opportunity, Johnson would telegraph his plan to shift the emphasis stated by Jones from social and economic to cultural. The new edition of Opportunity projected Johnson’s new emphasis when he wrote, “There are aspects of the cultural side of Negro life that have been long neglected.”26 Johnson set about finding a remedy for centuries of neglect. As editor of Opportunity, Johnson began to focus on the cultural contributions of African Americans long ignored or misunderstood by white America. For the next five years, Johnson used his role as editor of Opportunity to become the entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance. Building upon publications like Messenger and Crisis, and drawing upon the works of figures like James Weldon Johnson and Alain L. Locke, he gave direction and publicity to the obscure world of the black literati. In reflecting upon the Harlem Renaissance more than a quarter of a century later, Johnson said, “[T]he importance of the Crisis Magazine and Opportunity Magazine was that of providing an outlet for young Negro writers and scholars whose work was not acceptable to other established media because it could not be believed to be of standard quality despite the superior quality of much of it.”27 Because of Johnson’s important role, historian David Levering Lewis places him among the most important of “The Six”28 facilitators of the Renaissance. He cites testimonials from poet Langston Hughes, writer Zora Neale Hurston, writer Arna Bontemps, and artist Aaron Douglas that proclaimed Johnson as the individual who did more to encourage the arts during the 1920s than anyone else. For example, Aaron Douglas said of Johnson, “His subtle sort of scheming mind had arrived at the feeling that literature was a soft spot of the arts; it represented a soft spot in the armor of the nation, and he set out to exploit it.” This strategy would become a hallmark of Johnson’s approach. Blyden Jackson, a former professor at

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Charles S. Johnson

Fisk University under Johnson’s presidency, also credits Johnson with helping to “ease the transformation of more than one neophyte in the arts, like a Zora Neale Hurston, from a nonentity into a luminary of the Renaissance.” Furthermore, Jackson portrays the Renaissance as a stage on which Johnson thought “America [would be] utterly emancipated from the color caste.”29 Johnson believed that the creative genius of the many black artists, who for years had published in Crisis, was being wasted until the racial barriers that restricted them from access to the larger white audiences were removed. With this in mind, he moved along with Urban League official William H. Baldwin to bring the white publishers and the black writers together. They worked closely with Frederick Lewis Allen of Harper’s on this project. Weiss relates that “Allen invited a ‘small but representative group from his field, and Baldwin and Charles S. Johnson ‘supplied an equally representative group of Negroes.’”30 The efforts of Johnson, Baldwin, and Lewis culminated in a dinner held March 21, 1924, in New York. According to Blyden Jackson, “It was a dinner at the ‘white’ Civic Club, one of the very few places in downtown Manhattan where an interracial group, be it ever so elite, in the 1920s could have broken bread together undisturbed.”31 That night the Writers’ Guild, “an informal group whose membership includes Countee Cullen, Eric Walrond, Langston Hughes” and the publishers were brought together.32 After a brief interpretation of the objective of the Guild by Charles S. Johnson, Alain L. Locke was introduced as master of ceremonies. He was asked to interpret the “new currents manifest in the literature of this younger school.” The Civic Club gathering read like an honor roll of the Harlem Renaissance. W. E. B. Du Bois, just back from Africa, was introduced by the chair with “soft seriousness as a representative of the ‘older school.’” James Weldon Johnson was then introduced and acknowledged for the “invaluable encouragement [he had given] to the work of this younger group.” Others included Carl Van Doren, editor of Century; Walter White, whose novel The Fire in the Flint had been accepted for publication; Montgomery Gregory, director of the Department of Dramatics at Howard University; Albert C. Barnes, art connoisseur and “foremost authority in America on primitive Negro art”; Countee Cullen; Gwendolyn B. Bennett; and Joel A. Rogers. Jessie Fauset, literary editor of Crisis, whose novel There is Confusion was scheduled to appear soon, was given “a place of distinction on the program.”33 There were immediate tangible results from the Civic Club dinner. As Johnson noted years later, “Out of this meeting came some of the first publications in the best publication tradition.” In fact, “Frederick Allen . . . [Harper’s editor] made a bid for Countee Cullen’s poems for publication

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as soon as he had finished reading them . . . ; and Paul Kellogg of the Survey sought to carry the entire evening’s readings in an issue of the magazine. This fumbling idea lead [sic] to the standard volume of the period, The New Negro.”34 Originally carried in the special March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic, under the editorship of Alain L. Locke, it was later combined with drawings by Winold Reiss (which had been done for Survey) into book form as The New Negro.35 Johnson and his colleagues had succeeded in bringing together the black literati and the white publishers—thus allowing the Renaissance to begin in earnest. No longer could such publications as Survey, Survey Graphic, The World Tomorrow, Nation, the New York World, and Harper’s plead ignorance or talk about the lack of “qualified” blacks. Until the Great Depression, black culture flourished as it moved out of the narrow restrictions that white capitalists had placed upon it. However, it would still be at the mercy of white-controlled publications. And, as a result, when the stock market crash came, black writers and artists would be the first “fired.” But even during the bleak days of the depression and after, aspiring black writers and artists would have a wealth of literary models worthy of emulation. As Charles S. Johnson later remarked, the Civic Club dinner marked “the first significant transformation of value hopes for the future into a material means for making that future possible.”36 No longer was it necessary to look only to Paul Laurence Dunbar, who had “resorted to dialect verse to gain a hearing and then nothing but his dialect verse would be accepted.”37 In fact, in all areas of black culture, one saw the influence of the Renaissance, and from Charles Gilpin to Paul Robeson, from Aaron Douglas to Richmond Barthé, from Bessie Smith to Josephine Baker, a new era had emerged. It would later decline, but only to be rediscovered and appreciated even more by later generations. In short, the March 21, 1924, meeting had secured broad patronage for the “New Negro Movement.” While Robert L. Allen, Harold Cruse, and many others would later argue that a movement based upon white financiers was folly, it did seem at the time to Charles S. Johnson and his literary circle at Opportunity like one gigantic step.38 Certainly, no one can gainsay the artistic and cultural contributions of the Harlem Renaissance. Its dependence for funds on the political and social power structure, which was controlled by whites, was another matter. The productive Civic Club dinner led Johnson, during the next three years, to enlarge upon the successful formula of the March 24 gathering and to use Opportunity as the major vehicle in stimulating the Harlem Renaissance. By the end of the summer of 1924, he announced the first of what was to be three Opportunity contests for black artists.39 From 1925 through 1927, the editor of Opportunity recruited and promoted the black literati.

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Charles S. Johnson

Contest judges were selected from the nation’s leading literary and publishing figures. For example, the contest for 1925 included among the judges Fannie Hurst, well-known short story writer; Robert C. Benchley, dramatic critic and editor of Life; Henry Goddard Leach, editor of the Forum; and James Weldon Johnson.40 The next year he added such figures as Carl Van Vechten, Jean Toomer, Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, and Alain L. Locke.41 The final year saw the list of judges including Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Paul Green, and Paul Robeson.42 A cursory examination of the list of contest winners from 1925 to 1927 suggests that most of the artists who are traditionally identified as being members of the Harlem Renaissance were at one time or another recipients of a contest award. A random listing of prize winners would include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, E. Franklin Frazier, Sterling Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, John Matheus, Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and many others.43 The contests were followed each year by an awards banquet much in the manner of the Civic Club dinner. Although prearranged, the dinners were not stiffly formal. The writers and publishers were encouraged to mingle.44 It was not unusual that when James Weldon Johnson read Langston Hughes’s “Weary Blues” aloud in 1925 at the first banquet, Carl Van Vechten approached Hughes that very night about producing a book of poems, which Alfred A. Knopf later published as The Weary Blues.45 The most obvious achievement of Johnson’s endeavor as entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance was to identify, develop, and promote a black literary elite. This legacy was most apparent in the resurgence of black letters in the 1960s.46 Even in the 1920s, Johnson could point with pride to the entry of blacks into what had been previously the all-white world of letters. In the February 1926 issue of Opportunity, he referred the reader to the Boston Transcript’s reporting of Edward J. O’Brien’s analysis of the “best short stories of 1925,” which included the work of John Matheus, Zora Neale Hurston, Eloise Bibb Thompson, Marietta Bonner, Clement Wood, and Isabelle Eberhardt (translated by Edna Worthley Underwood) “as having distinction.”47 For the most part, these were short stories by black artists, and all had been carried in the black journal Opportunity. The following year, O’Brien again acknowledged the work of a number of contest winners and Opportunity writers, and the same year William Stanley Braithwaite’s sesquicentennial edition of the Anthology of Magazine Verse had noted the works of Gwendolyn B. Bennett, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Waring Cuney, Joseph S. Cotter, Frank Horne, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Wallace Thurman, Helene Johnson, and Lucy Ariel Williams.48 Johnson noted, “Representation for Negro writers in these anthologies is the largest of any period in . . . history. . . . Their work now speaks for itself; and, to the glory of their skill, it speaks for Negroes.”

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Johnson’s approach in the contests, dinners, and special issues of Opportunity was that of a skilled, shrewd, and pragmatic entrepreneur. He was always aware of his goal and set out deliberately to achieve it. In announcing the first contest he wrote, “A new period in creative expression among Negroes is foreshadowed in the notable, even if fugitive and disconnected successes of certain of the generation of Negro writers now emerging.”49 He went on to state, “The body of experience and public opinion seem ripe for the development of some new and perhaps distinctive contribution to art, literature, and life. But these contributions demand incentives.” In the same issue of Opportunity, he wrote of the need to “foster a market for Negro writers . . . and bring these writers into contact with the general world of letters.” In addition to the pecuniary needs of black writers, he believed that “literature had always been a great liaison between races.”50 For the most part, he believed that blacks wrote the most authentic literature about blacks. For, as he argued, whites were “at a serious disadvantage in writing about the subtle intricacies of Negro life and to its peculiar emotional experiences as the Negroes are of writing about them.” He did not mean to restrict black writers to black subjects, but by avoiding writing about the African American experience, blacks were allowing whites, “who have never yet been wholly admitted to the privacy of Negro thots [sic],” to continue to produce accounts that were “palpably unauthentic, frequently misleading, [and] sometimes criminally libelous.” As the Renaissance years progressed, Johnson took on the role of advisor and interpreter through the columns of Opportunity.51 He wrote that “if this awakening is to be a sound, wholesome expression of growth rather than a fad to be discarded in a few seasons, it must somehow be preserved from the shortsighted exploiters of sentiment; . . . [and from] a double standard of competence as a substitute for the normal rewards of study and practice.” He warned in the 1920s, as he would all his life, that it was not sufficient to be “the best Negro.” In short, “[I]f a book or poem is bad or mediocre it is bad and should not beckon for the shroud of race to redeem it.” Johnson believed, for example, that literary gains were curtailed by “pseudo-philanthropic teachers” who in integrated schools did not apply the same rigorous standards that were “applied to white students.” Johnson’s point was that “until the product of Negro writers can be measured by the same yardstick that is applied to all other writers, the Negro writer will suffer from the lack of full respect, and all that this implies.” Needless to say, entries in the Opportunity contests were not faced with this problem. In 1927, Johnson edited Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea, which was published by the National Urban League. In many ways, it was a companion volume to Alain L. Locke’s New Negro. In the introduction, Johnson

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Charles S. Johnson

went far toward defining the Harlem Renaissance.52 He said of Ebony and Topaz, “It is a venture in expression, . . . [by artists] who are here much less interested in their audience than in what they are trying to say, and the life they are trying to portray.” They did not seem to mind if “some of our white readers will arch their brows or perhaps knit them soberly at some point before the end.” Nor were they overly concerned if some blacks objected, for “it is also true that in life some Negroes are distasteful to other Negroes.” Johnson continued, “The Negro writers . . . are now much less self-conscious, less interested in proving that they are just like white people, and, in their excursions into the fields of letters and art, seem to care less about what white people think, or are likely to think about the race. Relief from the stifling consciousness of being a problem has brought a certain superiority to it.” In short, Charles S. Johnson seemed to be saying that what he had envisaged in announcing the first Opportunity contest in the September 1924 issue had come true. The early creative promise of the Claude McKays, the Jean Toomers, and the writers in Crisis had matured. A significant number of black artists were now producing a “serious body of literature about Negro life.” Finally, the writing was free of the “deliberate propaganda and protest” that so bothered Johnson. The protest now was subtle, artistic, and sophisticated. Years later, near the end of his prolific life, Johnson had occasion in a speech at Howard University to look back at the Harlem Renaissance.53 Even though the movement per se was long dead, he seemed even more convinced of its success than he had been when he edited Ebony and Topaz. He recalled that the Harlem Renaissance was “that sudden and altogether phenomenal outburst of emotional expression, unmatched by any comparable period in American or Negro American history.” Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” and Jean Toomer’s Cane had been the harbingers. Unfortunately, Toomer had “flashed like a meteor across the sky, then sank from view.” After McKay and Toomer, there was Countee Cullen, who gave “a classic beauty to the emotions of the race,” and Langston Hughes, who lent “a warm glow of meaning to their lives.” Johnson remembered that in Hughes’s writing there was always a “wistful undertone, a quiet sadness.” And he told the Howard University audience in 1955 that “no Negro writer so completely symbolizes the new emancipation of the Negro mind” as did Langston Hughes.54 In Johnson’s mind, the Harlem Renaissance had been an effective example of cultural pluralism. He remembered it as a period of “cultural, if not . . . social and racial emancipation.” Although it expressed race consciousness, Johnson noted it had “virtues that could be incorporated into the cultural bloodstream of the nation.” But this incorporation did not negate “the discovery by these culturally emancipated Negroes of the

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unique aesthetic values of African art, of beauty in things dark, a period of hearkening for the whispers of greatness from a remote African past.” Johnson went on to set the Harlem Renaissance in the framework of internationalism when he said, “It was a period of the reaching out of arms for other dark arms of the same ancestry from other parts of the world in a Pan-African Conference.” In 1927, Opportunity suspended the contests. Within a year the Harlem Renaissance as it was known in the 1920s neared the end. In 1928, Johnson severed his direct association with the National Urban League. What had been his contribution? He had employed the race relations survey technique to conduct urban community surveys. This approach was aimed at improving the lot of poor blacks. But as Weiss has suggested the impact upon public policy was negligible and the influence upon private behavior was limited. Of course, the collected data was of some value to scholars, self-help benevolent groups, and historians. And the experience that Johnson gained would be invaluable as a basis for his later sociological research—research that would have a greater impact. But Johnson’s major role in the 1920s was that of cultural entrepreneur. He identified, encouraged, and promoted a black elite of letters. Individuals, many of whom would continue to produce for almost half a century, first got their due recognition during the Harlem Renaissance. Among the most serious scars in black America, first from the era of slavery and later from the post-1877 period, was the lack of a knowledge and appreciation of black heritage and its relationship to the larger American culture. During the few years that Johnson directed the Harlem Renaissance, much was done to change this orientation. By training a cadre who had an appreciation of African American culture, Johnson helped develop a vanguard that in later years would carry the message beyond the sphere of middle-class academia. If the Harlem Renaissance was so successful, why did Johnson leave the security of New York for the uncertainty of life in Nashville? The process by which Johnson arrived at this decision and the motivation for leaving New York were, like the man, complex. In part, his decision resulted from his ambition and desire to be free of an organization that he found increasingly restrictive. It also resulted from a timely turn of events at Fisk University, which had the potential to propel him to national status. As early as 1927, during the Urban League’s awards dinner, Johnson was corresponding with Fisk President Thomas Elsa Jones.55 At first, Jones tried to recruit Johnson on a part-time basis. Apparently, Johnson was willing, for the Fisk President wrote the executive secretary of the Urban League that “Mr. Johnson has consented to come for at least one semester provided his work with you can be arranged.”56 Fisk was in the process of reestablishing a social sciences department that would be closely

26

Charles S. Johnson

related to the service of black people. On June 15, 1927, Eugene Kinckle Jones wrote the Fisk president that “the Steering Committee voted unanimously that it could not comply with your request for the services of Mr. Johnson.”57 This was one of many instances in which Eugene Kinckle Jones curtailed Johnson’s outside activities and contributed to a growing dislike between the two men. Although not ready to resign from the Urban League, Johnson continued to keep in close touch with President Jones and Fisk’s plans for a strong social sciences department.58 These plans were spurred by a $200,000 grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (LSRM) for the recruitment of several esteemed social scientists and an administrator for the overall program. The LSRM expected that Fisk’s new social science department would put an end to the lack of materials and research on race relations in the United States. According to John Stanfield, each time the LSRM assisted with the establishment of a department of social sciences (for example at the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago), its officers “formally or informally influenced the selection of the center’s director.”59 Fisk was no exception. What a fortunate turn of events, then, for a man who had established himself as a leader in social science research and who was well liked by foundation leaders, including Leonard Outhwaite of the LSRM. The only thing keeping Johnson from leaving New York was his position with the Urban League. In 1928, Johnson’s discussions with President Jones about the possibility of coming to Fisk became more serious. The editor of Opportunity was beginning to consult others for advice. He sought the counsel of Robert E. Park, Edwin R. Embree, and L. Hollingsworth Wood. In his letter of February 8 to President Jones, Johnson suggested some of the reasons for leaving Opportunity and returning south.60 He noted, “I have talked with Mr. [Leonard] Outwaite specially and frankly . . . , stating the reservations which I had entertained concerning my present organization, [and] the question of the magazine. . . . He is already aware that my research interest is definitely committed to the South. I have talked similarly with Mr. Hollingsworth Wood, and to both of these I think I made my first definite commitments about resigning the work here.” In his February 8 letter to Jones, Johnson also discussed his concern about fulfilling certain long-range obligations made while with Opportunity. In 1926, the planning had begun for the National Interracial Conference to be held in the fall of 1928 in Washington, D.C. Johnson had committed himself to the task of acting as research secretary for the conference. Under its chairwoman Mary Van Kleeck, the conference had secured a grant from the Social Science Research Council. It was expected that he would record and analyze the data presented. One of Johnson’s requests of the Fisk president

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was that he be allowed to complete the work after he came to Fisk. This request, along with many others, was granted. From Johnson’s work in the conference came his book The Negro in American Civilization. The kind of freedom exemplified by this sequence of events was typical of the environment in which Johnson would soon flourish. When he arrived in Chicago on the way home, he took time out to write his wife that “President Jones made a most extraordinary offer. I am waiting to talk with you about it the only one about whose opinion I give a damn. . . .” Apparently, Marie Johnson agreed.61 After further consultation with Robert E. Park, Johnson reported to Fisk President Jones on March 13, 1928, that Park “is exceedingly anxious that I go to Fisk. . . . Thus, to bring matters to a conclusion, I announced to Mr. Jones, the Executive Secretary, that I had decided to resign the work here, to take up the duties at Fisk in the Fall.”62 Johnson’s motives for the move to Fisk were many. Although his work with the black elite of the Harlem Renaissance had been successful, his interests had shifted to include a desire to work more directly with the problems facing poor blacks. Under the young president Jones, the university seemed headed for what was then called a “Greater Fisk.” As mentioned, Jones allowed Johnson to set the conditions under which he would come— conditions that included material comfort as well as intellectual freedom. But the biggest factor in Johnson’s decision may have been his deteriorating relationship with Eugene Kinckle Jones, executive secretary of the Urban League. Johnson was an ambitious man. Yet, how much further could he go with the Urban League? The future of Opportunity magazine was not secure.63 It had been funded out of the annual grant from the Carnegie Corporation earmarked for the Department of Research and Investigations but in 1927 that support was discontinued. The attempt to persuade Julius Rosenwald to pick up the tab failed and Johnson’s work now became a responsibility of the entire League. Eugene Kinckle Jones then decided that it was time “to consider ‘the whole question of Opportunity Magazine and its future’; to ‘determine whether the magazine is an effective instrument for carrying out the League’s purposes,’ and, more immediately whether it justified as much as $10,500 of the League’s annual budget.” In later years, Johnson seldom referred to Eugene Kinckle Jones but when he did, his remarks were not overly kind. For example, in 1935, he wrote Arthur A. Schomburg concerning Eugene Kinckle Jones’ review of one of Johnson’s books.64 In the letter, he commented, “Oh, for . . . the patience of Job. . . . Have you seen the Hon. Kinckle Jones’ review . . . ? The nuts! They are shooting the buttons off their pants, and unless the gentle graces intervene, I am going to find them embarrassingly exposed to buck shot.”

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Charles S. Johnson

Johnson’s dislike of Eugene Kinckle Jones can also be inferred by the cool relationship between the Rosenwald Fund and the Urban League after his departure. For more than two decades after Johnson left the Urban League, he worked closely with Rosenwald Fund president Edwin R. Embree. It was well known that Embree had the utmost respect for Johnson personally and professionally and consulted Johnson on all matters concerning other black leaders and organizations. Meanwhile, until 1941, Eugene Kinckle Jones remained in his position with the League. Time and time again, requests for funds by the Urban League to the Rosenwald Fund were scaled down or rejected. There were many reasons given by Embree and the Fund for rejecting the Urban League appeals. In refusing grants to the Urban League, Embree did seem to push hard to get the League to combine efforts with the NAACP. Such a recommendation suggests a certain lack of understanding of the histories and functions of the two organizations. But for the most part, the chronicler of the Rosenwald Fund writes, “Embree’s reasons for rejecting the appeals of the NUL seemed vague even to other members of the Rosenwald staff.”65 When staff member Clark Foreman pressed Embree on the point, “Embree advised Foreman that Jones failed to direct an efficient and effective organization and refused to accept advice that would improve the Urban League.” On the surface, one might believe that Embree was opposing the Urban League because it would not merge with the NAACP. But at the same time that Embree refused the requests by Jones, he was authorizing funds for T. Arnold Hill, the Urban League’s director of the Department of Industrial Relations. The real reason for Embree’s judgment seems to be stated best when he wrote Arthur W. Packward, director of the Davison Fund, that “Eugene Kinckle Jones seems to me an ineffective person. On the other hand, T. Arnold Hill impresses me as . . . usually competent.”66 It requires little speculation to surmise that Embree’s evaluation of Eugene Kinckle Jones was a mirror of what Charles S. Johnson thought. If this is the case, Eugene Kinckle Jones may have been the chief motivation behind Johnson’s decision to move south. On September 14, 1928, at the Cafe Boulevard, located at 132 West 41st Street in New York, Charles S. Johnson was honored with a testimonial dinner.67 Arthur A. Schomburg was chairman of the distinguished sponsoring committee, which also included Albert C. Barnes, Jessie Fauset, William Pickens, Eugene Kinckle Jones, and many others. The next few months were chaotic for the thirty-five-year-old Johnson. He and his family, which now included three children, had to adjust to the South and to Fisk. By Christmas, he had completed the necessary research for the National Interracial Conference and was adjusting well to his new chal-

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lenge. In January of 1929, he wrote Countee Cullen that “the machine is beginning to operate again and soon I shall be ‘quite cool again.’”68 Just what kind of machine was Johnson operating? While in Chicago and New York, Johnson established many precedents for a working method that would aid him in later years. His shrewd political savvy and commitment to an overarching goal would be cornerstones in his future success. Johnson’s ability to attract the attention of important and powerful people, to garner resources, and to publicize his ideas would enable him to achieve many of the goals set forth by other black leaders of the time. Most importantly, Johnson would flourish because he focused on culture as a means for change. The promotion of African American culture was a goal that he attained on many different levels. Johnson also believed that research could be a tool for combating racism—an idea that would come to fruition during his years at Fisk. The origins of his belief in research, however, were in his training under Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago and his past experiences as an observer of race relations during his youth.

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Chapter 3

The Mentor: Robert E. Park

C

harles S. Johnson’s most productive years as a practicing sociologist spanned the era from the end of World War I to the end of World War II. After that period, he continued to be active in related areas but was no longer a pure sociologist. The giant in the sociology of race relations during the early years of this crucial generation and a half, and Johnson’s mentor, was Robert E. Park. In fact, Johnson was Park’s first African American student at the University of Chicago.1 According to his biographer, Park gave one of the first courses dealing exclusively with black America in a predominantly white university.2 To grasp the evolution of the sociology of race relations from Park to Johnson to Myrdal, it is necessary to review Park’s work in detail. Johnson’s published works carried Park’s imprimatur, and the major decisions of Johnson’s career were usually made after consultation with his mentor.3 Certainly, this pattern was evident in Johnson’s acceptance of the assignment with the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, again in 1928 when he decided to leave the security of New York and go south, and again in 1942 when he opted to unite Fisk University, the American Missionary Association, and the Rosenwald Fund in an ambitious venture that became the intellectual basis for much of the race relations and civil rights struggle prior to the era of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is not surprising that years later Ophelia Settle Egypt, the first instructor and research assistant Johnson employed at Fisk in 1928, would write of Park, “I always thought of him as Dr. Johnson’s professional father.”4 Nor was this the isolated opinion of only his professional colleagues. Almost a generation after Johnson’s death, his daughter recalled that Johnson “thought of Dr. Park as a father and his [own] father as a father.”5

31

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Charles S. Johnson

With all due respect to the European scholar Georg Simmel, under whom Park studied, and to W. E. B. Du Bois, whose pioneering work The Philadelphia Negro (1899) was an early scholarly work on race relations, Robert E. Park was the father of the study of race relations. Although Park’s works are little studied today, Park and his students at the University of Chicago dominated the field of race relations until the monumental study of Gunnar Myrdal An American Dilemma appeared in 1944. A partial listing of Park’s disciples would include Horace C. Cayton, Bertram W. Doyle, E. Franklin Frazier, Charles S. Johnson, Donald Pierson, Edward Byron Reuter, Everett V. Stonequist, St. Clair Drake, and Edgar T. Thompson.6 While supporters of Frazier might dissent, Johnson seems to have come the closest to following in the footsteps of Park. Between the wars, Johnson modified Park’s race relations model significantly. In Park’s view, improved race relations was the result of such forces as war, migration, famine, and other effects of natural law. Johnson believed that instead of waiting for change to evolve from natural law, change could be accelerated by artificial stimuli, such as governmental intervention, therein causing change in the same manner as the forces of war, migration, and famine. Of all of Park’s students, Johnson appears to have had the greatest influence upon Gunnar Myrdal. For example, one of the memoranda written by Johnson for Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) was published in 1943 as an independent monograph, Patterns of Negro Segregation. Robert E. Park was born in Harveyville, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1864.7 His family soon moved to Red Wing, Minnesota, where he spent his childhood. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan in 1887, Park worked for a short time as a high school teacher in Red Wing, Minnesota. Late in 1887, however, he went to Minneapolis to get a job as a newspaper reporter. In 1894, Park married Clara Cahill, and they had four children. After three years in Minneapolis, his interest waned. He set out for New York, but his arrival was delayed by a six-month detour to Denver. Still restless, he entered Harvard University to study philosophy. After a year at Harvard, Park went abroad with the intention of staying for only one year, but remained in Europe for four years. In Berlin, Park received his “only formal instruction in sociology” by listening to the lectures of Georg Simmel, the social philosopher and sociologist, who was at the height of his career at the turn of the century. While in Berlin, Park was influenced by reading “a little treatise on the logic of the social sciences by a Russian, Kistiakowski.” Kistiakowski had been a student of the European social philosopher Wilhelm Windelband. Park’s lifelong curiosity compelled him to go off to Strasbourg to study under Windelband. When Windelband moved to Heidelberg, Park followed. Under the European master, he wrote a thesis “Masse und Pub-

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likum” (“Crowd and Public”). From Heidelberg, Park returned to Harvard in 1903 to serve as an assistant in philosophy to William James and to finish his Ph.D. But, as he later recalled, by this time he “was sick and tired of the academic world, and . . . wanted to get back into the world of men.” About the time that Park completed his dissertation, he first met Booker T. Washington. As a result of this meeting, Park was to spend “seven winters, partly at Tuskegee but partly roaming about the South, getting acquainted with the life, the customs, and the condition of the Negro people.” Park met Washington as a prelude to a study of the Congo for the Congo Reform Association. In February of 1905, Washington invited Park to start his study of “Africa in the southern states.” This experience changed Park’s life and perhaps the course of race relations in America. Park later noted, “I think I probably learned more about human nature and society, in the South under Booker Washington, than I had learned elsewhere in all my previous studies.” Park would later recall in a public address, “Until I met Booker T. Washington, except for what I had learned from books, I knew nothing . . . about Negroes or the South.”8 From about the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century onward, Washington provided Park with a ready-made laboratory for research at Tuskegee Institute. In 1905, Park went to work for Washington at Tuskegee Institute with the generic working title of publicist.9 Park’s many tasks included ghost writing some of Washington’s books, traveling across the South by railway with Washington during some of Washington’s tours from 1906 to 1912, and, earlier, in 1901, touring Europe with Washington. Park reluctantly left Tuskegee Institute and Washington in 1912 to take a job with the University of Chicago.10 The job as Washington’s publicist required extensive travel, forcing Park’s wife Clara to be both mother and father to their children. Eventually, Park decided his developing family required that he spend more time at home. Park wrote Washington that he was leaving “to spend the next few years, while they are growing up, in closer contact with my children. . . . I want to say . . . , that I have never been so happy in my life as I have since I became associated with you in this work.”11 Even during the Tuskegee years, Park was indirectly involved in events that would later affect the career of Charles S. Johnson. In 1911, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., was so moved by reading Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery that he invited Washington to a luncheon when the principal of Tuskegee Institute was visiting Chicago.12 Washington stirred Rosenwald to action and the “same year he took a railroad car filled with friends and relatives to Tuskegee for a firsthand look at vocational education in operation.” Soon, Rosenwald was an enthusiastic supporter of Washington and the Tuskegee idea. To mark his own fiftieth birthday, Rosenwald donated $25,000 to Tuskegee. From this beginning grew the Rosenwald Fund, first incorporated in 1917. In 1928,

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the Rosenwald Fund was reorganized with Edwin R. Embree as president. It would be under the auspices of the second Rosenwald Fund that much of Johnson’s work during the two decades he chaired the Department of Social Sciences was financed. In 1919, after the debacle that followed the Chicago riot, it was to Rosenwald that Park and Johnson turned for financial aid for the Chicago Commission on Race Relations.13 As Johnson plunged into his work on the Commission, Rosenwald expressed a continuing interest. Oral tradition records that Rosenwald, by then a man in his sixties, often stopped by Johnson’s office to give the young scholar a lift home while discussing the latest findings of Johnson’s research. By 1913, Park was settled in at the University of Chicago, where he stayed until retirement in 1934.14 Even in his later years, Park’s intellectual interests were always cosmopolitan, and he never lost his desire for travel and adventure. Park had an insatiable interest in the Orient and in South America. Beginning in 1931, he spent a year in Honolulu as a research professor at the University of Hawaii. Asia continued to hold his interest, and he “was in Peiping a few months,” where he learned “a great deal about China from the members of [his] . . . class at Yenching University.” In addition, he found time to visit Java, India, South Africa, and South America. Among his most memorable travels was a visit in July 1937 to the city of Bahia, in Brazil, “which is a kind of center of African culture.” Upon his retirement—a misnomer in Park’s case—from the University of Chicago in 1934, he joined Fisk University as a visiting professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Race Relations chaired by his protégé Charles S. Johnson. Johnson’s enormous respect for Park is evident from their early meetings. Park’s biographer Winifred Raushenbush describes Johnson’s perception of Park during early 1915, when Johnson later recalled, “I met Dr. Robert E. Park in my first quarter of study. . . . [After a while], it dawned on me that I was being taken seriously and without the usual condescension or oily paternalism of which I had already seen too much.”15 In 1936, Fisk University was the only black college to receive an A rating from the Association of American Universities.16 Park could be intellectually comfortable at Fisk while continuing his work in race relations. Because Fisk had financial problems, Park requested as compensation only a nominal salary and the little house in Nashville in which he lived near the Fisk campus at 1809 Morena Street. On February 7, 1944, seven days before his eightieth birthday, Park died. Park’s legacy continued throughout the twentieth century and after. The discipline of sociology is relatively young in American academia. Its origins can be found in the late nineteenth century as an outgrowth of the work of such figures as William Graham Sumner and Lester Frank Ward. It was not until the eve of World War I, however, that any-

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thing resembling the sociology of race relations developed. Even then, more likely than not, it was little more than a rationalization for the political, social, and economic conditions and status that white America had imposed upon black America. Typical of the racist polemics which were passed off as scholarly works of sociology were Thomas Pearce Bailey’s Race Orthodoxy (1908), Robert W. Shufeldt’s The Negro A Menace to American Civilization (1907), and even the more scholarly Social and Mental Traits of the Negro (1910) by the young Howard W. Odum.17 There were isolated dissenters, like W. E. B. Du Bois, who undertook objective studies of the lives of black people and the nature of race relations, but they were seldom given a hearing.18 It remained for Robert E. Park to develop the theoretical and methodological approaches necessary to turn the field of the sociology of race relations on its head. Park’s graduate training was in philosophy, not sociology. Apparently, the intellectual development that would lead to the development of a new school of race relations was first stimulated in Park when he heard his Harvard professor William James read an essay entitled “A Certain Blindness in Human Beings.”19 Years later, Park recalled, “I was greatly impressed at the time, and, as I have reflected upon it since, the ideas suggested there have assumed a steadily increasing significance.” From this experience, Park concluded that “what sociologists most need to know is what goes on behind the faces of men, what it is that makes life for each of us either dull or thrilling.” Park carried this new insight with him a few years later when he went to Tuskegee. His experience in the South with Booker T. Washington reinforced what James postulated at Harvard. Johnson’s mentor later testified to Washington’s influence upon his study of race relations when he wrote of the Tuskegee days that “I came to believe in firsthand knowledge not as a substitute but as a basis for more formal and systematic investigation.” In the field of academic sociology, Park was most influenced by Georg Simmel and William Graham Sumner.20 Although Simmel did not always use the term conflict per se, Lewis A. Coser has demonstrated that Simmel, more than any other sociologist, was the individual most responsible for the reliance of twentieth-century sociologists upon the concept of the theory of social conflict. It was the social conflict theory that most characterized the Chicago school of sociology during the first half of the twentieth century. Sumner had long preached that “stateways cannot change folkways.” From this orientation, Park tended to be less than optimistic about the ability of individuals to change the world. More often than not, he looked to the impersonal forces of natural law to bring about change. His view of race relations, then, had three dimensions. He saw change coming from conflict. The way to understand this

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change was by a study of the practical day-to-day life of the society. But there was little beyond study that one could do to accelerate the change needed to alter race relations. Again and again, in Park’s view of the nature of race relations, one can see the influence upon Park’s thinking of James, Washington, Simmel, and Sumner. Robert E. Park actually published very little for one who was such a giant in the field of race relations. Most of his publications were in the form of impressionistic and suggestive essays. More speculative and theoretical in nature than exhaustive and pedagogical, he preferred to present his ideas in short articles and in introductions to the more lengthy works of his students. Perhaps his most enduring book was Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921), a collaboration with Ernest W. Burgess. In this work he set the objective, balanced, and detached tone that was characteristic of his writing. Years later, Burgess recalled that Park told students who saw themselves as champions of black people “that the world was full of crusaders. Their role instead was to be that of the calm, detached scientist who investigates race relations with the same objectivity and detachment with which the zoologist dissects the potato bug.”21 It was with the orientation of a scientist, then, rather than that of a reformer, that Park molded his seminal theory of race relations over the years. Park viewed race relations in a broad historical context, ranging from ancient to modern times. In essence, they were relations “existing between peoples distinguished by marks of racial descent, particularly when these racial differences enter into the consciousness of the individuals and groups so distinguished, and . . . so . . . determine in each case the individual’s conception of himself as well as his status in the community.”22 Thus, anything that intensified racial consciousness reinforced conditions under which race relations existed. In the case of black people in a dominant white society, physical visibility became an important factor. In short, race consciousness was “to be regarded . . . like class or caste consciousness.” At least in the early stages of race relations, it acted to enforce social distance. The important distinction was not that race relations were relations between individuals of different races, but rather, relations between individuals who were “conscious of these differences.” In support of this proposition, Park argued that in Brazil there was no such thing as race relations because that country had no “race consciousness.” For Park, race relations in the broadest sense “might comprise . . . all those situations in which some relatively stable equilibrium between competing races has been achieved and in which the resulting order has become fixed in custom and tradition.” The key to the struggle surrounding race relations was status. If status were well defined and mutually accepted, there was tranquility. This was the case in a caste relationship such

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as American slavery. Historically, the universal distinguishing characteristic of race relations has been the meeting of strangers. The nature of that contact has been the association of peoples “primarily for secular and practical purposes; for the exchange of goods and services.” In short, they were the relations forced on peoples by the impersonal forces of nature. Peoples of diverse races and cultures, for example, have been thrown together by the fortunes of war. As a result, they “have not been sufficiently knit together by intermarriage and interbreeding to constitute a single ethnic community, with all that it implies.” Generally, race relations have followed a strict pattern. Originally, they were merely economic intercourse in the market place as characterized by barter, trade, and the rise of the city. “Trade relations . . . [were] invariably succeeded, eventually if not immediately, by some form of political domination.” Political dominance was necessary both for the protection of trade and the trader. At this point, the foreign missionary entered, and the seeds were sown for the future development of cultural relations. All the while, the status relationship between the dominant and the dominated groups was being defined. The underlying factor in defining status was social distance. Race relations were the product of migration and conquest. For Park, this was “true of the ancient world and it is equally true of the modern” world. The interracial adjustments that followed such migration and conquest were the basis for the conflict model that was so extensively employed by the Park school of race relations. It was Park’s view that the history of the modern world had been dominated by European expansion. In applying his theory of race relations to the United States, it did not matter that blacks in America were of African ancestry. He was more often than not critical of Europe for its role in history, but the action of Europeans remained for him the dominant factor in understanding race relations in the world and especially in the United States.23 Everywhere that European peoples had penetrated, they had disturbed and superseded the locally existing economic, political, judicial, and social processes. In the end, they had imposed “upon native societies” the world of the invaders. Often in the process, they had frequently “inoculated the native peoples with new and devastating diseases. They have invariably infected them with the contagious ferment of new and subversive ideas.” For Park, the disorganization and demoralization of conquered societies in both the ancient and modern world seems to have been an “incident of ineluctable historical and cultural processes.” From these processes came the “integration of peoples and cultures.” It was upon this wide view of history that Park built his model of race relations. The competition of conquest led to conflict. From this conflict came changes in the society. Here, reflecting the influence of Simmel,

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he contended that social order necessary for a functioning society was “a pattern maintained by accommodation.”24 In every society, the “organization of elements more or less antagonistic to each other . . . unite . . . for a moment . . . by arrangement which defines the reciprocal relations . . . and spheres of action of each.” This new accommodation in a caste society is relatively permanent, but in societies based upon open classes it may be only transitory. Eventually, as the process repeated itself on a lesser scale, assimilation would follow.25 In its most elementary form, the Park school divided the pattern of race relations into a historically determined cycle that moved from competition to conflict to accommodation and eventually to assimilation. Black Americans fitted very neatly into the cycle. In effect, blacks had been conquered in Africa. If there was a glorious African past, it had been lost to European conquest. Forced migration had brought blacks to America. In the nineteenth century, they had been settled in the American South. The twentieth century again witnessed the impersonal forces of history. War and poverty had seen the beginning of the Great Migration. Black people, as strangers in the marketplace, had become threats to whites. Riots were the outgrowth of conflict. The struggle for status continued as both sides sought a working accommodation. Sometimes it was Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise; sometimes it was the Niagara movement. More often, it was something in between. From this struggle would emerge some form of assimilation. Park saw race in America as social, not biological. He perceived black people as “backward,” but it was a “backwardness” that was “on the whole, a historical and not a biological phenomenon.”26 He was fond of comparing blacks with the similar status imposed on poor whites of the Appalachian Mountains or the Acadians of southern Louisiana.27 The key was not race but status. Park’s favorite illustration of the role of status in race relations was a story told by Booker T. Washington.28 Washington often traveled the South in statewide campaigns to spread his gospel of education. Whites had long been interested in black prodigies, and on these trips he and his party were often “visited by delegations of white folk from remote villages along the way.” Park related that “on one of these occasions a delegation, headed by a lanky and rustic but enterprising member of the village intelligentsia, waited upon Mr. Washington at the station.” The white man introduced himself and said, addressing the legendary Washington by his first name, “Y’u know, Booker, I been hear’n about you. . . . I been a tellin’ my friends . . . you was one of the biggest men in this country today.” In an attempt to change the subject, Washington asked the man, “What do you think about President Roosevelt?” In a perfect example of the role of

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status in southern race relations, the white man answered, “Oh! Hell, Roosevelt! Well, I used to be all for him until he let you eat dinner with him. That finished him far as I’m concerned.” According to Park, during slavery times, whites had systematically maintained a caste system. Except in the case of free blacks, “there was no such thing as a race problem before the Civil War and there was at that time very little of what we ordinarily call race prejudice.”29 Immediately after the Civil War, there was a long struggle between whites and blacks over the question of status in American society. For a time, an accommodation was found in a new type of caste system. But in the twentieth century, this had broken down. Education, the rise of a black professional class, and a rising race consciousness among blacks had “conspired not merely to undermine the traditional caste system but to render it obsolete.”30 It was with the attack upon the caste system that “the disorders and racial animosities that we ordinarily identify with the race problem began.”31 The earlier accommodation was reinforced by what was euphemistically called “the etiquette of race relations” but was actually the institutionalization of “forms of deference and recognition.”32 The etiquette of race relations was further buttressed by ensuring that social distance would be maintained. This concept, illustrated by Park’s anecdote about Booker T. Washington, reflected the whites’ attitude that the black person was all right and quite acceptable, “in his place and at his proper distance.”33 The whole phenomenon of black-white relationships was economic, political, and social, but not biological. Of course, biological arguments would be used to defend and rationalize the etiquette of race relations. But the inconsistencies and irony of the realities were too well known to students of race relations; they could not substantiate such rationalizations. Park rejected the idea of caste, which was to play such an important role in Gunnar Myrdal’s work. But how did he and his students explain segregation? At least by the mid-1930s, Park saw black Americans occupying the status of a racial and cultural minority.34 He granted that intermarriage was still deterred, but to a great degree this was also characteristic of such minority groups as “the Jew in Europe and elsewhere.”35 As early as 1928, Park had offered the thesis in his discussion of biracial organization that blacks were a minority group. To support this position, he argued that originally race relations in the South were “rather accurately represented by a horizontal line, with all the white folk above, and all the Negro folk below.”36 But the character, content, and meaning of this relationship were in flux. With the development of industrial and professional classes within the race, the distinction between the races tended to assume the form of a vertical line. On a graph, Park drew the following:

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The situation was this: All white All colored It is now this: White

Colored

Professional occupation Business occupation Labor

Professional occupation Business occupation Labor

From this graph, he argued that there had developed “in every occupational class professional and industrial bi-racial organizations.” Although biracial organizations preserved racial distinctions, attitudes were different. In short, “the races no longer look up and down; they look across.” Parks predicted a further shifting of the status of race relations in the future. He saw in the “long historical perspective . . . a common culture and a common social order.”37 To be sure, diversities among peoples in the modern world would continue, but they would be “based in the future less on inheritance and race and rather more on culture and occupation.” The future, then, would be a single great society, and the race conflict would be superseded by “the conflicts of classes.” As Ralph H. Turner writes of Park’s stages of race relations, “[H]is chief preoccupation lay in the movements between accommodation and conflict.”38 He did, however, deal with assimilation from time to time. In 1928, Park wrote that “peoples and races who live together, sharing in the same economy, inevitably interbreed, and in this way if in no other, the relations which were merely co-operative and economic become social and cultural.”39 Assimilation, like race, was cultural and social rather than biological. In short, assimilation was “the absorption of a cultural heritage.”40 For Park, in the process of assimilation the important thing was that “groups of individuals, originally indifferent or perhaps hostile, achieve this corporate character.” In a race-conscious society, of course, the chief obstacles to assimilation were “physical traits.” By assimilation, Park meant the process whereby black people took on the larger American culture. He saw this Americanization process as beginning in early slavery days. While assimilation was continuing, Park identified a corresponding pattern of increased black solidarity. The earlier caste sentiment had drawn blacks together while keeping blacks and whites apart. Black people were losing the earlier loyalty to whites fostered in slavery and, at the same time, were developing a new race pride.41 In Park’s eyes, black

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people were beginning to follow the model of European nationalist groups and, as Booker T. Washington had said, were “a nation within a nation.” Park warned that this model had far-reaching implications for the larger white American culture.42 He suggested that black people were attaining the character of a nationality and might remain loyal to the state “only in so far as that state incorporates, as an integral part of its organization, the practical interests, the aspirations and ideals of that nationality.” A corollary to the process of assimilation for Park was the phenomenon of the marginal man. The marginal man is the individual who, in the process of cultural assimilation, “finds himself on the margins of two cultures and not fully or permanently accommodated to either.”43 Park characterized the typical marginal man as being of “mixed blood, an Eurasian, mestizo, or mulatto, . . . predestined to occupy a position somewhere between the two cultures represented by his respective parents.” The marginal man tended to occupy a “separate caste or class.” Park was careful to stress the point, however, that the marginal man was a cultural, rather than a biological, phenomenon. For example, he noted, “Much the same consequences ensue . . . in the case of the individual who is the product of parents representing two widely different cultures, particularly if the two groups are endogamous.” Park noted that in the broader world the marginal man was a personality type, “for reasons that are not at present wholly intelligible, . . . likely to be smart, i.e., a superior, though sometimes a superficial, intellectual type.”44 The marginal man usually had forced upon him the role of a “cosmopolitan and a stranger.”45 The end product was that “inevitably he becomes, relative to his cultural milieu, the individual with the wider horizon, the keener intelligence, the more detached and rational viewpoint. The marginal man is always relatively the more civilized human being.”46 While the concept of the marginal man tended to describe urban blacks, both proletariat and middle class, what about rural blacks who stayed in the South after the Civil War and built isolated black communities? Here, again, Park believed that the universality of his theory of race relations applied.47 He cited the example of individuals in other experiences who had continued to live “in the isolation of an immigrant community.” The record indicated that they were likely to “sink to a cultural level in the country of their adoption lower than that of the national or racial stock of their origins.” Park defined these groups, which were diametrically opposed to the concept of the marginal man, as “marginal peoples.”48 Among those Park listed as marginal peoples were the Acadians of southwestern Louisiana, the Mennonites of Pennsylvania, whites of the Appalachians, peoples of mixed ancestry like “the Mexicans of New Mexico” and “little

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isolated communities of Indian, Negro, and white mixtures, scattered about in remote parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana.” It was upon the concept of marginal peoples that Charles S. Johnson drew for his study of the folk Negro in his seminal work Shadow of the Plantation (1934). As he would do for the works of his students Romanzo Adams, Bertram W. Doyle, Donald Pierson, and Everett V. Stonequist, Park wrote an introduction for Johnson’s study of Macon County, Alabama. In the introduction, which established the essential theoretical framework for Shadow of the Plantation, Park noted that the folk Negro was a product of isolation. He had a history, but it was oral rather than written. Basically, it consisted of a “tradition that is handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth rather through the medium of the printed page.” Folk peoples’ culture was “local.” Park suggested, for example, that “‘spirituals’ have been, and to a very considerable extent still are, the natural expression of the mind and the mood of the plantation Negro.” Johnson’s book went far beyond the oral tradition of spirituals to substantiate Park’s observation on the value of oral tradition as a valid research source. Studying marginal peoples presented certain problems for the sociologist. At first, it appeared easy to describe the external forms and obvious expression of a local culture. But the difficulty lay “in making that culture intelligible; in discovering the meaning and the function of usages, customs, and institutions.” Park noted that it was necessary for Johnson to distinguish between form and function; understanding a society required “the study not merely of its institutions but of its mentality.” The study of folk peoples necessitated the employment of the survey method of interviewing and evaluating the culture in the context of internal as well as external standards. Park himself had pioneered this method at the University of Chicago. In studying race relations, Park conceived of and developed the methodology of the race relations survey. Here, again, the close relationship between the mentor Park and the student Johnson was readily obvious. Two years after the publication of The Negro in Chicago (1922), Park outlined the major features of what was to be known as a race relations survey.49 In many ways, it resembled the survey just completed by his student, Charles S. Johnson, and Graham Romeyn Taylor. For more than thirty years, the race relations survey method pioneered by Park and used by Johnson would be the standard model for studying community race relations. Not only did Johnson and the program at Fisk adopt it, but groups like the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress employed it as late as mid century.50 In outlining his approach, Park reminded the reader that “a Race Relations Survey, whatever else it may be, will inevitably turn out to be a

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study of public opinion.”51 Park noted that it was essential to differentiate between opinions and attitudes. While it was attitudes that eventually needed to be changed if race relations were to improve, there were certain distinctions the researcher must keep in mind. Opinions were the explanation, justification, and “rationalization” of an individual’s attitude. Park wrote that “every man’s opinion becomes more intelligible if we know the particular circumstances under which it was conceived; particularly if we know also, the circumstances that have reaffirmed and intensified it.” Unlike attitudes, opinions were conscious and were framed to meet attacks upon one’s attitudes. In the case of groups, opinions soon “pass over into doctrines or theories, more or less philosophical in character.” Once this has transpired, dialogue between groups in conflict becomes impossible. If, however, the researcher can differentiate between the opinion, and the attitude that stimulates the opinion, it is sometimes possible to bring both parties “into the same ‘Universe of Discourse’ and make . . . them in this way intelligible to one another.” In discussing the method to be used in a race relations survey, Park was being consistent with his lifelong emphasis upon education as the great “moral solvent.”52 One of the keys was to break the barriers to communication. Park wrote, “[I]n time . . . what was strange becomes familiar. We discover the same human motives and wishes reflected in the manners of other people of which we are conscious in ourselves. Conduct that formerly struck us as queer becomes familiar and intelligible.” The real barriers to communication were not language and culture per se; nor were they physical distances, but rather, social distances. From social distance, reinforced by racial etiquette, came self-consciousness and race consciousness. With education and communication, Park believed that racial barriers would be undermined and broken down. It was social distance that produced or at least reinforced prejudice. Race consciousness was an acquired trait. “Children do not have it.”53 Prejudice in Park’s view was the “spontaneous response . . . to what is strange and unfamiliar.” Park further contended that there was “no reason to believe that attitudes based upon race are fundamentally different from any other attitudes. Race prejudice is like class and caste prejudices—merely one variety of a species.” In this context, race prejudice became “a phenomenon of status.” In this struggle for status, the dominant group merely manifested a resistance to the changing social order. Thus, whites could approve of a black trying to improve his condition, but would resist immediately if there were an attempt to improve status. Observers tended to confuse racial prejudice with racial antagonism; in the latter there was “more racial conflict.” This antagonism was an outgrowth of the fact that “the Negro is rising in America,” and it measured “his progress.” Animosities arose in conflict, and

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“racial animosities are an incident of the struggles in which racial classes are formed.” When conflict ceases, some kind of accommodation has been reached. The racial prejudice may persist, but the cause of conflict has been removed. In Park’s scheme of things, a war or a riot might, in fact, be productive in the form of improved race relations for black people. Such events usually led to a reordering of society and a new status for blacks. Much of the work in a race relations survey was mundane and pure physical legwork. In order to get an accurate view for the study, the investigator must look not only at biological and economic relations but also at social and political life. To accomplish this task, Park divided the survey into four categories: (1) geographical distribution of racial groups; (2) division of labor, that is, occupations, and so forth; (3) competition, conflict, and accommodation; and (4) public opinion.54 The demographic data would include population shifts, such as from rural to urban, or internal movement within one of these areas. An important feature of the demographic study was good maps—especially of agricultural areas. Segregated, isolated, business, and residential areas of urban centers should be detailed. The division of labor section was rather selfexplanatory. It would include original occupations, changes occurring, along with dominant and present occupations. The third section, of course, was a scaled-down version of Park’s general theory of race relations. It included a discussion of the economic competition of different racial groups. Vital information would include the nature of the complaints, when and where conflicts have arisen, “in what region . . . have complaints been more bitter,” and, finally, “in which situations and under what conditions” accommodations had been reached. The section on public opinion sought to establish the nature of racial contacts, sources of irritation, actual experiences, and, most important, how “the racial contacts and sources of irritation differ.” The method of collecting and recording the materials was varied. But one central theme was the importance of the human document. In general, materials included letters, newspaper clippings, case histories, autobiographical materials, and life histories. In using the human document, Park stressed the need to record “as far as possible in the language . . . of the person interviewed.” In fact, he added, “Formal language is an imperfect instrument of expression of attitudes, which are only adequately revealed in actual behavior.” He was, of course, adamant in insisting that an interviewer “distinguish between attitudes, opinions, convictions, and theory.” Despite his tremendous influence in the sociology of race relations, Park has come in for his share of criticism. Although muted by his many contributions, Park’s references to racial temperament, especially at the time of World War I, are disquieting.55 As Stanford M. Lyman notes,

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Park’s use of the term “racial temperament” and his characterization of Negroes as “the lady among races” met vigorous criticism. For example, in a work written in 1944 but not published until 1964, Ralph Ellison compares Park’s characterization of “the Negro as ‘the lady among the races’ as a descriptive metaphor . . . so pregnant with mixed emotions as to birth a thousand compromises and indecisions . . . , uncomfortably close to the preachings of . . . Dr. Goebbels.”56 The sociologist Morris Janowitz reports that “Park regretted the characterization again and again.”57 Lyman notes Janowitz explained Park’s use of the term to describe intergroup relations without using the term “biological racism.”58 Janowitz’s rationale is less than persuasive. Like all individuals in race relations, Park must be judged by the era in which he lived. Park never developed a theory about African Americans having a “racial temperament” nor representing the female gender of races. A far more enduring censure has been Park’s failure to appreciate the historical importance of Africa and the survival of African culture traits in the lives of black Americans, as well as his a priori acceptance of natural law as immutable. During Park’s lifetime, scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois, Melville J. Herskovits, and Carter G. Woodson had written of the role of the African past in the lives of black Americans.59 They suggested that the presence of African survivals in the twentieth-century black community supported the hypothesis that there was a much greater continuity of culture from ancient Africa to the present day than was once believed. In the 1960s, this theme was enlarged upon by the newly emerging black Nationalist and PanAfricanist school of sociology.60 In the model of the 1960s, black sociologists argued that black people were first and foremost African people who had been colonized in the United States by the great Diaspora. Park’s orientation was always that of a Euro-American. He felt that whatever ancient Africa may have been, it was not relevant to black Americans. It was his impression “that the amount of African tradition which the Negro brought to the United States was very small.”61 What African traits apparently did survive Park attributed to life on the isolated plantation. Upon arriving in this country, blacks were immediately cut off from their kinsmen and not allowed to speak their own language. In short, “[N]one [had] . . . been so utterly cut off and estranged from their ancestral land, traditions, and people” as had blacks in America. Park never treated seriously the work of Du Bois, Woodson, and Herskovits. Although Park’s academic writings in race relations ranged from China and Japan to Brazil and the United States, they were conspicuous in omitting Africa. Many of Park’s contemporaries accepted his idea of Euro-Americanization, but still found grounds to be critical. Both Oliver C. Cox and Gunnar Myrdal attacked Park for his conservative, laissez-faire view of the

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world.62 Cox was disturbed because Park failed to distinguish between modern race conflicts and historical cultural conflicts. Cox argued that racial conflicts were of recent origin and that historical caste relations, such as those that existed in India, were not racial. He was even more upset with Park’s view of the world. He linked Park with William Graham Sumner in seeing only the accommodative aspect of race relations in the South. Cox himself preferred to stress color prejudice as a recent development in America to protect class interests. Although he was not always accurate in suggesting that Park viewed race relations in a caste context, he did offer a key to criticizing Park—Park’s tendency toward fatalism regarding impersonal historical forces for change. An even more theoretical criticism, from a sociologist’s viewpoint, of Park’s approach to race relations can be found in Myrdal’s American Dilemma. Although Park was not against working for reform as an individual (as his work with the Chicago Urban League and his interest in the Congo Reform Association demonstrated), he felt that significant changes in race relations were the product of forces that were chiefly impersonal. For example, he saw war, riots, and depressions as the forces that produced the conquests and migrations that were so central to his conflict model. Only such catastrophic events could break the logjam that characterized the stages of competition, conflict, and accommodation. The Swedish sociologist and economist Gunnar Myrdal believed that change could be produced artificially by man. Myrdal opted for “conscious and organized planning”; for example, he noted Park’s inability to deal effectively with assimilation because of the permanence of the visibility factor in blackwhite race relations. Here, like Cox, Myrdal linked Park with Sumner in “inferring from the facts that men can and should make no effort to change the ‘natural’ outcome of the specific forces observed. This is the old donothing (laissez-faire) bias of ‘realistic’ social science.” Myrdal’s antidote was change consciously introduced into the environment.63 Whatever his shortcomings, an assessment of Robert E. Park must be a positive one. At the University of Chicago, he inspired a whole empirical school of race relations. He recognized the value of field work and did research in a living laboratory with Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute. Intellectual heirs, like Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, devoted much of their professional careers to pursuing Park’s seminal theories. At the same time, Park was a social scientist and not a crusader. He doubted that humanity could alter the course of race relations. Yet, much of the research for the Myrdal study, which was based on the opposite premise, was done by Park’s students and their students. His philosophical training and adherence to natural law often kept him away from projects like the one

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Myrdal engaged in. Yet Park preached a kind of reform by education. Today, that approach has a distinctly conservative, if not reactionary, ring. Park, like many of his contemporaries, suffered from the limitations of his age. Park began writing at a time when the views of Thomas Pearce Bailey, Robert W. Shufeldt, and the early Howard Odum were accepted by most scholars in the field. This may have influenced Park’s failure to appreciate the importance of Africa. In overlooking the scholarship of W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and Melville J. Herskovits, Park apparently violated his own rule of objectivity. Park’s rejection of the work of these scholars, as well as the research of Lorenzo D. Turner concerning the Gullah Islanders, is put in perspective by Park’s colleague at Fisk, Werner J. Cahnman. According to Cahnman, Park’s goal was “total integration, a melting pot of races, and the formation of a unified nation on American soil.”64 Cahnman writes that Park lost his normal objectivity in rejecting African survivals in black culture, apparently because such scholarship was detrimental to integration. For example, Cahnman writes, “I was struck by Park’s desperate opposition to Lorenzo Turner’s report about his findings among Gullah Islanders on the South Carolina Coast, where he had encountered, in painstaking linguistic research, numerous West African words, names, proverbs, tales and usages.”65 Park’s contributions were many. Perhaps the most important was that he took his job of teaching seriously. His greatest legacy was his students, like Frazier and Johnson. Over the years, they were able to grow with the times. Many of Park’s ideas were expanded and updated. In later years, Frazier gained a new appreciation of Africa. By the time of the Myrdal study, Johnson set aside Park’s views on the immutability of natural law while still drawing upon his ideas on the methodology of race relations surveys. In so doing, Johnson would act as the link between Park and Myrdal.

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Chapter 4

The Park-Johnson Model

U

nlike his mentor, Robert E. Park, Charles S. Johnson wrote many books on race relations. Park had preferred the short, suggestive essay that was weak on factual data but strong on theory, while Johnson tended toward the long, thoroughly researched, and heavily documented study. For the most part, Johnson was able to maintain the thin line between scholarship and pedantry. Many of his studies were of a pioneering nature and necessitated massive documentation. As a consequence, it is often more difficult to place Johnson’s work into a neat conceptual framework. When one looks beneath the copious documentation and the neutral tone of Johnson’s writing, it becomes apparent, however, that he, too, had a well thought out theory of race relations. He drew heavily upon the earlier work and teachings of Park. In fact, the model he used in the years prior to World War II was in many ways merely a more sophisticated version of Park’s old model of competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Johnson’s most theoretical work was Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (1934). He coauthored it with Willis Duke Weatherford, a traditional, white, southern liberal of the era. A curious work in many ways, it actually was two books in one volume. The individual chapters were signed. The preface stated that “each writer has been the sole arbiter as to what he would say. His initials appear in the table of contents after each chapter. . . . He therefore does not place responsibility on the co-author for any of his own interpretations.”1 Weatherford, a tragic and pathetic figure, was torn between his religious convictions and his desire always to remain a part of the white South. His position was one of vacillation. On the one hand, he eulogized the idyllic life on the plantation with southern white belles who were “gently bred, but knew little of the ways of the world,” of mansions with “old flower gardens with . . . honeysuckle hedge [and] . . . lilac bushes,” and of “contented slaves” whose “loyalty . . . to their masters was beyond approach.” 49

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On the other hand, he lamented the cruelty of slavery, crime, and poverty. It was not surprising, then, that when the book was first published, he worried constantly that his picture would be in the newspaper beside that of “a colored man.”2 Not that he minded, but his “friends would not understand.” But the pragmatic Johnson knew the value of the “Trojan horse,” and he utilized his association with Weatherford to great advantage. What he wrote, although cautiously stated and couched in neutral language so as not to inflame, was essentially a statement of the philosophy of the ParkJohnson model. For years after its publication in 1934, Race Relations was the basic text in race relations courses across the country.3 As a result of the Johnson strategy, many whites were exposed to a set of ideas that the racial etiquette of the southern region would otherwise have censured. In Race Relations, Johnson expanded upon his earlier work in The Negro in Chicago and in Opportunity.4 He instructed his reader not to confuse the terms “race” and “race relations.” Mindful of the many years of indoctrination that had stemmed from the pseudoscientific school of the study of “race,” Johnson drew the distinction clearly. He noted that the term “race” had “a factual content; but it also had an emotional content which persistently obscures its meaning.” It was important to distinguish between what was “scientifically known about race and what is uncritically believed.” Johnson continued, “Strictly speaking, race is a biological term and has to do with physical characteristics based on blood relationship.” Thus, the distinction to keep in mind was the “distinction between biological and social phenomena.” In fact, the scientific study of race “has little, if anything, to do with race relations.” When considerations of race were detached from social issues, it became “fairly academic and remote.” The problem in the past has been the attempt to give race social meaning. As such, theories of race, which were of recent origin, had been responsible for such “conflict, arrogance and persecution.” For the most part, they have been “political and social in both character and inspiration.” The origins of such theories could be found in attempts to justify the evils of slavery, capitalism, and imperialism. The same phenomena “which we call racial may be observed in relation to differences in religion and even differences in sex.” The study of race relations, then, and not the study of race, was Johnson’s concern. Race, as all but the specialist used the term in the United States, was a social-political-economic phenomenon and did not refer to biology. Again and again, Johnson repeated this theme. The Negro in Chicago was conceived upon the basic assumption that racial inferiority was a myth and that prejudice was learned, not instinctive. In Opportunity, Johnson had both argued and demonstrated this position. In the important work Race Relations and the Race Problem: A Definition and an Analysis, edited by Edgar T. Thompson, Johnson wrote, “Race relations, as we conceive

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them today, may in many respects be said to be only incidentally racial. They reflect a state of mind and a social or political philosophy shaped to expedience.”5 Again, during World War II, he wrote, “Race and race relations belong to two very different categories of thinking. Race is a biological concept about which the layman talks freely but knows little. . . . Race relations, on the other hand, are social relations that are given special definition by the ideology or social philosophy of the dominant group.”6 It was from this orientation that Johnson studied race relations. Gradually, not only sociologists but most educated laymen assumed this position. Johnson followed Park’s lead in the treatment of the role of opinions and attitudes. If opinions were the rationalization rather than the cause of the current state of race relations, it was necessary for the social scientist to go back to the genesis of the circumstances and motivation of the opinions. While Park’s earlier theoretical writings had been more concerned with the status of European immigrants and Asians than with blacks, Johnson, in his work with Weatherford, focused specifically upon American blacks. Here, he concentrated upon the period from 1619 to 1863. It is obvious that he saw slavery as the single most important historical force in the race relations of black and white Americans. His practical concern was to search for “the point of genesis [and] seek to define the concrete circumstances under which opinions took form, and the motives which inspired them.” In the era of constitutional slavery, he hoped to find the basis for the attitudes that characterized and stifled race relations in the United States. In his discussion of slavery, Johnson expanded upon his earlier premise that racial prejudice was not instinctive and did not always exist. Rather, it had become custom. It was Johnson’s position that in the beginning slavery was a product of class stratification rather than race. In the early American colonial setting, “not only were Negro and white servants treated alike, but they associated freely with one another. White and Negro servants frequently ran away together, intermarried, and were accused of plotting together against their masters.”7 Ironically enough, it was the early-seventeenth-century Negro Anthony Johnson who was the plaintiff in an epoch-making decision that led to the institutionalization of slavery when he was granted the “right to the perpetual services” of one John Casor, a black indentured servant. And although the suit was not brought on racial grounds, it was to become the precedent for the later legal basis of black enslavement. The final step was the reconciliation of slavery and religion in 1667 when the Virginia Assembly passed an act declaring that “baptism doth not alter the condition of a person as to his bondage.” By the end of the seventeenth century, the combination of legal and religious factors, available African slavers, and the added factor of visibility moved slavery from class stratification to stratification of race and

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caste. From this status imposed upon blacks by whites grew the need for “justification.” The consequences for black people were catastrophic as the “rationalizations of the status of Negroes as slaves, in support of the profitable institution of slavery, served to place a stamp upon the Negroes as a race which remains today, only slightly changed in its main features.” Johnson’s writing was concerned with the psychological and sociological problems stemming from slavery. This concern was a central theme in such books as Shadow of the Plantation, Growing Up in the Black Belt, and Patterns of Negro Segregation. In Race Relations, he devoted an entire chapter to “The Effect of Slavery on the Negro.”8 He noted that “the psychological effects of slavery have been pervasive and will, perhaps, continue longest.” He went on to suggest that the “infrequency of actual slave uprisings points to a mental adjustment of the slaves to their position of subordination.” Johnson cited historical parallels with such experiences as the Helots of Sparta, the many slaves under Rome, and the serfs during feudalism. In these parallels, as in American slavery, he saw a historical cycle that was similar in each case. First, there was control by force; soon “habituation to the status takes the place of a direct show of force.” In America, he suggested, “[t]hese habits persist, and have persisted long after slavery, in the psychology of Negroes.” But accommodation was not always the case, and resistance to this status was evident in Park’s “marginal man,” who got “partially out of this zone of habituation and partially into another.” In turn, he became “restless, discontented, and dangerous to the fixed order.” In some cases, this phenomenon could produce the needed impetus for migration, education, and wider communications, which inevitably led to change. More often, however, the consequences were the reverse. Too often, the mental adjustment necessary for survival in slavery has “instilled a belief in their own actual inferiority, which extends beyond themselves to the conviction of the inferiority of all Negroes.” This belief, in turn, has acted as an agent of white social control by fostering “distrust of Negro leadership.” The pervading self-deprecation has even had the subtle effect of fostering “standards of beauty and physical appearance which are not wholly adjustable to . . . [black people].” One manifestation of this was seen in the “valuation on mulattoes [sic] and other approximations to whiteness and straight hair,” along with a contempt for blackness.” Johnson concluded that “the implications are everywhere: ‘Black is evil.’ It has been and still is associated with witchcraft, devils, sin, bad luck, and ‘all the other distressing and horrible aspects of human experience.’ . . . So long as scorn of blackness is in the tradition, it will be ‘evil’ for Negroes until they can succeed in emancipating themselves from its implications.” Nor were the psychological and mental consequences of slavery limited to blacks; whites, too, paid a great price.9 During slavery, King Cotton

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was reared “upon the backs of black slaves.” The institution of slavery “required no white workers, and they were simply eliminated from the picture and very largely by their own blood kin of another class.” In a poetic passage, Johnson recorded that “these whites were driven off to the barren hills, forced into a degrading poverty at times beneath even the Negroes, reasoned out of the right to work as the Negroes were reasoned out of the right to enjoy the fruits of their own labor.” Blacks gained a monopoly upon the skills necessary to nineteenth-century America from the “rough labor of the plantations to the skilled work of the towns.” In response, the poor whites developed a deep and enduring enmity, which continued into the twentieth century, for all blacks. After the Civil War “the leaders of these non-slaveholding whites and ‘poor whites’ . . . were the most rabid Negro haters because this appeal was most effective with their constituents.”10 From the Civil War forward, the story of race relations was essentially an economic struggle for security and status fought out in the racial arena. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Jim Crow in all its ugliness was legally entrenched. In an ironic reversal from the nineteenth century, state legislatures “threw up an economic breastwork of protection for white workers against the free competition of the blacks who had the advantage of actual possession of the trades as a heritage of three hundred years of slavery.” But the white status was more social than economic and more apparent than real. Johnson did not go so far as to label the poor whites the new slaves, perhaps because there were significant differences. The poor whites were given the illusive privileges associated with skin color. At the same time blacks did not have, in practice, the legal redress afforded poor whites in times of slavery. Nor did the economic plight of blacks always seem to be analogous. But the consequences were similar. In 1935, a summary was published of the extensive research on cotton tenancy by Johnson and Rupert B. Vance of the University of North Carolina Institute for Research in Social Science.11 In this document, the authors wrote that “Negroes no longer make up the bulk of cotton tenants. White workers, in an increasing flood, have been drawn into the cotton fields, until today they outnumber the blacks more than five to three.” The Great Migration had taken its toll by the end of the 1930s. While white families had increased by approximately a million persons, black tenants decreased by two thousand families. The authors concluded from this that “increasingly, therefore, the problems of the rural South in general, and of cotton tenancy in particular, are those of native white families much more than of Negroes.” The lessons Johnson saw in the nineteenth century still applied as race was used as a bogus issue to cloud the real question of economics. The tragic result was that “it has been impossible

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to bring about any change, even to get the poor white workers to take a stand, since any movement for reform is immediately confused with the race issue.” The end result was that “because of their insistence upon the degrading of three million Negro tenants, five and a half million white workers continue to keep themselves in virtual peonage.” Johnson’s basic position during his long career as a sociologist was that the nature of race relations was essentially a struggle for economic and social status in which race was only an incidental element. From this conflict had developed a code of racial etiquette and behavior employed by the dominant group, which fought for economic and social security, while seeking to contain the subordinate group, which fought to change the status quo. While race was used ideologically and politically as a rationalization for continuing the status quo, it did not deal with the real issues, which were economic. Johnson noted early in his career that the spurious issue of race was used to feed the emotions of poor whites while benefiting capitalists who stood to gain from racial hatred. In 1923, for one of the few times in his career, the sociologist bordered on accepting the thesis of an economic conspiracy in interpreting American history. In an editorial in Opportunity entitled “Myth Makers and Mobs,” he asked where the ultimate responsibility for racial antagonism rested.12 He noted that it was usual to attribute such responsibility to the “unlearned rabble, the mob, the great unwashed.” But it was not that simple. Slavery had actually been opposed by white laborers because it limited their economic advancement; it was “supported and defended by the slave holding gentry.” The doctrine of the racial superiority of the Anglo-Saxon did not originate with the common workers but “among those to whose advantage it was to keep Negroes enslaved.” The most serious hostility that had developed between blacks and whites had been a result of someone “deliberately [trying] . . . to get cheaper and cheaper labor.” When riots occurred, they were usually inspired in part by bogus issues like sex by “writers of editorials and news stories.” Johnson asked, Who inspired the mob? He answered his own question with the comment that “it usually takes a third party.” In support of his economic interpretation, Johnson was not short on examples. His study of black migration, first for Emmett J. Scott and later for The Negro in Chicago, had convinced him that the dominant motive for the Great Migration had been economic.13 The draft riots during the Civil War and the East St. Louis riot of 1917 were essentially manifestations of economically insecure white men, who feared that blacks were there to “take white men’s jobs.”14 The examples were numerous. Johnson again and again repeated his thesis that “economic forces are stronger than racial forces.”15 It had been the story often, as when blacks had been used as strikebreakers or in the case of

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“black slaves . . . [used] to grind other and poorer white men pitilessly into the earth.” Throughout his life, Johnson retained a basic compassion for poor whites who were the unwitting victims of an oppressive system. It was in this context that he wrote Lewis Wade Jones in 1945 that “a Klansman is more than a nightgown and a prejudice; he is also a little thwarted man who sells butter and eggs and soap and has not been able to make himself a hero to his wife or his neighbors and who has nothing more exciting to look forward to than the color of his shroud.”16 Although Johnson stressed the importance of economic, social, and political status over the element of race in the daily interaction of black and white people, he realized that the nation, and especially the South, had been extremely successful in making race the shibboleth around which the conflict centered. With this in mind, he wrote, “The orthodoxy of the South on the question of the Negro, whether morally wrong or right, is held in varying forms with all of the conviction and intensity and reality of morality itself. These beliefs change slowly and are scarcely, if at all, affected by factual contradiction or argument. . . . [But] such attitudes . . . change, and by processes which can be understood.”17 In fact, Johnson believed the so-called race problem to be a sign of progress, for it meant that blacks were not accepting a subordinate status. In a caste society, such as slavery, there was “no serious questioning of this fixed relationship on the part of either the slave or the slave owning class.”18 It was only as the status of blacks was questioned that the rationalization so much a part of “pseudoscientific” racism developed. Johnson, much like his mentor, took a strong negative position on the question of African survivals in American culture. Despite the scholarship of Du Bois, Herskovits, and Woodson, Johnson, unlike Frazier, never changed his position from the early days of Opportunity to the waning days of the Fisk presidency.19 He took the position that blacks had “been stripped of the greater part of . . . [their] original cultural heritage” as a result of the American experience. Being detached from their environment, “it is not unnatural that the original culture drives should have weakened.” Once the elements of a complex culture lost their function, they then were without meaning. Thus, in traditional Africa the complex “African music and dance . . . are not mere amusement; they are almost invariably a phase of some ceremonial complex . . . [and] belong to Africa and the social organization of which . . . [they] are a vital element.” Johnson suggested that the same was true in other areas, as for example, “the difference in fundamental conceptions of law and justice between the African and the European.” Once the unity of the interrelated parts was removed from their special organization, they no longer had meaning and did not survive. In fact, Johnson saw a similar disintegration in Africa itself during colonialism. If it had

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occurred in the mother country, “how much more thorough must be this disorganization when individuals are completely separated from their original setting and placed in a new culture.” Survival demanded reorganization, and “the only reorganization possible, in the midst of a dominant culture is one based upon this culture’s own postulates.” Johnson further argued that there were practical reasons, in addition to the loss of the African past, which ruled out a separate black culture. Foremost was economic organization. Johnson’s study of history convinced him that “there is not and apparently cannot be an exclusive Negro economy within the American culture; the work of Negroes is seriously prescribed, but all such work is within the American economic system. It must be evident how impossible any other arrangement would be.” An additional problem was the difficulty of living in “the midst of a culture without absorbing it.” As a case in point, he cited the “immediate absorption by the American white race of . . . jazz.” On the surface, Johnson’s argument for rejecting the thesis of African survivals was logical and persuasive. But a thorough study of his work Shadow of the Plantation leaves the reader uneasy.20 In chapter 1, Johnson devoted seventeen lines to a discussion of “‘Salt-Water’ Men.” He noted that the plantation community in Macon County still retained a memory of the “salt-water niggers” who had been freshly imported from Africa. Like most immigrants, these newly arrived Africans were looked down upon by the older immigrants, and even in the 1930s there were “contemptuous references to certain families as springing from ‘salt-water niggers.’” Johnson did acknowledge that the “situation provides an unexpected link with Africa which might indeed yield traces of other transplanted culture traits.” But that seems to have been the extent of the sociologist’s interest in the question of African survivals. Thereafter, he immediately dropped the subject. Johnson may have been accurate in his rejection of the works of Du Bois, Herskovits, and Woodson. The question, however, is not one of the validity of the interpretation of the early Nationalist and Pan-Africanist writers. The more important concern is that missing from Johnson’s published works and collected papers is any evidence that he ever seriously considered the works of scholars with an opposing view. It is surprising, in view of Johnson’s research for Shadow of the Plantation, which documented African survivals, and Lorenzo D. Turner’s Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, published after Park’s death, that Johnson appears not to have revisited Park’s thesis rejecting African survivals, at least by the time of World War II.21 For whatever reason, Johnson seems to have been guilty of violating his own rules of objectivity. Until recent times, if not today, many whites and some blacks have accepted the myth of “primitive Africa with lions,

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tigers, and man-eating cannibals.” Perhaps Johnson, who was committed to the integration of blacks into the mainstream of American society, did not wish to associate African Americans with this image. From his vantage point, assimilation was much easier if the Americanism of blacks was stressed. If this is the case, Johnson may not have cared to muddy the waters with a more thorough investigation of a topic that he believed to be strategically counterproductive. In an attempt to demonstrate the Americanism of twentieth-century blacks, Johnson was fond of pointing out that although all Americans shared the same general culture, there were different patterns within that culture.22 For example, he wrote, “[T]he culture of the western world has the American culture as one important variety. But within the American culture there are numerous patterns.” In this argument Johnson pointed to different patterns in American agricultural and urban culture. They were of the same culture but on different planes. From this premise, he argued that “no other group in America represents so wide a range of planes of culture as does the American Negro.” In both Race Relations and Shadow of the Plantation, Johnson went into great detail to make his case. Many factors determined the different planes. Social and cultural isolation, the character of the cultural patterns to which one was exposed, and economic and educational levels were but some of the many variables. In support of this premise, Johnson cited his pioneering study of 612 black families in Macon County, Alabama, which he published as Shadow of the Plantation. Here, he had studied “several Negro groups which . . . [were] representative of these . . . various groups from the same general area.” In one group, he found that the “traditions of the plantation survive, only slightly modified by the accident of the formal abolition of slavery.” In a second group, he found a lifestyle on a much different plane. Normal school was expected, courtship codes were well developed, and the materialism of the automobile and the “simple conventional southern small-town style” home were all a part of the established social order. Finally, in a third group at Tuskegee Institute, he found all the trappings of middle-class academia. The effort to develop a culture other than the common American culture was for Johnson the folly of escapism. It was not surprising, then, that he ridiculed the Garvey Movement. Johnson used the many media open to him to attack Marcus Garvey.23 Every year (except 1927), he devoted at least one and sometimes several vitriolic editorials to Garveyism in the pages of Opportunity. Again, in his contribution to Alain L. Locke’s New Negro and in such later works as Race Relations, he denounced Garvey and his movement. His discussion of Garvey was always presented within the framework of the lost African past, the irreversible Americanization of blacks, and the unfeasibility of a separate ethnic economy in the

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United States. The manner of his criticism differed from the detached, scientific, and neutral tone that characterized most of his work. On the surface, he appeared to be emotional, and the virulence and rancor that marked the tone of his argument were uncharacteristic. For example, he used such phrases as “bumptious and flamboyant,” “ritualistic baggage of bombastic fantasy,” “ridiculously unsound,” “absurdly visionary and impossible,” and the “fleecing of hundreds of thousands of poor and ignorant Negroes.” Johnson probably did view Garvey as a black racist and thus was being consistent with his criticism of white racism. But in his criticism of the latter, he almost always spoke in a neutral and scientific manner. Why did he treat Garvey differently? Possibly, he was motivated more by strategy than by the scientific method. Not only did Garvey appear to him to curry favor with the Ku Klux Klan, but, more important, the Garvey Movement, which he saw doomed to failure, was a threat to assimilation. If he were to keep and increase the support of white liberals, needed to change the course of race relations, it was imperative that Garvey’s stance not be accepted as the position of most blacks. It is possible, of course, that Johnson was merely reacting to his visceral feelings fostered by his middleclass environment, aspirations, and values. But at least two factors suggest that this was not the whole story. First, it was not Johnson’s nature to give himself over to blind emotionalism. Second, a close examination of his writings on Garvey finds him repeating the same emotionally charged phrases, almost verbatim, over a period of many years. More likely, his response was at least partially a strategy of emotionalism—both as an attempt to keep his white allies and as an example of how they should react to what he viewed as similar white racism. Although Johnson dismissed Garvey as a charlatan, he treated the underlying motivations of Garvey and his supporters much more seriously. He saw Garvey as the symbol of the “new psychology of the American peasantry,” and was convinced that the movement would survive Garvey’s incarceration. To imprison the charismatic Garvey was not to deal with the root cause of the movement. To Johnson, the Garvey Movement was an attempt by the peasantry to escape the oppressive racism of white America. It was nothing more than an illusory dream, but it was an expression of race pride by those at the bottom. In short, it was a “movement of the class lowest down to fabricate a background and a racial self-respect, to compensate for the prestige and power they have habitually lacked.” While Johnson did not see historical Africa as a dominant force in the lives of African Americans, he did have a deep and abiding interest in Africa. And unlike Park, he at least discussed the Garvey Movement, albeit in a rather cavalier manner. Once he began to move from under the

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direct influence of Park, many of his ideas actually anteceded the modern Nationalist and Pan-Africanist school of the 1960s. Much of Johnson’s study of race relations during his early career as a sociologist was based upon a modified version of the Park model. The student stressed economics more than the mentor and credited slavery with being an even greater influence on the lives of blacks in the twentieth century. They both shared the belief that the African past was forever lost. But as the years progressed, Charles S. Johnson developed his own model for studying race relations.

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Chapter 5

The Johnson Model

A

s Johnson’s ideas as a sociologist matured, he updated the Park-Johnson model until it became his own. Park had rejected the idea of a caste interpretation for the thesis that blacks were actually a minority group. But he had not gone on to discuss blacks within the framework of class mobility. Instead, he focused upon the study of accommodation. Johnson, on the other hand, expanded the group minority thesis to demonstrate that assimilation through the sociology of tensions was already occurring. Furthermore, Johnson assigned a much more positive role to education as a means for aiding assimilation. Finally, Johnson was forced to reject Park’s premise of the immutability of natural law and to view the federal government as a positive force to bring about improved race relations. As Park and Johnson surveyed the social stratification of the United States—and especially the South—they did not accept the prima facie evidence of caste. In the late 1920s, Park had argued that segregation was not an expression of caste because “the races . . . look across” a vertical line and not up and down a horizontal line of caste. Furthermore, biracial organizations had changed the content of the old horizontal line of the former caste relationship. Johnson accepted Park’s position and reproduced his graph and argument in Race Relations.1 As early as 1929, in a speech at Vanderbilt University, Johnson had hinted at the direction he would pursue for the next quarter of a century when he said, “There is a view . . . , which I share, that the Negro status, both social and economic, is largely one of class . . . complicated by race.”2 For Johnson to use a class rather than caste analysis of race relations, there had to be social and economic mobility. Apparently, he thought he saw this mobility when he wrote, “Despite the weight of tradition there is a progressive shifting of these racial relations, notably in the South, from a castelike structure to a class organization. In the latter, individual and group personalities tend to be shaped more by occupation than by racial pressures.”3 For example, Johnson argued, “The Negro doctor is 61

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more like the white doctor than he is like the Negro peasant.” Hence, Johnson viewed communication, “which is the essence of the process of acculturation,” taking place more “readily across occupational lines than between occupational levels of the same race.” Furthermore, Johnson saw “increased mobility . . . [breaking] down provincialism and [extending] social tolerance.” Johnson contended that the traveled man was much like the “conceptual marginal man, the cosmopolite, who is at home in many worlds. It is on the margin of these intercommunicating worlds that active changes occur. It is on the margins of cultures that civilizations, historically, have grown up.” In Growing Up in the Black Belt, Johnson enlarged his argument refuting the caste interpretation.4 He outlined four basic conditions as necessary for a caste system: “prohibition of intermarriage between caste, the absolute impossibility of altering caste status, the religious sanctions, and the mutual acceptance of and adjustment to the fixed status.” He added the qualification that “these restrictions are established by custom and are accepted without apparent resistance by the participants in a caste system.” There were many reasons why the southern race system did not meet the criteria for a caste system. It fought often and hard against change of status. A caste system, on the other hand, “does not need to fight against change.” Intermarriage was not perceived as impossible. If it were, there would be no laws against it. Such law “indicates the lack of faith of the white group in the efficacy of traditional taboos against intermarriage.” Moreover, Johnson noted that “the South does not exist in vacuo. Intermarriage occurs to some extent in the North.” To argue, as many who accepted the caste interpretation did, that the status of blacks did not change was to ignore the “terrific energy expended in ‘keeping the Negro in his place.’” A caste system had stability; on the other hand, “the southern race system is highly unstable. There is not only tension between races but actual uncertainty in the minds of both groups as to the significance of race lines.” Finally, Johnson argued that there was not a rigid caste “association of occupation and race.” Although certain occupations had been “traditionally Negro and others white, the dividing line is far from rigid. Negroes can and do enter skilled and white-collar occupations supposedly reserved for whites and . . . whites enter ‘Negro’ occupations, frequently displacing Negroes . . . from fields in which they formerly had a monopoly.” Johnson did allow that blacks generally held a subordinate position, but they were always “struggling against this status rather than accepting it, and . . . the white group is constantly redefining its own status in relation to the Negro.” What appeared to be a caste system was, in fact, a very unstable system resembling class as much as caste and preserved by legal sanction and the threat of physical violence.

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For Johnson, then, the goal became assimilation. But there were many obstacles. As the sociologist pondered the quandary, he noted that “it is evident that if the Negro, during his three hundred years in this country, has not been assimilated, it is not because he has preserved in America a foreign culture and an alien tradition.”5 The distinction that had set blacks apart from the “rest of the population is real, but it is based not upon cultural traits but upon physical characteristics.” Johnson noted that the “test of such assimilation, as well as the means by which assimilation takes place, depends upon the ability of individuals to participate freely and without prejudice in the common life of the community and of the nation.” For the most part, assimilation—especially biological assimilation—was the silent issue of those who purported to favor improved race relations. White liberals and black moderates, who favored it, were afraid of its explosive nature. Most whites, along with black nationalist groups like the Garvey Movement, opposed assimilation. Johnson openly confronted the issue and wrote in 1936 that there was “a reluctance, for one reason or another, to consider assimilation as desirable. The question of assimilation, whether cultural or biological, is one about which the layman knows actually very little, but this does not prevent him from having strong opinions on the matter.”6 It was necessary for a social scientist to confront all issues regardless of their sensitivity. As a result, he devoted much of his research to determining how a society moves from accommodation to assimilation. In this endeavor, he pushed the minority group thesis much further than had his mentor. Park had always been vague about how society achieved assimilation. Johnson, in one of his most important contributions to his mentor’s model, provided the transmission belt to assimilation, which he conceived as the sociology of tensions. From the latter days of Opportunity until the 1940s, Johnson developed his thesis on the value of tension for change. The ideas that became the basis for the sociology of tensions first appeared in Johnson’s public speeches. Over the years, his counsel was sought by white liberal and civic leaders who were interested in improved race relations. But Johnson’s ideas on improved race relations were not always what they had in mind. The majority of the inquiries stemmed from individuals who were often humane, but who were concerned with an overriding desire for racial harmony—which was the layman’s term for accommodation. Johnson’s calm, courtly, debonair, but scientific and analytical manner had a way of disarming such leaders of their fears. Consequently, he was often able to put in the record rather advanced liberal and even militant positions without losing their support. During the Coolidge administration, he told a New Haven, Connecticut, audience that “riots with all their horror are strangely enough an evidence of progress. Peaceful co-existence of ruler and ruled is

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possible only in a static society in which relations between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ race are fixed, mutually understood and unquestioned.”7 As Johnson surveyed events set in the context of depression and war, he became convinced that tensions should be creative. For example, he wrote Edwin R. Embree, president of the Rosenwald Fund, that “tensions are inevitable where there is change going on. One thing [that] can be done is to help give direction to these changes.”8 In an address to the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Columbia University near the end of World War II, Johnson made a rather startling speech before men who must have regarded him as a moderate, conciliatory, southern Negro.9 The essence of his message was: “[I]f we think of the really significant gains in race relations and in Negro development over the past century, it must be realized that they were all born in tension. There has been no very important advance in Negro status that has not been accomplished by doing things regarded as not in the best interest of the Negro race or of race relations.” Johnson had kept the idea of tension alive in the 1930s as, for example, when he wrote Embree, “Some distinction might be made between restlessness and dangerousness. Restlessness is not in itself bad. It may be discontentment with a low status. It might be said that the education that does not make a person restless is of poor and insufficient quality.”10 In the 1940s, when at least a part of white America was looking for ways to react to the unrest of the racial tensions accompanying the war, and in some cases wanted to avoid the bloodbaths that had followed the “war to make the world safe for democracy,” Johnson shared his counsel with those who would listen. In To Stem This Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (1943), he foreshadowed Myrdal by suggesting that now was the time to force America to confront openly its dilemma. In short, he wrote, “The American people may have to decide whether to incorporate this persistently rejected group into their system of moral obligations and Christian fellowship, or revise the system itself downward to a more comfortable tolerance of permanent injustice.”11 A year later, in 1944, in the southern-based journal Social Forces, he surveyed race relations in a nation that had suffered the most severe riots since the end of World War I. This time he advised those who saw race relations as deteriorating to look more closely. In fact, he wrote that the “popular agreement based upon the assumption that quiescence and absence of racial tensions are a major, if not exclusive, index to the most wholesome race relations” needed to be reexamined.12 It was his view that the “present period, involving racial issues, are symptoms of accelerated social changes, . . . these changes are wholesome, even if their temporary racial effects are bad.” The sociology of tensions was not limited to whites reexamining issues once thought to be nonnegotiable or blacks rioting in the streets. It

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also witnessed positive movements in the black community. Johnson had noted in a speech at Westtown, Pennsylvania, in the early 1940s that “the difference between a race riot and a lynching or massacre is the violent resistance of the subordinate group to violence, or to the threat of it.”13 From this new conflict sprang what Johnson saw as the “beginning of nationalism, at least that sort of nationalism by which minority peoples have sought to make themselves politically and culturally dominant within the bounds of their ancestral settlements.” In other words, black people were not a lower caste as others, including Gunnar Myrdal, contended; rather, they were a minority struggling for inclusion and assimilation. From Johnson’s vantage point, “the essence of minority-group status is struggle for change in the direction of improvement of its status.”14 Granted that there would be continued resistance on the part of whites; it would take many forms—from pseudoscientific racism to physical force—but the forces of history had moved too far toward assimilation to be turned around. The resistance would merely produce more tension which, in turn, “creates that solidarity which permits the group to act.” As one reflects upon Johnson’s sociology of tensions many years later, the sociologist appears almost prophetic. The battles of the NAACP after World War II, the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights movement led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality, and the subsequent resurfacing of black nationalism, given new life by Malcolm X, all seemed to follow the general pattern he had outlined in the 1940s. Despite shifting the emphasis of Park’s sociology of conflict, Johnson did share Park’s belief in education and the cultivation of public opinion as one means of improving race relations. But as he was wont to do, he expanded upon the narrow view Park had taken during their years together at the University of Chicago. Johnson spent his most productive years in the field of education. It was surprising, therefore, that he seldom wrote about education per se. He and his staff at Fisk did, however, produce two books and a few random articles on the subject.15 His best known work The Negro College Graduate, published in 1938, was appropriately enough dedicated to the two most important teachers in his life: the white man Robert E. Park of the University of Chicago, and the black man Joshua B. Simpson of Virginia Union University. Johnson’s book Education and the Cultural Crisis, a collection of lectures delivered in a Kappa Delta Pi series, was published in 1951 during his Fisk presidency. It represented an abortive attempt to be a scholar-administrator and did not break any new ground from his days as a sociologist. Although somewhat dated at the time of its publication, it is valuable to the student of

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Johnson bringing together his views. In these two works, Johnson tended to treat education in its formal academic setting. For Johnson, formal education was a means of assimilation into the mainstream of American culture. In The Negro College Graduate, he wrote that his “basic interpretation . . . [was] that education for Negroes in America is one of the instruments of their acculturation, and that the higher learning and professional proficiency achieved are evidences not only of their changing social and economic status, but of their increased integration into American life.”16 Johnson based much of his discussion of education on the work of John Dewey.17 Historically, education has been the process of “cultural transmission and renewal,” but the process was made much more complex in the United States by the “diverse cultural origins of the population and by the continued isolation of many groups in more or less closed communities.” Rapid changes in an advancing technological culture limited the participation in a common experience so necessary to the older definition of education. In the twentieth century, it was possible that “one generation may lose touch with the one that preceded it.” The end result might be the transmission of form without content. For education to be meaningful, acculturation must lead to “solidarity of the society.” Furthermore, for education to be a part of a democracy, its goal must be “to teach children reverence for individual dignity as the basis of all social relationships. From this root can develop all the other attitudes and practices which may be considered a part of education for understanding.” But this orientation had not marked American education. In fact, the opposite had often been the case, and in Johnson’s words, “[E]ducation has been qualified by the dominant group value judgment of the assimilability of the different racial and cultural units. Racial groups which are physically and culturally similar to the dominant pattern or ideal are educated for assimilation; racial groups which differ markedly from the norm have been educated for accommodation within the framework, rather than for assimilation.” Education, then, was neutral. The key was in how it was employed. In America, it had become a negative tool as a “means of communicating an infallible doctrine and systems of beliefs,” and this, in turn, had reversed what could become a major instrument for social change. In a personal note in his inaugural address as president of Fisk, Johnson crystallized the problem when he said, “I believe in the importance of practical and functional education. If the college does not or cannot do it, some other or new institution will have to assume responsibility. The mere acquisition of knowledge is not enough. The thing to be stressed is the ability to use knowledge and to realize its effectiveness.” But it was in the broader context of education that Johnson’s impact was the greatest. Here, he concerned himself with whites as much as blacks.

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Implicit in all of his writings on race relations was the need to educate whites both about black people and about the actual status of whites in a society dominated by the powers of capitalism. Almost exactly a decade before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in an article that was apparently aimed chiefly at a black audience, Johnson addressed himself to the role education should play in race relations.18 Less than two years later, Johnson expanded upon his earlier article in a speech apparently directed chiefly at a white audience. By lumping the two expositions together, one can get a fairly clear picture of how Johnson planned to implement his sociology of tensions. As the sociologist looked over the recent past, he noted that much attention had been given “to educational methods to counter an unfavorable image.” From this effort had come a “new body of knowledge about Negroes as a minority group.” Blacks were now “a self-conscious and struggling minority.” But the educator lamented that while there had been relative improvement of “Negroes . . . it cannot be said that there has been a comparable growth in ‘race relations.’” Blacks had withdrawn as a group. One of the ironies of this group solidification had been the “multiplication of formal and very largely artificial interracial committees normally viewed as hopeful signs of increasing interracial unity.” If there had been real progress in race relations, “such committees would not be necessary” and blacks would be functioning as interested local citizens in the “common institutional programs” of the community. What was needed was the collaboration of whites and blacks in “programs for the common good.” Thus, for Johnson, the index for measuring progress in race relations was full participation in the democracy and not artificial committees and meetings. It was toward this goal that he counseled blacks to map strategy for the coming years. Johnson outlined the fallacy of the traditional rhetoric, which called for waiting for the realization of Christian brotherhood. As he saw it, the problem was that “many well-intentioned people who believed in Christian brotherhood and who think they believe in equal opportunity, honestly cannot even discern the discrimination in their treatment of members of another race, because they have a different frame of reference for members of that race.” To the well-meaning, nonblack intellectuals who ignored the church to look for solutions in the “halls of ivy,” he spoke of the tendency “to confuse scientific knowledge about a cultural or racial group with cultural understanding.” From Johnson’s point of view, “scientific knowledge may or may not lead to understanding, but it is not itself understanding. Understanding means exactly what it says—the act of standing oneself in the other person’s spot.” What was needed in addition to a commitment to the ideals of Christianity and academia was the willingness to cross the artificial barriers that society had erected during the centuries.

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There were some areas where black people could more or less act on their own initiative; there were other areas where black and white people could act together; finally, there were areas where, because of power relationships, the burden of responsibility for action was with white people. Blacks, for example, needed to stress individual development independent of race, while avoiding the built-in danger of aspiring to be the “best Negro.” This need existed at all economic and social levels. A “forceful program of adult education” was necessary. Blacks must be trained even in those skills where the market was currently closed. When opportunities opened, as they had in time of war, there must be individuals ready to “seize the opportunity.” The time had come to begin thinking in terms of coalitions. Although it would take white cooperation, it was necessary to recognize that the future of black workers was with strong labor unions. More communication and cooperation were needed between “various racial and national minorities.” Johnson believed that there were more common areas of experiences to be explored between apparently competing groups than was suspected. For this reason, he reiterated the “value of emphasis on the welfare of the whole rather than that of a special group.” To appeal to special interests, in Johnson’s mind, was to encourage further “precisely the type of sentiment and argument that justifies other groups in their exclusive position.” Along these lines, perhaps mindful of the atrocities being committed in the name of the paperhanger in Germany and General John L. De Witt on the West Coast, Johnson noted that the “Negro minorities should support campaigns against anti-Semitism and against undemocratic treatment of Japanese American citizens.” Blacks needed to seek white allies in the numerous areas where they could not act alone. In this context, Johnson reminded his audiences that the problem of the “Negro minority should no longer be viewed as a Negro problem but as a problem of American democracy in which Negroes are interested along with other responsible Americans.” This was especially the case in politics and government. A fight must be made for the extension of the “franchise which includes not only Negroes but poor whites.” Blacks must begin an “intimate study of political issues.” The best guarantee of security for a minority was the support of good government. While lynching and the poll tax were dramatic issues, they were, in fact, only symbols of the more vital national issues of “economic security, social welfare, and even the security of small nations in our plan for world peace.” Finally, there was the need to fight for the “official sharing by Negroes of responsibility for the development and control of Negro life.” Johnson saw as the next step here the need “to insist upon the appointment and use of qualified Negroes as police officers, members of school boards, farmers’ organizations, and policy-making private and public agencies.”

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There were other areas where blacks could assist whites, but the latter must bear the brunt of the responsibility for change. Johnson saw stereotypes—both of groups and ideas—perpetuated by whites as one of the major barriers to understanding “between Negro Americans and white Americans.” Until stereotypes were removed, it would never be possible to relate to individual members of the group as they really were. One of the main tasks for whites was to support activities “designed to break down the stereotypes.” There were many areas where they could start, for example, “school texts, newspapers, literature, the press and the radio.” But perhaps most effective were experiences gained through “direct personal contacts which run counter to stereotyped definitions.” He cautioned his audiences against the fallacy of the argument of the majority of white southerners who would “testify that they have known Negroes intimately since childhood.” Such reasoning too often mistook class differences for cultural differences—and thus, attributed to all blacks the characteristics of working-class blacks. The classic example, of course, was the white housewife who thought that she “knew her Negro maid.” Johnson was not arguing for a rigid class structure; rather, as a practical matter he was suggesting “that for those who are just venturing on a first contact across racial barriers, lack of class differences will make the contact easier.” Just as destructive as stereotypes of groups were stereotypes of ideas associated “with certain human relations.” Unfortunately, the concepts of racial equality, social equality, and intermarriage “arouse emotions of fear and hate.” Such “symbols of conflict” were difficult to deal with in race relations. But at least, Johnson reasoned, a beginning could be made by instilling in “our youngest school children such definition of these ‘loaded’ terms that they could never again be frightened by them.” In the meantime, it was necessary to deal with the real underlying problems that caused such emotions to be triggered by mere words. It was time to examine the fears most often associated with race prejudice: the fear of “loss of status or of economic security, the fear of some cosmic or remote racial degeneration through inter-marriage, and sex fears, which are at the bottom of many fears not basically racial.” During the war years, northern white intellectuals were moving away from the interpretation that racism was basically an economic problem.19 While Johnson continued to be committed to economics as the root cause of racial discrimination, he began to give more attention to the influence of ideology. In this context, he concluded his exposition by acknowledging that at least the initial steps toward change must recognize that “the problem is in its essence a moral one.” Yet he did not see the immediate answer in churches with “the strictly segregated character of the vast majority of congregations. . . .” Instead, he looked to the federal government to

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exploit the opportunities occurring from the newly developing tensions. By moving beyond Park, Johnson laid the groundwork for Gunnar Myrdal’s seminal work on race relations in America. By the time of Park’s death in 1944, his student had so changed the mentor’s model that it was now more accurately the Johnson model. Park’s initial attack upon the caste interpretation had been buttressed, but assimilation rather than accommodation was the new focus. The sociology of tensions pointed the way toward integration. Education was still part of the model, but it took on a more positive role. Finally, as discussed in the next chapter, the immutable law of nature was replaced by man-made forces which could produce the favorable consequences of migration, natural catastrophes, and depression without society experiencing many of the accompanying deleterious effects. Johnson would go beyond Park and study areas where his mentor had dared not tread.

Chapter 6

Park to Johnson to Myrdal

U

ntil the time of his death in 1944, Robert E. Park was the unchallenged giant in the sociology of race relations. On the eve of World War II, a cooperative research venture sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation employed the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to direct an in-depth study of race relations in America. From this massive undertaking came the monumental An American Dilemma. Until the early 1960s, Myrdal’s orientation, approach, and conclusions (like Park’s before him) were generally accepted by both black and white social scientists and activists.1 By the 1960s, Myrdal’s work became the object of criticism by sociologists who employed the Nationalist and Pan-Africanist model. Nevertheless, almost sixty years after publication, An American Dilemma remains of significant importance, both in contemporary race relations scholarship and as an historical document. Johnson is very important in understanding Myrdal. Of all of Park’s students who contributed to An American Dilemma, Myrdal drew most upon Johnson and his work at Fisk. Not only did Johnson and his staff produce a memorandum for Myrdal of such quality that it was published independently as Patterns of Negro Segregation, but in addition, Growing Up in the Black Belt and Shadow of the Plantation were often cited by Myrdal. In many ways, Johnson acted as the bridge between Park and Myrdal. Less than two decades after first sitting in Robert E. Park’s class at the University of Chicago, Johnson was demonstrating signs of dissenting from the mentor’s major premise of the immutability of natural law. In 1936, Johnson wrote, “It is not enough merely to wait watchfully for time’s slow solution of social ills. . . . There are steps that can be taken immediately to correct old ills.”2 Although in the context that he made this statement Johnson was talking more about personal relations than he was about the role of the government, it was typical of a trend that was developing in his thinking. From the onset of the Depression to the publication 71

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of Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma in 1944, Johnson began to call upon the federal government to assume a positive role in order to change economic and racial relations. Johnson’s intellectual odyssey, from Park’s premise of natural law to one of using man-made forces to duplicate what previously had been left to nature, was an uneven path. But a careful examination of his work during the 1930s and early 1940s clearly shows that Johnson had arrived at such a position before Myrdal published his monumental work. As Johnson was a member of the Myrdal team and published the monograph Patterns of Negro Segregation (1943), written for Myrdal’s work, it is not too much to claim for Johnson the role of bridging the gap between Park and Myrdal. Much of Johnson’s work in Patterns of Negro Segregation was based upon Park’s idea of the race relations survey. But what is important is that in the preface to his monograph for Myrdal, Johnson stressed the inevitability of assimilation, and in the conclusion he wrote, “Logically, it would be appropriate for government to impose controls and regulations, . . . to ensure to all its racial minorities not only free but equal participation in the economic and political life of the country.”3 The recommendations in Patterns of Negro Segregation were the culmination of over a decade of study in the areas of housing, management, agriculture, and employment. During the Hoover administration, Johnson had prepared the report on Negro housing for the President’s Conference on Home Ownership and Financing.4 The motif of the recommendations echoed a kind of quiet economic radicalism for the era before the New Deal. Most notable were such recommendations as the need to encourage states to “pass adequate housing laws, and . . . administrative measures to enforce them”; the need to give “special consideration to . . . housing for urban people with incomes of $1,000 a year and rural dwellers with incomes as low as $750 a year. . . . If it is not feasible to build low-priced apartments as business investments, we recommend that considerable consideration be given to the intervention by public funds either through tax relief or through direct subsidy as has been done by Vienna and other European cities.” Other recommendations included “the removal of legislation restrictive of Negro residents in desirable residences of the city” and the “organization of local cooperative associations of Negro home owners and prospective home owners for the purpose of enabling community groups to bargain collectively for financing facilities.” It was largely due to the efforts of Johnson and his young assistant, Lewis Wade Jones, that Nashville had one of the first public housing projects under the New Deal.5 When such a program became a possibility, Johnson immediately set Jones about the necessary research for planning the facilities, called Jackson Courts and located near Fisk University.

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In Race Relations, Johnson had suggested a “deliberate education and strategy to overcome emotional opposition to the full inclusion of Negro workers in the pattern of American industrial life.”6 It was no longer enough merely to have the sympathetic support of a few white coworkers. In fact, Johnson suggested that it was time to seek the “aid of economic laws.” Johnson’s long involvement in the problems of tenant farmers, summarized in The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, which he wrote with Edwin R. Embree, Will W. Alexander, and Rupert B. Vance, resulted in an open invitation for the federal government’s intervention.7 Johnson, Vance, Embree, and Alexander attacked the older, more traditional interpretation of free enterprise when they called for the government to “buy up huge acreages of farm lands now in the hands of insurance companies, land banks, and others, and distribute this land in small plots of minimum size required to support farm families.” In the area of employment, Johnson was no less outspoken. In To Stem This Tide, he called for “legislation guaranteeing participation of minority groups in available employment.”8 Such legislation would demand not only enforcement but the development of “organizational structures with policy predicated on the philosophy of the legislation, . . . [with] the intent to make the matter of full participation in employment by minority groups a reality as well as an objective in government.” Myrdal’s major contribution to the sociology of race relations was what he called the “principle of cumulation.”9 Here, he saw himself drawing upon the precedent of the economists who, during the previous two decades, had “abandoned the classical static equilibrium approach . . . to construct a dynamic theory.” Myrdal rejected Park’s old idea of the four stages of the race relations cycle as a theory based upon the static notion of natural law. As Myrdal read Park, there was nothing that could be done to change the modus vivendi but wait for the forces of conquest, migration, war, pestilence, and depression. Myrdal opted for a model of “dynamic causation.” In the Park model, the forces of accommodation were in a state of “stable equilibrium.” Myrdal’s model called for employing the concept of the “cumulation of forces.” In other words, the many forces that composed the phenomenon which Park called accommodation were actually dynamic and not static forces, and, as such, they were always in action. By changing any of the forces, it was possible to change the flight pattern of the whole field of forces. If, for example, economic security were increased for white workers, it could conceivably have the effect of decreasing racial prejudice toward blacks—that is, if economic insecurity were one of the factors causing prejudice. Of course, an increase in economic insecurity for white workers would have the reverse effect. Using Myrdal’s principle of cumulation in its simplest form suggested that

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change anywhere was change everywhere.10 Any man-induced change— economic, social, political, or cultural—could, in fact, alter race relations far afield from the original force. The basic thesis of the often cited but seldom read work by Myrdal was conventional knowledge among social scientists and political activists of his generation. The essence of Myrdal’s position was that “the Negro problem is primarily a white man’s problem.”11 In short, it was a moral problem. The white American was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, he was a practical idealist who subscribed to an American creed drawn from the Bill of Rights, the Enlightenment, English law, and Christianity. On the other hand, the white American saw and participated in the violation of these basic principles. As the forces of government, economics, world leadership, and politics, which directly affected whites, combined with the improving status and acculturation of blacks, Myrdal concluded that the dilemma could eventually be solved in a positive way. Myrdal’s principle of cumulation provided a model whereby peaceful change would come about through the natural process of new forces and improved conditions. These forces could be anything from the Urban League and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation to the improved educational and economic status of blacks. The key to Myrdal’s argument, however, was its weakest element: chiefly, the premise that historically white Americans shared the values he attributed to them, despite a history of slavery and Jim Crow. Apparently, Myrdal and his contemporaries were not bothered by these inconsistencies. Rather than stress the historical record, they tended to rely on the forces of ideology. Myrdal accepted the American Creed as a priori. From this assumption, Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, applying the principles of cumulation. With a large, highly capable, and well-financed staff, he gathered a massive amount of data, which he summarized in 1,024 pages, buttressed with extensive footnotes, appendixes, and bibliography. The Myrdal study, despite its interpretive shortcomings, has left a tremendously valuable document for the social historian. In many ways, Myrdal’s views of black people in American society were very similar to those of Park and Johnson. He, too, defined race in America as social and cultural rather than biological. He was even stronger than Johnson in placing his faith in assimilation. Park had assumed that it was inevitable, but it had not been one of his major concerns. Johnson’s goal was always assimilation, but he placed it in the context of cultural pluralism, with blacks making significant contributions to the larger American culture. Myrdal lacked such appreciation of black culture. It was apparent that when Myrdal spoke of American culture, he meant white American culture; thus, his statement that “here in America, American cul-

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ture is ‘highest’ in the pragmatic sense that adherence to it is practical for any individual or group which is not strong enough to change it.”12 To ensure that no one would misread him, he prefaced this statement with the comment, “We assume that it is to the advantage of American Negroes as individuals and as a group to become assimilated into American culture, to acquire the traits held in esteem by the dominant white Americans.” At the same time, Myrdal observed a trend toward “Negroes and whites . . . becoming increasingly separated.”13 But Myrdal, like Johnson in his treatment of African survivals in Shadow of the Plantation, was too committed to the assimilationist thesis to react seriously to a trend he observed over a generation before the reemergence of black nationalism in the post-Garvey era. To Myrdal, any kind of black nationalism was merely the reaction to discrimination and failure growing out of racism. He summed up his position best when he said, “In practically all its divergences, American Negro culture is not something independent of general American culture. It is a distorted development, or a pathological condition, of the general American culture.”14 Here, he was essentially in agreement with Park and Johnson, although he tried to avoid the controversy which Du Bois, Herskovits, and Woodson were waging with the Chicago school over the significance of African survivals. Myrdal interpreted the pattern of race relations in the United States as growing out of the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow. He did not have the insight into the effects of slavery that Johnson did, but his treatment of the post–Civil War period was important. Despite all the evidence he compiled to document slavery and Jim Crow, he never saw it, as did the scholar Vincent Harding a quarter of a century later, as a refutation of his basic premise that the commitment of white Americans to the American Creed would prevail.15 Although Myrdal collected an awesome amount of data and planted a beachhead of optimism, his most important contribution was to be found in his recommendations. For if the principle of cumulation were a viable approach to understanding race relations, then men and women could manipulate policy in order to bring about the changes which Park had left to natural law. That was, of course, what Johnson, Du Bois, and many others had been suggesting for almost a generation, but unlike them, Myrdal was given a hearing. Myrdal called for a national planning of population and migration.16 More important, he called for the federal government to take an active role, wherever discrimination and prejudice appeared, in changing behavior patterns in much the same manner that national catastrophes had changed behavior patterns in the past. Myrdal also endorsed education as a means to power which, in turn, would lead to protest and ultimately assimilation. In all of these recommendations, both explicitly and implicitly, he assumed that the ideological force of the

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American Creed and the innate goodness of men and women could be harnessed to turn race relations around. For the next generation, Myrdal’s approach to race relations held center stage. But what he wrote was not produced in a vacuum. He drew heavily upon the work of American sociologists, many of whom had studied under Park. Myrdal differed from Park in many ways, yet much of what Myrdal wrote was an enlargement of Park’s seminal theory. Much of the continuity from Park to Myrdal can be found in the work of Johnson. For example, Johnson’s recommendations to President Hoover in his study of Negro housing and his recommendations in The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy for government action actually predated much of what Myrdal wrote. Johnson embraced Park’s idea that change was possible and, in fact, inevitable. But he rejected the iron law of nature and by the 1930s pointed toward the sociology of tensions as a means to direct manmade change. A year prior to the publication of An American Dilemma, Johnson had crystallized in his book To Stem This Tide the paradox of a society in which democracy was the creed and segregation was the practice.17 The same year in Patterns of Negro Segregation he remarked that it was only logical that the government “impose controls and regulations, as mandatory as those imposed on its economic life, to ensure to all its racial minorities not only free but equal participation in the . . . life of the country.”18 He went on to say that “before the present war is ended, such action may become a political necessity.” A little more than a month after the entry of the United States into World War II, Johnson wrote his wife of a meeting he had had with Myrdal. In a less than modest note, Johnson told his wife, “Myrdal seemed to like my Mss. and wanted most to talk over problems in his own. It looks as if my materials are the core of the general study.”19 When one examines the published works of the Fisk sociologist and combines that with his own candid testimony shared with his wife in a private letter, it becomes apparent that Myrdal was greatly influenced by Park’s student. Park’s preoccupation in writing was with theory. His articles were surprisingly devoid of hard data. Yet his life was that of a practical man who was never completely at home in academia. Johnson relied upon data much more than did Park, but usually his works appeared to be set in the theoretical basis laid out by Park. Upon closer examination, Johnson’s data, sociology of tensions, and interpretations were actually more akin to Myrdal’s principle of cumulation than to Park’s reliance upon natural law. All three men more or less had the same goal in mind, but there were differences. Myrdal was completely committed to assimilation at any cost. He saw no enduring value in black culture. For Myrdal, it was the strategic approach for blacks to adopt what had been the culture of

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white America and to do it at once. Johnson, too, was committed to assimilation as a goal, but he never forgot that black culture had a significant contribution to make to the larger common culture. Johnson’s work in the Harlem Renaissance, if nothing else, had demonstrated that he had a deep appreciation for the cultural contributions of blacks. His assimilation was tempered by cultural pluralism. Park was less clear on this question. Park saw assimilation as historically inevitable and desirable, but he spent little time studying or writing about it. Finally, there was one more important difference among Park, Johnson, and Myrdal, and that was in their definition of the status of black people in American society. Park and Johnson argued strongly that the status of blacks had moved from a caste status to that of a minority group. Myrdal, on the other hand, argued that the movement of blacks was restricted, the line of caste rigid, and intermarriage forbidden. He, however, did seem to feel that this situation would change. Apparently, the whole question of caste and class was a difficult one for Myrdal to resolve. If the future Myrdal foresaw was to be realized, the caste system he perceived in America had to be broken. Perhaps because of his own puzzlement over the question, his work is not very clear on the whole subject. In his January 13, 1941, meeting with Johnson, Myrdal discussed the subject in some detail. Johnson was to write his wife that one of Myrdal’s assistants had “reported my attack on the caste hypothesis in Chicago, and it seems to have left more concern than I had anticipated.”20 It remained for Johnson to ferret out the problems and contradictions that still existed by the time An American Dilemma was published. By the end of 1944, Park was dead and Myrdal had returned home. Until the 1960s, the traditional study of race relations pointed to Park and Myrdal as the giants in the field. Yet without Johnson to bridge the gap, their work would have suffered. A closer examination of the period suggests that by 1944, Johnson was at least among the giants. But by this time, his interests had moved far beyond theory as he pursued his work in the area of applied sociology that he had begun in 1928 when he went to Fisk University to build the Department of Social Sciences.

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Chapter 7

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rom his early days with Opportunity, Johnson manifested a continuing interest in the world beyond the United States. He articulated this interest in his writings, speeches, and his capacity as a service intellectual. Much of the focus of Johnson’s concerns beyond the United States involved what by the 1950s would be called the Third World. Unlike such individuals as Bishop Henry M. Turner, Marcus Garvey, and to a great degree W. E. B. Du Bois, Johnson was not a PanAfricanist. Instead, Johnson was an American liberal internationalist— albeit his objections to colonialism and racism were more pronounced than those of many internationalists. During the decade in which Johnson helped spawn the Harlem Renaissance, he was developing a deepening interest in Africa and in the Diaspora, as it had evolved in the Third World. Throughout his life, he was fascinated by the Caribbean and in the fall of 1926 devoted an entire issue of Opportunity to a discussion of questions dealing with the original Caribbeans and “their sons now living in the United States.”1 The previous year he had attacked the United States’ handling of race relations in the Virgin Islands, which had been placed under the Navy Department after they were purchased from Denmark.2 The consequence was that the “Virgin Islanders living in the United States [were] left without a country,—no longer citizens of Denmark and not allowed to become citizens of the United States.” Civil liberties had been suspended by “muzzling the press [and], jailing and persecuting those who complain.” Johnson pointed out that the Islands were not conquered territory and “there seems little reason for treating them as such.” The problem must be with the United States. Johnson reasoned that “these same natives had no such difficulties with the Danes.” But he noted that “the Danes, fortunately, .

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were less impressed by color differences than our hardboiled Americans who know all about Negro psychology.” As a beginning to solving the conflict, he suggested the use of “Negro executives fully competent to preserve all of the practical interests of this country.” The subject of economic imperialism in the Western Hemisphere was a favorite topic in the columns of Opportunity.3 Since the First World War, the United States had been investing billions of dollars in South America. Johnson wrote, “We have vast investments in oil in Mexico, . . . Columbia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras; in cattle and grain farming in Argentina and Uruguay; in copper in Chile and Peru.” The trend was portentous for the indigenous population. The investments represented “not native but foreign property ownership, and . . . profit not [for] the natives but the foreign proprietors.” Johnson especially resented imperialism in Haiti. He had long loved Haiti and enjoyed visiting it; in 1945 he would spend an entire summer there.4 The editor of Opportunity attacked the United States’ actions in forcing a treaty upon Haiti in 1915 that “amounted to purely military control.” In the July 1925 issue of Opportunity, he noted that the ten-year treaty would soon expire, but “no indication has been given of this country’s intention to relax its control of their affairs.” Now the “Haytian [sic] Nationalists” were beginning to raise their voices, and Johnson indicated his implicit support. Nor was he happy with the way the white press treated the 1926 visit to the United States of President Louis Borno of Haiti. In Johnson’s eyes, Borno was not the legitimate representative of the Haitians, but if the U.S. press insisted on continuing the fiction, which was so advantageous to American capital investments, they could at least treat his visit with more importance. Johnson was an ardent foe of colonialism all his life. In his opposition he often drew upon the American ideals that had long espoused free democratic rule. When the United States violated its own principles, he usually pointed it out in the columns of Opportunity. Nor was he slow to test other members of the western world against these ideals. In 1925, for example, he reported that a commission appointed by the governor of the colony of Kenya “bluntly recommends forced labor” to enhance the production of cotton and other raw materials necessary to Great Britain’s economy.5 Johnson was outraged that “private enterprise under government protection . . . [was] aspiring and conspiring to reduce natives to the fate which they escaped in America a hundred years ago.” He was no happier with the trends for black people in South Africa.6 The Transvaal provincial division of the Supreme Court of South Africa had attempted to allow the governor general to declare that “certain work should be limited to white men.” In its operation, this decision had the effect of “debarring

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all colored persons, most of whom are natives, from all but the meanest grades of work.” The fact that the higher court had refused to sustain the ruling held out little consolation. A commission appointed by the white government had established that “the practice of debarring the natives was in force throughout the province, whether it had legal sanction or not. It is now a social measure upheld by custom.” Long before Mussolini moved into Ethiopia, Johnson was cognizant of the dangers to its independence.7 In a lengthy editorial in 1926 entitled “Abyssinia,” he wrote that “from the beginning of the mad scramble for Africa a hundred years ago, this little country has been coveted by white hands.” But Ethiopia had always prevailed. In 1889, for example, Italy “boldly claimed a protectorate . . . , and when in 1896 it attempted to make good its claim by force of arms, the redoubtable black soldiers of Menelik, crushed them with such bitter decisiveness that for thirty years no European nation had much zest for expansion in that direction.” Once again, however, Johnson feared the European threat on the horizon in Italy’s desire “to connect the Italian colony of Erithea on the north with Italian Somaliland on the east by a trans-Abyssinian railway.” Johnson saw this as only the beginning of Mussolini’s attempt to realize his dictum that “Fascist Italy must expand or suffocate.” In 1930, Johnson got his first chance to work as a service intellectual in an international capacity when he was appointed as a member of the League of Nations’ Commission to investigate “slavery and forced labor” in Liberia. Apparently, Emmett J. Scott was chiefly responsible for bringing the name of Charles S. Johnson to the attention of President Herbert C. Hoover.8 Scott had formerly been secretary to Booker T. Washington. While serving as Washington’s secretary, President William Howard Taft appointed Scott to the American Commission to Liberia.9 After leaving Tuskegee Institute subsequent to Washington’s death in 1915, Scott became treasurer at Howard University. In 1920, Scott published his book Negro Migration During the War, a study of African American migration funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In later years, it was the accepted tradition that Johnson had ghosted Scott’s book using research data gathered by Johnson for The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot.10 In recommending Johnson, along with Charles H. Wesley and one other individual, to Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, Scott wrote that Johnson “ . . . was associated with me in developing the facts in connection with my study of Negro Migrant Conditions during the war for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”11 On November 26, 1929, William Castle, Assistant Secretary of State, extended a formal invitation to Johnson to serve on the commission, and by December 6, 1929, Johnson gave his firm acceptance.12

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Johnson would spend seven months in Liberia, from March to September 1929. The State Department led Johnson to believe that the charge of the commission was to be an objective, fact-finding body.13 In fact, for many the task of the commission was to confirm a preconceived political stance favorable to the Americo-Liberian elite.14 Clearly, that was the objective of the Liberian representative, Arthur Barclay, and, in part, of the United States Department of State.15 Cuthbert Christy, the British League of Nations representative, seemed mostly focused on uncovering the Firestone Company’s involvement in encouraging slavery and manifesting a general negative attitude towards the United States.16 Although the League of Nations provided official secretaries, Johnson made arrangements to have former Opportunity contest winner John Matheus, who “could type and knew Spanish,” accompany him as his private secretary.17 Almost half a century later, in 1975, reflecting on the Liberian venture, the novelist Matheus was of the opinion that the sociologist’s decision to include him among the entourage stemmed from Johnson’s desire to have a black American writer see Africa in hopes a novel would be forthcoming. In addition to Johnson, the commission was composed of two other members. The chairman was Cuthbert Christy, an Englishman who had lived for many years in Africa and was a senior diplomat at the League of Nations. Arthur Barclay, a former president and elder statesman of Liberia, was the other member. Working with these men would not be easy. As early as April, Johnson wrote his wife that “Barclay is about 77 and Christy 66 although the latter looks and has the heartiness of a man of 45.”18 Barclay was viewed by the Liberian government as the most educated man in Liberia.19 As a prosperous lawyer in Monrovia, he represented the Firestone Company, among other clients.20 He appears to have been more concerned with protecting the Liberian government and Americo-Liberians’ interests than he was with investigating the issue of slavery.21 Johnson’s dissatisfaction with Barclay was immediate judging from Johnson’s letter to his wife.22 His disillusionment with Christy came more slowly. Early in his relationship with Christy, Johnson wrote his wife Marie that Christy was “a very congenial person. . . . Our long walks and chats, living as we do constantly together, are quite valuable education in a new field for me.”23 Johnson further reported that Christy had forty years experience exploring Africa and was a big game hunter for museums and an expert on sleeping sickness. Johnson’s early, good first impression of Christy would change once the work of the commission got underway. The commission was empowered to investigate six major concerns.24 First, it was to determine whether “slavery as defined in the AntiSlavery Convention [1926] in fact exists in the Republic.” Second, it was to determine if the “system is participated in or encouraged by the Gov-

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ernment of the Republic.” The four remaining questions were really just an extension of the first two. Those were how the compulsory labor was recruited; how it related to the public and to the private economy; what the nature was of contract arrangements with Spain for shipments to Fernando Po and the Congo and other foreign ports; and, finally, whether the Liberian government gave “sanction or approval to the recruiting of labour with the aid and assistance of the Liberian Frontier Force,” or whether individual governmental officials participated in such actions. On April 4, 1930, Charles S. Johnson wrote Countee Cullen from Liberia, “I am about to burst forth in a poem about Africa, if you will only allow me the use of that immortal line ‘What is Africa to me.’”25 A careful reading of Johnson’s unpublished works dealing with Liberia entitled “Bitter Canaan” and “African Diary,” an examination of his letters home to his wife Marie, and the recollections of his private secretary John Matheus leave no doubt that Johnson’s role in the League’s Commission was paramount.26 In fact, in John Stanfield’s introductory essay to Bitter Canaan, he states that “Johnson wrote the entire ‘Christy Commission’ report.”27 Barclay’s loyalties were to the Americo-Liberians who were under fire, and he had neither the interest nor the desire to aid the inquiry. He did not accompany the team on its investigation into the hinterland. When it came time to draft the commission report, Johnson wrote his wife that Barclay “has not touched the evidence beyond reading it.” Christy’s contribution was somewhat greater. During the laborious task of examining witnesses before making the journey to the hinterland, both Christy and Johnson held hearings, but even here Johnson seemed to have borne the brunt of the burden. On this topic he wrote his wife, “We have been besieged with witnesses and have called many others . . . examine about 10 a day . . . I have not been remiss in my duty to probe. My partners [are] . . . a trifle difficult.”28 The itinerary of the commission, once it got started, included the following schedule: April 30–May 9, Karate (sixty miles from the Monrovian Coast); May 10 to early July, in the hinterland; return to Monrovia July 7–August 8.29 The commission interviewed 264 persons, including natives, native chiefs, and Firestone Plantation Company officers.30 Most interviews were done in the mornings and late afternoons.31 The commission closed in the middle of September 1930.32 Initially, Christy joined the trek to the hinterland, but on May 1, 1930, illness forced him to withdraw.33 Johnson continued. When the time came to draft the report, Christy was not much aid. In a long letter to his wife in August, Johnson was very critical of Christy. He wrote, “The impossible task has been imposed of analyzing and texting the testing of several hundred persons, documents of every description and all my travel

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notes.”34 Johnson wrote of fellow commission member Christy, “[T]ho English and hard headed; quite unadjusted to this phase of the work, and has spent much of his time fumbling thru papers and walking the floor— with general notions about what ought to be said but no aptitude . . . for saying it, or doing anything important with material.” In fact, later in the letter to Marie Johnson, the sociologist remarked “I finally had to draw together the whole of the material and turn over to him a first draft of his section for additions, corrections, etc.” In the privacy of his diary, Johnson made a more serious criticism of Christy. Johnson noted that Christy wished “to sign all the papers, write all letters, except disagreeable ones, have only his name appear on State papers, acknowledge all courtesies personally, and do the social negotiating. . . .” Offensive to Johnson was Christy’s practice of taking Johnson’s notes and drafts and using such materials as Christy’s own work. Perhaps most offensive to Johnson was Christy’s questioning the capabilities of black Americans. By the time Johnson was ready to leave Africa, his enthusiastic note to Countee Cullen was superseded by a piquant line to his wife: “This morning I am very warm and very through with Africa. I subscribe fully to the slogan ‘Africa for the Africans.’” The stay in Africa had been a difficult one. In accepting the investigating team of the League, President C. D. B. King of Liberia had agreed that the commission should be “independent in character and international in composition.”35 In reality, however, Americo-Liberians were less than happy about the inquiry, and they made Johnson’s stay less than pleasant. The commission members had been instructed to arrive separately.36 Johnson got to Liberia at least two weeks prior to Christy. For at least the first month of his stay, Johnson was in a state of boredom and frustration. By the middle of April, he would write his wife that “all is a monotony of either heat or rain—a commission or, such a job as mine cannot call or be called upon, except in line of unpleasant duty.”37 As the early weeks ground on, he became exasperated with “no where to ride, no shows, no sports (only tennis which I do not now have time to play), no books—I have read all I brought—no papers. Only a letter from home, which never comes.” As the member of a foreign commission, he was always suspect as a plant for “future U.S. ventures” and was spied upon by his chauffeur.38 One Sunday when he and Christy attended a Methodist church service, the minister preached directly to them on the danger of shaking “the foundation of the Republic.” The attempts to get the commission operating were obstructed by passive resistance on the part of government officials and by the threat of physical violence from quasi-officials of Liberia. When Johnson approached the officials for action, they engaged in delaying tactics. For example, he reported to his wife, “[W]hile the cabinet was waiting outside I

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played chess with the President and Secretary of State.”39 Johnson was certain the design was “to throttle the commission.” Matheus remembers that the commission was always on guard against the danger of being poisoned. At least one story of the physical danger the sociologist faced is still a part of the Johnson family oral history.40 To Johnson’s astonishment, one day a Liberian confronted Johnson with the fact that the Liberian had been paid to assassinate Johnson. Keeping his wits, Johnson asked what the would-be assassin had been paid and offered to pay him more to spare his life. The deal was consummated to save Johnson’s life, but to his horror, he later learned the Liberian had been killed when he failed to carry out the assassination. The most exciting part of the stay in Liberia was the time spent in the interior interviewing the indigenous population who were potential victims of slavery. During the hearings in Liberia prior to the trek to the hinterland, Johnson spent many days securing “straw tents, bush clothes, . . . water tight boxes, field blankets, bath tubs, cooking and eating equipt. etc.”41 The task was much bigger than he had thought as it would take “80 carriers, a headman, personal boys, interpreters, etc.” The various journeys into the interior, the longest of which lasted three months, were always marked by the threat of disease and death. Again, Johnson’s letters to his wife Marie offer the best accounts of those conditions. 42 He wrote, “I tramped 160 miles into the forest country thru a sheet of rain, leading my own Safari . . . in boots and wet for three weeks running—setting up camp in the rain, working thru the day and into the night and breaking camp again in the rain.” His Euro-American orientation was never more apparent than when he wrote, “[L]eopards were probing thru and menacing my tent; strained good for poison, and gone . . . without water because of the hazards of dysentery.” And again he said, “[V]igilance is required to avoid the sting of the yellow fever mosquito.” At least three times, he was reported killed. He must have at least felt that there was a possibility that the reports were true when he remarked to his wife, “I am collapsed like a worn and bruised balloon.” Despite the rigors of the interior of Liberian life, Johnson’s efforts were not without their rewards.43 The indigenous population received him as if he were their savior from the Americo-Liberians. Upon approaching the local villages, he was hailed by the inhabitants with spontaneous celebration and laudation. He was usually very embarrassed and tried to restrain the enthusiasm by reminding his hosts that he was serving in the capacity of a neutral observer. But this did little good. Although some chiefs were too intimidated by the Americo-Liberians to talk with him, more often than not they followed the lead of the villagers and talked openly with him about the role of the Frontier Force (Liberian Military)

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in putting their people in slavery. Thereafter, in the tribal tradition they ordered a calf be slain and a feast followed. In addition to the cooperation of the indigenous population, Johnson found other extralegal forces in Liberia willing to help. During the treks, the missionary posts always welcomed his team by providing them with fresh water and a dry place to bed down. And whatever its motivation, the Firestone Company went out of its way to provide for the comfort of the individual who had been so critical of them in the columns of Opportunity. John Matheus remembers that in Monrovia, Firestone made a guest house available to the commission. And when the team journeyed to the province of Maryland, the company put their private plantation at the commission’s disposal. In fact, Matheus recalls that on at least one subject, the question of wages for the indigenous population, Firestone was more humane than the Americo-Liberians. The company wanted to pay $1.25 per day for wages, but the government restricted them to 24¢ a day. Apparently, the cheaper wages posed less of a danger to the slave enterprise of the Frontier Force. During his stay in Liberia, Johnson made many friends among the African population. His stevedore was a man named Twe, who once worked for and had kept in contact with Mark Twain. For many years after Johnson returned to the United States, he corresponded with Twe. T. J. R. Faulkner, who was an enemy of President King and who had been instrumental in motivating the League of Nations to investigate forced labor in Liberia, became friends with Johnson. Faulkner, who had come to Liberia from South Carolina about the time of the migration led by Bishop Henry M. Turner, was a leading businessman in Liberia. With an ingenuity that rivaled that of Benjamin Franklin, he had built a monopoly on making and selling ice in Liberia. No record of their relationship is retained in the collected papers of Johnson, but the latter did see fit to praise Faulkner in his later remarks about Liberia.44 Johnson had a special regard for Chief Twelly Jeh whom he met during his travel. In fact, when his youngest son was born in 1931, Johnson named him Jeh-Vincent. By August of 1930, Johnson had returned from the interior for the last time. His last days in Monrovia were not much different from the previous spring. It had not been possible for the Americo-Liberians to completely thwart the commission. During Johnson’s last days in the capital, politicians employed new tactics. On the official level, he was besieged by a series of “interested visitors, presidential candidates, cabinet aspirants in whatever new line-up there is to be. The most acute fears seems to me, are of losing their autonomy thru misgovernment.”45 When this did not seem to get the desired results, the next ploy was to try to discredit the commission. On this subject Johnson reported, “I have had

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word of some new forged papers purportedly to be directed to me by the government, letters, etc., I am supposed to have written.” He saw them as indicating the “obsessing fears.” Apparently, no more came of the forged papers and the report was finished. The commission’s findings were very depressing.46 It found that “although classic slavery carrying the idea of slave markets and slave dealers no longer exists as such in the Republic of Liberia, slavery as defined by the (1926) Anti-Slavery Convention did exist in so far as inter- and intratribal domestic slavery exists. Pawning is also recognized in the social economy of the Republic.” In “Bitter Canaan,” Johnson describes pawning as “an old native custom. It is a system by which one person may exchange another person, a son, a daughter, a wife, or another pawn for a sum of money, usually from £1 to £5.0 to redeem him at any time. The indefinite aspect of redemption virtually gives to it the status of slavery. . . . The government has officially recognized pawning in a set of regulations which made the shadowy fact of the passing of a token the distinction between legalized pawning and unconstitutional slavery.”47 The commission did ameliorate this finding by noting that domestic slavery was discouraged by the government and that appeals to the courts for release were possible. Although the commission found no evidence that “leading citizens of the country participated in domestic slavery,” at the same time it noted that “some Americo-Liberians take natives as pawns, and in some instances have criminally abused the system for personal ends.” The main purpose of forced labor, according to the commission’s report, was “for motor road construction, for building civil compounds and military barracks, etc.” In the process, “systematic intimidation and ill-treatment” were frequent, and in many instances, the laborers had “been diverted to private use on the farms and plantations of high Government officials and private citizens.” The commission further found that “a large proportion of the contract labourers shipped to Fernando Po and French Gabun [sic] from the southern countries of Liberia have been recruited under conditions of criminal compulsion scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading, and frequently by misrepresenting the destination.” Somewhat surprisingly, the commission found “no evidence that the Firestone Plantation Company consciously employs any but voluntary labour on its leased plantation; but this . . . was not always the case when recruiting was subject to Government Regulations, over which the company had little control.” Finally, in a damning statement, the commission declared, “Vice President [Allen] Yancy and other high officials of the Liberian Government, as well as country Superintendents and District Commissioners, have given their sanction for the compulsory recruitment of labour for road construction, for shipment abroad and other work, by the aid and

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assistance of the Liberian Frontier Force, for intimidation of villagers, for the humiliation and degradation of chiefs, for the imprisonment of inhabitants, and for convoying of gangs of captured natives to the coast, there guarding them till the time of shipment.” The commission’s recommendations were reminiscent of those of many of the reports issued by other commissions on which Johnson served, such as The Negro in Chicago. There was the familiar call for an end to isolation of the indigenous population. Education must be expanded extensively. The policy of suppression must be abandoned. Special note must be taken of tribal interests, and humiliation and degradation of chiefs must cease. In this respect the tribal authority of the chiefs must be reestablished. Removal of the current district commissioners was a necessity; they were to be replaced by European or American commissioners. Some form of civil service and new political divisions must be forthcoming. Pawning and domestic slavery must be made illegal as a preliminary step toward total abolition. The road programs must be curtailed, with a much stricter control of the soldiers of the Frontier Force and a reconstruction of their duties of first concern. In the text, the commission spoke of the need for encouraging “Negro immigration,” but in the “Summary of Suggestions and Recommendations,” it merely noted the need to encourage American immigration. The commission’s report on the black republic of Liberia made for discouraging reading. It remained for Johnson to put it in its proper perspective over the years.48 It was not enough to study the opinions and rationalizations that either denied the reality of forced labor or excused it as necessary. The scope of the question was much broader. One must look at the historical development of attitudes. As Johnson had done with the Chicago report, he examined the history of Liberia as a starting point. Liberia had been conceived by the American Colonization Society as a means of abetting slavery in the United States. The constitution was written by a Professor Simon Greenleaf of Harvard and “patterned faithfully after that of the United States.” The first twenty-five years saw 4,456 blacks removed to Africa with 2,198 dying “before they could make a home.” In 1847, the society suddenly withdrew its support and left the Liberians to govern themselves. The consequences were less than happy, as they had an “undigested formula of government . . . [and] were unpracticed in the fundamentals of self-support and self-guidance.” Even more catastrophic, they had “carried over all the prejudices and arrogances of their masters, feeling this to be the secret of their power and aspirations. Freedom was taken to mean freedom from work.” Money was needed, but they had “neglected the best economic resources open to them—agriculture—and they could not compete with the conquered natives.” Finally,

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the Americo-Liberians had to “resort to securing loans, thereby letting themselves in for countless difficulties.” Starting in 1870, they began to borrow huge sums from Western capitalists. First was a loan of $500,000 from a firm of English bankers. In 1906, another $500,000 was secured from the Liberian Development Company, another British concern, and with it went the loss of much internal control. In 1912, Liberia obtained another $1,700,000 with the assistance of the American government. With this loan came a surrender of customs to an international receivership. As conditions worsened in 1924, another $5,000,000 was contracted. With the entry of the Firestone Company in the 1920s, a massive building program was begun and the economy appeared to be taking an upward swing. But the future implications of an economy controlled by Firestone were unnerving to those interested in an independent Liberia. The coast of Liberia had about fifteen thousand “emigrants and their descendants.” But the pressures from the hinterland were enormous, and it was “necessary” for the Americo-Liberians to “extend . . . [their] jurisdiction over the hinterland.” Furthermore, the action of the Congress of Berlin and the later Brussels Conference necessitated that they “effectively possess the territory . . . if they were to lay claim to it.” To do this, “they assumed the manners of superiors and from this evolved a rather disastrous native policy.” The large numbers of the indigenous population provided a cheap and ready labor supply. Out of this arrangement grew the “social classes and castes, and the stigma of degradation attached to manual labor.” Gradually, the Americo-Liberians lost whatever skills they had “acquired in . . . slavery.” Agriculture and industry lagged until the present government, which provided support for 85 percent of the immigrant population and got its chief income from “customs and earnings of the natives in the form of hut taxes and head moneys on deck hands and labor exported from the country.” The decline of income had resulted in further exploitation which, in turn, led to the “natives . . . becoming restive.” At this point, the problem became a concern of world opinion, and the investigation by the International Commission of Enquiry followed. It was all a familiar pattern to Charles S. Johnson, the sociologist. Again, the underlying themes were economics and status. This time the direct oppressors were black American emigrants who tried to emulate the white slaveholders in the United States. The oppressed were the indigenous African population, which corresponded to black people in the United States. As economic insecurity increased, the Americo-Liberians became more fearful of their status and more oppressive. In an attempt to ward off “further aggressions by France, England or Germany, the Liberian government was risking future exploitation by the Firestone Company.” At present, the “Firestone Company . . . represents the only major

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income source for the native labor with the republic.” But even that had not solved the economic pressure felt by the Liberian government. In its need for income, the government had formed a “contract with the Spanish government, agreeing to export native ‘boys’ to the island of Fernando Po, notorious because of its unhealthy climate and because so few ‘boys’ returned.” The situation had deteriorated to the point where even the president himself “systematically scoured the country for ‘boys.’” If they refused to go, they were held under guard by the Frontier Force until Spanish ships arrived. The result had been disastrous as an “excess of ten thousand natives were shipped in this manner.” As a widespread system of trade routes developed, the new economy demanded roads, which had resulted in a road-building program with an “average of six thousand natives daily building roads without pay while at the same time requiring them to purchase and use their own tools and feed themselves.” Johnson saw some hope for the reform of a pernicious system built on the model of American slaveholders and exacerbated by Euro-American capitalism. He wrote that the “culture of the West has already invaded Africa, and is a requisite of security in all new world relations.” What was needed was the “development of intelligent leaders from the natives, who will be capable of sharing responsibility for the conduct of government.” Just as important was the immediate development of a strong economic base. Liberia needed to “know its own resources; it needed capital.” The keys to the problems of Liberia were historical and economic. In short, he wrote, “These evils are rooted deep in the unfortunate economy of the country. It is necessary that Liberia set itself now to this economic reorganization, if the country is to survive.” Although the commission had found no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing on the part of Firestone, Johnson was never comfortable about its relations with Liberia. In Opportunity he had fretted over the large investment of the Firestone Company in Liberia.49 Firestone had proudly pointed out that it represented the “most gigantic business transaction ever enacted between the races.” But Johnson recalled that transactions engineered by the agents of Cecil Rhodes, for example, were “just as gigantic,” for they “transferred from African to English hands what is now Southern Rhodesia, an area three times the size of England.” When Johnson returned to the United States, he wrote a supplementary memorandum to the commission’s report for the assistant secretary of state.50 In his memorandum, he allowed that the Firestone Company was the only large and definite source of income for “the native labour within the country.” He did not doubt its importance to the country, but “its implications [were] suspected. Fear of white control, though unlikely under the present arrangement is responsible for endless irritations.” But there was an even

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greater danger in the growing economic dependence upon Firestone by Liberia for “public facilities, goods and services, which they are expected to render without pay . . . and the result is exactly what the Liberians oppose and preach against—control by the company.” In his unpublished manuscript “Bitter Canaan,” he returned to this theme again.51 Here, he wrote, “Objections to the company include their connection with the loan; the fact that no Negroes hold any of the higher positions of management; their aloofness as a colony; and a suspected desire to interfere with the methods of government.” The commission led by Charles S. Johnson did not fulfill all the dreams of the inhabitants of villages in the hinterland who had welcomed him so openly. But in the words of John Matheus, at least the “slave trade stopped.”52 After returning from Liberia, Johnson drew from his African diary, the Commission report and supplemental report, and letters to his wife while in Liberia to draft a manuscript entitled “Bitter Canaan.”53 In this manuscript, Johnson combined the best of the skills of a social scientist and the literary skills of a writer.54 In one surviving letter in the archives dated June 26, 1948, Johnson indicated he considered “Bitter Canaan” his best writing.55 Nevertheless, Johnson never published it. Why? In the 1940s, at least as early as 1945, the University of Chicago Press was ready to commit to publishing “Bitter Canaan.”56 Nevertheless, Johnson was reluctant. Instead, he sent the manuscript to three individuals: Eric Williams, at that time a member of the Howard University history faculty; Charles H. Thompson, dean of the graduate school at Howard; and, Claude A. Barnett, director of the Associated Negro Press.57 All three readers discouraged Johnson from publishing the manuscript. The rationale from the Pan-Africanist Williams to the establishment academician Thompson to the muckraker Barnett was similar. Each voiced concern that the work would be detrimental to the emerging African nationalism which was challenging European colonialism. As such, it would imply that blacks were not capable of leading third world and African nations. With the coming challenge of being Fisk University’s first black president and the near internecine battle which resulted in the selection of Johnson over Charles H. Wesley as Fisk’s president, Johnson did not want to alienate Barnett, who held enormous influence over the black press. Additionally, as the publication of “Bitter Canaan” was delayed, the manuscript became dated. Eric Williams, among others, pointed out this defect. Finally, by a letter dated December 18, 1947, Johnson withdrew the manuscript, citing among other things the need to update the research, which would entail a trip to Liberia. Obviously, Johnson had no time for such a research trip. In explaining his decision to forego a major publication, Johnson wrote Russel B. Babcock, “I have decided . . .

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it might embarrass the new administration that has remedied quite a number of the things pointed out in the latter part of the script.”58 Like so many things in the public life of the race relations diplomat, the real reason Johnson did not publish “Bitter Canaan” is shrouded in the ambiguity of polite language. It is clear that the University of Chicago would have published the manuscript. Johnson chose otherwise. Unlike Johnson’s academic publications, “Bitter Canaan” had a literary quality similar to Johnson’s writings in Opportunity. The total scientific detachment that Robert E. Park demanded of his students and that was exemplified by Charles S. Johnson was less evident in “Bitter Canaan.” For perhaps the only time in his career, Johnson gave the reader a peek at his soul. In an analysis with which one cannot disagree, the scholar John Stanfield characterized the manuscript as anti-AmericoLiberian elite while being pronative in sympathy.59 In short, Johnson does not shy away from being an advocate for the underdog. More than thirty years after Johnson’s death, Johnson’s manuscript “Bitter Canaan” was published in the Black Classics of Social Science series, edited by Wilbur H. Watson.60 Many will agree that the best wine had been saved for last.

Chapter 8

The Department of Social Sciences

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hen Thomas Elsa Jones assumed the presidency of Fisk University in 1926, its future was uncertain. Student unrest, alumni dissatisfaction, and near financial disaster had forced the former president, Fayette Avery McKenzie, to leave under cover of darkness.1 Upon his arrival in Nashville, Jones immediately began an extended fundraising campaign. Next, he proposed bringing in established scholars in the fields of the physical sciences, humanities, and social sciences for the then extraordinary salary of five thousand dollars a year. With the approval of the faculty and the board of trustees, he secured the services of three of Fisk’s most renowned faculty members: Elmer S. Imes, in the physical sciences; James Weldon Johnson, in the humanities; and Charles S. Johnson, in the social sciences. We have already reviewed how by 1927 Johnson was becoming more and more disenchanted with Eugene Kinckle Jones. At first, he had thought of leaving the Urban League and going with Edwin R. Embree, the new president of the Rosenwald Fund.2 But eventually the challenge at Fisk, which had just received a five-year grant of $125,000 from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation to reorganize and to develop a strong department of social sciences, proved more tempting.3 For almost two years, Jones carried on an extensive correspondence with Johnson in an attempt to recruit him, and by the summer of 1928 Johnson and his family took up residence on the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tennessee, at Fisk University.4 Even before Jones persuaded Johnson to come to Fisk, the young president had sought the sociologist’s counsel on the strategy for building a social sciences department. During the time that Jones was courting Johnson, the future chairman of the Department of Social Sciences submitted a 93

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memorandum to Jones outlining a plan of operation for the new department. When he came in 1928, Johnson put most of the plan into action in a matter of months. First, Johnson’s memorandum recommended that Fisk should select one area of research and that it should concentrate its study, research, and specialization upon it, rather than spreading the department too thin. As models, he suggested the concentration by the University of Chicago on urban problems, the University of North Carolina on the New South, and the University of California on mental testing. And for Fisk, “the most logical field is that of the Negro and Race Relations in the United States.” Fisk was centrally located with reference to “the Negro population, the United States at large, and strategic research centers like Chicago, New York, and the University of North Carolina.” Nashville provided an “ideal laboratory as an educational center, a large Negro population, and [was] within reach of interesting rural communities.” In addition to its proximity to rural communities, Nashville was fairly representative of Negro urban communities and could thus be a sufficient starting point for a continuous program of study which would not only set the patterns for research in Negro communities and in the myriad other problems by yielding data, but will reflect racial situations and qualities necessary to be known now.” Second, Johnson suggested that once the decision to use Fisk and Nashville as the base for studying “the Negro and Race Relations in the United States” was made, the ultimate plan might be divided into three periods of concentration. The first period would center on the city of Nashville. An immediate need was for a “thorough and systematic demographic study which will establish a base of information upon which specialized studies will proceed.” The more specialized studies would include housing, industry, recreation, health, living standards, crime, dependency, and the like. The second period would include a larger base—this time “selected urban and rural communities in the state.” Again, systematic demographic studies, followed by more specialized studies, were planned. At the same time, the specialized studies made in Nashville during the first period would be explored further. Whenever possible, the studies would be a coordinated effort of all of the disciplines within the Department of Social Sciences, but special emphasis would be placed on sociology and economics. Finally, the third period would apply the same model, only this time the study would be applied across the entire South on a regional basis. For Johnson, the key was in “the continuous work of the Department which would take the form of accumulative research over a long period.” With a centrally located base and a firm commitment to the study of race relations in the United States, Fisk could in the future play the role of a major research center.

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Johnson concluded his memorandum to Jones by proposing what later became the model for the Fisk data bank and served as a reservoir of information for at least the next thirty years. Among the numerous projects he suggested were the “collection of Negro life histories with some sort of guiding outline designed to draw out Negro emotional experiences,” case records of “abnormal, interracial occurrences, which would serve as clinical material for the study of race relations,” and the recording of “incidents involving friendships developed, taboos, inconsistencies in the expression of customary relations, . . . racial outbreaks, etc.” In addition to the human document, he advised the immediate “systematic collection of printed sources of information . . . [such as] government statistical publications bearing upon the Negro, and upon general questions—industry, wages, health, etc.” Classes had been in session but a few days in the fall of 1928 when Johnson wrote another extended memorandum to President Jones.5 This time, Johnson outlined the modus operandi for the future of the department. The essence of this memorandum covered four topics: the purpose of the new department, its future implications, Johnson’s teaching responsibilities, and the budget. Johnson observed that “after a first period of observation,” he was ready to begin the new program. Hence, he wanted to have on record the president’s “own judgment regarding the practicability of these notions in the light of the full program of the University, departmental relationships, and the relation of the work of the department of Social Science of Fisk University to the community.” Throughout this memorandum, as in the earlier one, Johnson expressed a deep concern that the theoretical and the practical be combined. In other words, he wanted his students to have a sound theoretical base, but with the larger goal of understanding and improving race relations in the city, state, and nation. The purpose of the department, therefore, was manifold. First, it was to “effect a productive working relationship between the teaching and research activities in the Social Science field,” and “to assist, through its inductive handling of material, in converting social theories into the basis for social action.” Second, in order to accomplish this end, it was necessary to “seek out and encourage productive scholarship” and “to extend its advantages and further strengthen its value to the student body through exchange of professors with other universities.” Third, it must “stimulate and support research projects which offer promise of contributing to the store of useful knowledge” and “marshal these studies . . . [so that they] contribute to the understanding of larger problems,” while at the same time providing a “field of practical training for graduate students.” Fourth, using this approach, Johnson planned “to establish in the South, which is the matrix of the Negro and race relations problems, a center for research

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into the very immediate questions of Negro life and status, and of race relations, to the end of serving as a source of information and guidance in the handling of these questions.” Johnson hoped that this scholarly inquiry would “provide a definite service to communities and particularly in the South through Special Surveys, investigations and researches, conducted or directed for the communities.” Johnson pledged to Jones that “definite and tangible results of this experiment must be forthcoming within a reasonable period.” To accomplish this end, it was necessary to establish the department on a professional basis, closely integrating the activities of the faculty and the staff in the areas of both research and teaching, and further, relating these activities to the community and the university. In the research agenda that Johnson had planned for Fisk, it would be necessary to work closely with the state and with the South. Johnson’s model for this program was the University of North Carolina, “which faced a situation in certain respects similar.” Johnson’s own immediate responsibilities were more in the area of research, planning, and coordinating than in teaching. He was, however, planning to offer “a course on The Negro in America,” which would be “ready for the Spring quarter.” In the lengthy report to Jones, Johnson went on to cover sundry items, but most important, although buried deeply in the memorandum, was the whole question of the budget. Johnson noted that he had already arranged some research projects for the Rosenwald Fund and the Social Science Research Council, and that he had transferred to his Nashville office his “current work as Research Secretary of the National Interracial Conference on an independent budget.” In addition, he asked for a “reasonably itemized statement of the budget” from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation grant. On this point, he wrote, “I should like to know with some exactness, the limits within which the department must operate for the remaining period of the grant.” The swiftness of Jones’s reply attests to Johnson’s effectiveness as a communicator. In a matter of days Jones replied.6 The young Fisk president wrote Johnson, “I agree with your interpretation of the intention behind the establishment of the department of Social Science at Fisk as outlined.” Jones also established a precedent by giving Johnson virtually a free hand with the budget. During the remainder of his tenure as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences, Johnson, who had a genius for fundraising, was allowed to control his own budget, and therefore, was permitted to establish almost a college within the university. In later years, this arrangement left him and Jones open to the criticism that the “tail was wagging the dog,” and that Fisk was budgeting a disproportionate amount of funds for the social sciences department. Actually, Johnson’s department did not get that much

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more money than the other departments, but with a free hand to manage his budget, Johnson was able to build a kind of fiefdom within the university structure by supplementing the regular university department budget with significant foundation grants.7 In the early years, the grants came from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, the Rosenwald Fund, and the Carnegie Corporation. The middle years saw new money coming from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New Deal agencies, the American Missionary Association, and the Greenwood Foundation. In the later years, the Ford Foundation and the John Hay Whitney Foundation, along with other outside sources, helped fund the programs Charles S. Johnson directed from the social sciences department at Fisk.8 Once he had established the goals of the department, defined its status within the university system, and received the blessing of President Jones for budgetary control of the money appropriated to his department, Johnson set about recruiting faculty and student personnel and laying out the curriculum. During the years he was the entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson had established the pattern of identifying, developing, and promoting young black talent. He enlarged upon the scheme at Fisk and was always on the lookout for promising young talent. The relationship with Park and his own productive studies had allowed Johnson to build strong contacts with many of the leading social scientists across the nation, especially in the North. For example, even before he arrived at Fisk, he was able to recruit Ophelia Settle (later Ophelia Settle Egypt), who was just finishing a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania.9 In less than a decade, Johnson institutionalized the process with programs like the Special Fellows to the point that almost without exception the best talent among young black social scientists welcomed the call to study at Fisk.10 Johnson explained his approach in a letter to a prospective Special Fellow when he wrote, “Apart from our graduate department, or rather, I should say in addition to it, we are chiefly concerned with selecting from over the country a few of the good minds and helping them to sharpen up their skills and insights in the social science field.”11 Not only did Johnson seek graduate students for the master’s program but he recruited Ph.D. candidates at other institutions to spend a year at Fisk prior to completing their degrees. As he wrote a young doctoral student in psychology at the University of Michigan, “It has been increasingly our feeling that Negro students . . . in the larger universities would do better in their graduate work . . . if they could spend a period in an institution in the South where actual research projects in Negro life are being carried on.”12 He noted that the majority of black students who would go into college teaching would do so in the South. The problem was that “several southern institutions

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want Negroes for their sociology departments, but prefer them after some actual experience in teaching and research.” Such a program allowed Johnson to use his funds for research facilities, while at the same time it assured him of a staff of top quality. He wrote a prospective fellow: “We cannot provide a large number of major salaries. We expect the persons to advance themselves into salaried posts on the basis of the skills that they acquire.”13 In the early years, Johnson’s various research grants financed the fellows. The most common sources were the Spelman and the Rosenwald grants. In 1936, Johnson and Embree, working closely with Mary McLeod Bethune, director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the Department of the Interior, were able to secure funds from the New Deal’s National Youth Administration (NYA) for fellowships for about twenty-five students.14 This program continued until midway in the Second World War when the New Deal program was curtailed.15 Besides the NYA fellowships and assistantships, by the mid-1930s Johnson had a limited number of more lucrative fellowships and assistantships funded by the General Education Board and the Rosenwald Fund. He reserved these positions for individuals demonstrating exceptional promise. With this program he successfully recruited Preston Valien, who succeeded him as chairman of the Social Sciences Department; Herman H. Long, who succeeded him as director of the Race Relations Department; and Bonita H. Valien, who over the years became Johnson’s alter ego.16 Johnson had similar success in recruiting staff and faculty. To the younger staff members, many of whom were fellows who functioned in the capacity of faculty, he offered the opportunity for exposure, experience in a first-rate research laboratory, and intellectual growth. The seriousminded and more mature social scientist interested in race relations and the South was offered research facilities, an intellectual environment, and an overflowing data bank. Distinguished and semiretired scholars were given the freedom for research in the best laboratory in the nation for race relations without many of the formal restraints of academia. The early faculty and staff assembled by Johnson included Paul K. Edwards and George Hines in economics, and C. Luther Fry and Eldridge Sibley in social research and statistics.17 Paul Radin in anthropology, Bertram W. Doyle in sociology, and Z. Alexander Looby in economics and government were also employed, and, in 1929, E. Franklin Frazier joined the faculty. Among the early research assistants employed, in addition to Ophelia Settle, were Maurine Boie, Mabel J. Byrd, Annabelle Bloodworth (later Annabelle Bloodworth Taylor), Lewis Wade Jones, Harry J. Walker, Josie Sellers, Ann Savage, and Edmonia Grant. As Johnson’s program became established and it became apparent that the university did not question his authority to recruit and hire, he

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used his foundation money, prestige, and laboratory to enlarge his faculty and staff. The administrative status of certain individuals was not always clear. Many, for example, were in residence with great freedom. Perhaps their only official responsibility was to teach a seminar or to meet occasionally with a group of students. Others were full-time faculty members, while still others, such as Lewis Wade Jones, Horace Mann Bond, Edmonia Grant, Giles A. Hubert, and Harry J. Walker, were in a state of administrative limbo on the organizational chart. Their duties as teachers, researchers, and staff members far exceeded their various administrative titles. For example, in the early years Bonita H. Valien was listed as a secretary, but in reality she functioned as a faculty member. What was important to Johnson were the contributions of each individual to the overall program. The department was always interracial and international. In 1936, Robert E. Park, in retirement from the University of Chicago, became a full-time scholar in residence. His presence, along with Johnson’s, attracted scholars of national and international reputation to spend time at Fisk. In the area of race relations, Edward B. Reuter and Andrew W. Lind came; in African studies, Reginald Barrett, Kenneth L. Little, Edwin W. Smith, and Cedric Dover; in Latin American and Caribbean studies, Donald Pierson and Rudiger Bilden; and in anthropology, Ruth Landes. The more permanent faculty members of the department during the 1930s and early 1940s were generally a young, impressive, interracial, and cosmopolitan group.18 Besides Jones, Hubert, and the Valiens, for example, there was Bingham Dai, a Chinese-American M.D. whose interest was psychiatry; Eli S. Marks, Jewish, fresh out of Columbia University, who served as a statistician; Addison T. Cutler, white and blond, who was an economist; and Jitsuichi Masuoka, Japanese-American and a sociologist. There were others who worked less closely with Johnson, such as Mark Hanna Watkins, at that time the only black American with a Ph.D. in anthropology, whose main interest was African languages; and Lorenzo D. Turner, whose interest was African survivals in black American culture. The list was long and impressive.19 During the almost two decades that Johnson chaired the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk, he trained many of the future leaders and policymakers of the latter-day civil rights movement. The curriculum at Fisk, perhaps more than that of any other American university, uniquely prepared students at the graduate level to understand race relations in the nation and the world, and to act upon that information to help implement positive change. As early as 1945, Robert E. Park’s former student, Edgar T. Thompson, who was on the faculty at Duke University, characterized Johnson’s role when he reviewed the field of sociology in the South for a publication marking the sesquicentennial celebration of the University of

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North Carolina.20 Thompson noted that the South was dominated by two men and their universities: Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University and Howard W. Odum of the University of North Carolina. Odum and his students “were concerned almost entirely with problems in southern, mostly North Carolina counties, or with aspects of southern state or regional life and welfare.” On the other hand, Johnson and his students “have studied and are studying immediate aspects of southern life, but they seem to be much more interested in the comparative use of nonsouthern experience in the analysis of southern society.” He went on to say that “their studies are not confined to southern horizons or to southern historical levels. They seek to wrench analysis clear of the particularistic assumptions of a single culture and to put the phenomena of southern life in a wider context of relationship and meaning.” In order to accomplish this end, Thompson reported, “students were writing theses on aspects of society in Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, and some of the islands of the Pacific and of the West Indies.” Thompson’s article went far toward defining the emphasis of the curriculum at Fisk. By 1936, with the permanent addition of Park, the funds from the NYA fellowships, and numerous projects under way, the department introduced Sociology 396–97, which was a two-semester seminar in race and culture. The seminar institutionalized the previously informal seminars and became, in Johnson’s mind, “one of the most important units of our educational scheme.”21 In its first year, Johnson wrote Embree that in the race and culture seminar “a group of about eighteen people, under the guidance of Dr. Park, actually lay out on the table the moot issues constantly arising in the course of analysis of various problems, and we seem to be getting somewhere.”22 Johnson saw the seminar as an ideal educational and unifying device for the department because, as he wrote Embree, “it not only makes . . . [the participants] acquainted with the materials but makes the materials a part of them and their thinking, and it permits each person to share the experience of all of the others.”Over the next few years, the race and culture seminar became legendary among those around Johnson. Five years after its beginning, Johnson again reported on its progress to Embree. By this time, the seminar was “made up of the entire graduate department, including the Fellows and faculty, numbering about 40. It meets for two hours. During the first hour, the speaker presents the main outline of his materials; and after a brief recess there is discussion.”23 The race and culture seminar became the vehicle by which Johnson exposed his graduate students to the parade of big names that continued to march through Fisk during the Johnson years. But it would be erroneous to conceive of the seminar as merely a venture in public relations. It was, in fact, part of a very rigorous program.24

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The underlying theme of the seminar, and of the department, was Johnson’s preoccupation with the process by which societies move from accommodation to assimilation. It was on this basis that Johnson, as Edgar T. Thompson later noted, looked to other societies in order to do comparative studies. A typical semester was the fall of 1940 when, in writing Embree, who had agreed to meet with the race and culture seminar, Johnson said, “I am happy that your selection of the American Indians and the Pacific Islanders . . . fits precisely into the total seminar scheme.” Johnson went on to say, “During the first semester the Race and Culture seminar . . . stresses . . . the presentation of a working culture other than the American or European scene by one who has some acquaintance with it. It might be Mexican, or Chinese, or African; and in the case of your presentation it will be the American Indian and the Dutch East Indians.” There was nothing unusual about the subject matter of the race and culture seminar in 1940. The previous year, for example, “attention has been centered on problems of acculturation involving the Negro, Indian, and Latin peoples in Brazil.” Using the studies of Brazil as a point of departure, the students concentrated on “the similarity of social, economic, and cultural aspects of racial problems in the southern United States and South America . . . [as] the basis for a fusion of these research interests.” Donald Pierson, under the tutelage of Robert E. Park, had just returned from eighteen months in Bahia, Brazil, where his field work had been supported by the University of Chicago and the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk University. Pierson was in residence at Fisk, pulling his data together, consulting with Park, and offering “a graduate seminar on Bahia, Brazil.” In later years, especially after the beginning of the African studies program in 1943, the non-European, non-American emphasis was upon Africa and the Caribbean. Here, Johnson was able to offer his students such Fisk faculty members as Mark Hanna Watkins, John W. Work, and Lorenzo D. Turner. As Johnson became increasingly involved in his many roles as researcher, service intellectual, and race relations statesman, he had less time for formal teaching. In the early years, he had offered a course entitled “The Negro in America.” But probably more typical of Johnson’s role in the formal classroom was captured by the remarks of a former student, Charles V. Smith, who in a 1972 article wrote, “[T]his writer has the impression that he was so often absent from class, because of other research, advisory, or administrative demands, with a substitute filling in for him, that few students had the chance to receive the full exposure to whatever abilities he had in this area.”25 At the same time, even in the later years Johnson did not completely slight his students. He usually taught a course in research methods and continued to serve as a resource person for the race and culture seminar. In addition, he often offered seminars centered

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on a special research project as, for example, the Louisiana school study begun in 1941. Johnson always had rigorous standards for his M.A. students. To get a degree in sociology, two years of residence were required with a minimum of twenty-seven semester hours (fourteen of which were at the seminar level), a reading knowledge of a modern foreign language (usually French or German), “the satisfactory completion of a thesis,” and oral examinations. To protect the department against academic incest, he always invited an outside social scientist to participate in the M.A. exam.26 While upholding standards, such a strategy had the added advantage of involving leading academicians from the profession in the Fisk program, which often offered residual benefits when the time came to place graduates in doctoral programs, get foundation support, and find employment for graduates. By the late 1930s, the enrollment had grown to approximately forty graduate students. In 1939, for example, there were “37, of which number 21 are women and 16 are men.” Nor were the undergraduates ignored. As Johnson’s tenure neared its end, President Thomas E. Jones wrote Johnson that “according to figures submitted by the Registrar’s office, the average enrollment for the Department of Social Sciences over the past several years has been between 11% and 12% of the total college enrollment.”27 While Johnson’s interest extended far beyond Nashville and the South, he also made his contribution to the local academic community. Ophelia Settle Egypt remembers that in the early years, during the era of strict segregation, “he arranged group meetings between Fisk students and students from the white colleges and university in Nashville. They met in seminars, institutes and information gatherings.”28 Many of these meetings and seminars in the 1930s were conducted in conjunction with Alva Taylor of the School of Religion at Vanderbilt University, to whom Johnson referred as “the one sturdy liberal in the entire school.”29 In the early 1940s, even before the Department of Race Relations was launched, the General Education Board, at Johnson’s urging, sponsored Ina Corinne Brown as “a Visiting Joint-Professor at Scarritt, Vanderbilt, Peabody and Fisk.”30 Despite Jim Crow in education, Johnson was able to involve the white community, to a degree, in the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk. In fact, once the department developed, it was Fisk, rather than Vanderbilt or Peabody, which attracted national and international scholars. The white colleges, if they wanted to share in these projects, had to acknowledge that the intellectual center of sociology was across the tracks in north Nashville. Johnson’s last major curriculum innovation in the department was in the area of African and Caribbean studies, which were begun in 1943.31 In the beginning, Johnson was the director; he was assisted by a faculty

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including Mark Hanna Watkins, Robert E. Park, Lorenzo D. Turner, Ina C. Brown from Scarritt College, and Edwin W. Smith, “sometime President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland,” who served in the capacity of consultant and lecturer. The prospectus, which bore Johnson’s name, noted that the “program of African Studies has a three-fold objective.” First, for the general student body it formed “part of the University’s purpose to widen the student’s social and intellectual horizon by introducing him to a world inhabited by people who differ from himself in custom and belief.” Second, at the scientific and academic level the program sought to “provide experience in the scientific investigation of cultural, psychological, and biological data for which Africa offers so rich a field.” Finally, the practical Johnson foresaw the end of political colonialism, and he reminded students that “the vocational aspect of these studies must be emphasized. Opportunities will be increasingly offered for American Negroes to share with Africans in Africa these advantages which they have gained in the United States. Medical men and women, social workers, agriculturists, teachers, missionaries—there is room for all these in Africa.” Johnson proposed that such workers needed to supplement their professional education with “specific training in African sociology . . . [and] economics.” With this in mind, he announced that Fisk “offers a curriculum in African Studies leading to the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees.” Unfortunately, the African studies program never materialized. Park died in 1944; Johnson was busy with other projects, including the launching of the Department of Race Relations; Mark Hanna Watkins was on leave for his own research with Indian language in Guatemala; student interest was not overly enthusiastic; and funding was limited. Lorenzo D. Turner began to assume a greater share of the responsibility, and Giles A. Hubert and Edward B. Reuter were added to the staff.32 There was sporadic enthusiasm but little sustained action. One memorable occasion was a conference on African studies held in November of 1943.33 Among the active participants were Rayford W. Logan of Howard University, W. E. B. Du Bois and Ira DeA. Reid of Atlanta University, and Melville J. Herskovits of Northwestern University, along with Edwin W. Smith, Turner, Watkins, and the rest of the Fisk faculty. There were also less ambitious projects, such as the attempt by Johnson and Edward B. Reuter to edit and publish papers on Africa read at the Sixteenth Annual Festival of Music and Art in 1945; but the proposed volume never materialized.34 After he became president of Fisk, Johnson made one last effort to revitalize the African Studies program.35 He secured the temporary appointment of Kenneth L. Little, who was on leave from the University of London, along with Reginald Barrett, a reader from Cambridge University who had worked in the training of black leaders for colonial Africa, and Cedric

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Dover. More convinced than ever by world events that Africa offered a rich vocational future for Fisk graduates, Johnson recruited Donald Wyatt, who had spent several years with the American Red Cross in North Africa, to help coordinate the program. By the mid-1940s, Johnson enlarged the African studies program to include the study of Haiti as part of the African and Caribbean Studies program.36 In 1945, he secured limited funding from the Rosenwald Fund to finance what became known as the Creole language project, which provided a basis for an exchange between Fisk and Haiti.37 Under Johnson’s leadership, Fisk established a program allowing faculty members, like Giles A. Hubert, John W. Work, Mark Hanna Watkins, and Inez Adams, to spend time in Haiti. In return, students from Haiti attended Fisk to study in the Department of Social Sciences.38 As part of the Haitian program, Johnson published an article, “Haiti as a Laboratory for Cultural Research,” in Pylon.39 In this article, Johnson encouraged more research in race relations using Haiti as a laboratory. Throughout his life, Johnson continued to nurture the Haitian program with the encouragement and support of Paul Magloire, the power behind the throne under the government of Dumarsais Estimé.40 By 1948, Johnson, with support from Mary McLeod Bethune and Will W. Alexander, established a beachhead for Fisk in Haiti.41 The triumvirate of Bethune, Alexander and Johnson persuaded Giles A. Hubert to join the Foreign Service. In 1948, Hubert was assigned to the American Embassy at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he served until 1951.42 Hubert’s presence gave Fisk a significant role in Haiti. Under Magloire’s influence, many of the Haitian cabinet posts were filled by former Fisk students trained in the Department of Social Sciences. Such cabinet posts included Minister of Labor, Minister of the National Economy, and Director of the Office of Coffee.43 In 1957, strongman Francois Duvalier came to power, and the old Fiskites had to “take to the hills.”44 Johnson had died a year earlier in 1956. With the emergence of Papa Doc in 1957, the Fisk-Haitian exchange ended. In the 1950s, Fisk continued the African and Caribbean studies program, but it never realized the potential it promised in the mid-1940s. The desire to establish a solid contact with the emerging African and Third World nations remained one of Johnson’s unrealized dreams. He was prophetic in his vision of eventual political liberation from colonialism coming to the Third World and the subsequent need for economic and technical skills.45 It was always his hope that the Fisk students would help meet that need. But his pressing duties as president of Fisk, the emerging civil rights movement, and student apathy all served to spoil this dream. Yet, in the last year of his life, Johnson was corresponding with the West

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Indian scholar Eric Williams in hopes of establishing “a definitive project assembling, microfilming, analyzing, and setting up, in a joint relationship with the University of West Indies, a base for long-time individual research and programs, both historical and sociological. . . . It is my ultimate hope that we can become the center of research of the future in this area.”46 Johnson had already laid the groundwork for extensive foundation support. Until his death in 1956, he continued to look toward Africa, the Caribbean, and the Third World. He was neither a provincial American nor a strict Pan-Africanist. He was actually one of the few internationalists who bridged the culture of the West and the East. Johnson’s greatest legacy as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences was intangible.47 It is not possible to quantify the impact he had on students, junior colleagues, and staff members, but a cursory review of the record indicates that he touched many, far beyond what is known today by all but the few who formed his inner circle. Here we can only cite a random sampling. Using the years which fall after Johnson’s program was well launched and before the full impact of World War II as representative, it is easy to determine that for a graduate student, an appointment with Johnson at Fisk was tantamount to a secure academic future. At the end of the 1937–38 academic year, for example, eleven students received the master of arts degree in sociology.48 All were immediately employed “in representative vocations.” Three entered college teaching, three others combined college teaching and research, one concentrated only on research, and four went into social work (a superintendent of a settlement house, a state supervisor of delinquent girls, a director of industrial work for a social organization, and a state probation officer). The Special Fellows fared even better if the academic year 1938–39 was typical.49 That year, there were eight Special Fellows and two assistants who already had the master’s degree but still chose to spend the year working under Johnson. Of this group, Johnson wrote Embree that “three have gone to head departments of sociology or social studies in Southern institutions; one became a statistical analyst in New York; one Dean of Women; two are completing their work toward their doctorates, and are beginning with the fellowship aid.” In all, four of the Special Fellows and assistants were “returning to their . . . dissertations” in one form or another. And “three of these 4 secured Rosenwald fellowships.” One of the placements that most interested Johnson was Josie Sellers, who over the years had performed yeoman service on such projects as Shadow of the Plantation. Johnson and Will W. Alexander had decided to make Fessenden Academy in St. Martin’s, Florida, an American Missionary Association and Farm Security Administration demonstration school. To head the program and serve as principal, Johnson and Alexander chose Sellers, who “is not only intelligent, but a good administrator.”50

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During World War II, Johnson’s staff more than made its contribution. Eli S. Marks joined the War Production Board; Addison T. Cutler, the Office of Price Administration; and for a time before he entered the military service, Louis Wade Jones was in the Office of War Information. But the real measurement of Johnson’s influence can be seen in the later careers of those whom he taught. A partial and representative listing includes several individuals who became at one time college presidents, such as William H. Hale of Langston University, Herman H. Long of Talladega College, and Lionel H. Newsom, of Johnson C. Smith University and later Central State. Among individuals who at one time or another became college administrators are Elton C. Harrison, formerly vice president of Academic Affairs at Southern University and later named vice president for Administration and Planning at Dillard University; Willis J. Hubert, academic dean at Morehouse College; and Joseph Taylor, dean of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Among the many individuals who later were recognized as outstanding scholars are Clifton R. Jones of Morgan State University, Lewis Wade Jones of Tuskegee Institute, and Charles R. Lawrence and Hugh H. Smythe of Brooklyn College. In the area of community service, Johnson’s imprint was evident in the work of Cleo Blackburn at Flanner House in Indianapolis and Lettie Galloway at the Matthew Walker Health Center in Nashville. In the area of governmental and international service, Johnson’s legacy was also evident. At one time or another, Giles A. Hubert, Preston Valien, John Buggs, Hugh H. Smythe, and Donald Wyatt were all involved in some kind of foreign or international service, with Smythe serving for a period as ambassador to Syria. In the area of government service, John Buggs, for instance, served as an administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Preston Valien served as Acting Associate Commissioner for Higher Education for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Some time prior to that position, Valien had been cultural attaché in Lagos, Nigeria. While in Lagos with her husband, Bonita Valien did research for the Department of Commerce producing a study on small industry in Ghana that might benefit from American investment.51 Here, she employed the Park-Johnson survey method and trained indigenous Ghanians from the various tribes as interviewers. When she returned to the states, she was employed at Columbia University to do research and direct one of the academic areas for a program funded by the State Department to train for the first time in the United States sixteen Nigerian women in leadership programs. Two other Johnson students who readily come to mind for their service in the State Department are Ernest E. Neal and Samuel C. Adams, Jr. Neal worked for a time as a college teacher and administrator, as well as doing a stint in the Office of Price Administration.52 In the early 1950s,

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he accompanied Lester B. Granger of the National Urban League on a visit to India for the State Department to observe the conditions of the poor. Later, Neal was sent back to India by the Agency for International Development (AID) to continue his work. For many years thereafter, he worked with AID. Samuel C. Adams, Jr., also served the State Department for years. His first appointment was in Indochina; from there, he went to Mali; and then, as AID Mission Director, to Morocco; and, finally, to Niger. In later years, he served AID as assistant administrator for Africa. The list of those Johnson touched could go on and on. During the tenure of Charles S. Johnson, the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk University provided an academic program of excellence producing numerous leaders, and in later years, many of these individuals gained access to the councils of policy making. While the contributions of many of Johnson’s students may be lost in footnotes to history, many of the positive policy decisions that have come in the period following World War II can be traced to the years the participants in those policy decisions spent on the Cumberland in Nashville, Tennessee, with Charles S. Johnson.

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Chapter 9

Beyond the Classroom: Service Intellectual

B

y the end of 1930, Charles S. Johnson was back from Liberia. The mechanics of the purely academic programs of the Department of Social Sciences were running smoothly. Johnson began to develop the various facets of the department beyond the classroom that characterized his tenure as chair from 1928 to 1947. As the Fisk sociologist worked to relate classroom theory with a sound practice in the field, three general themes emerged. First, Johnson was a pioneer in the process that during the New Deal saw the close cooperation of government officials and academicians. In later years, historians characterized involved scholars as service intellectuals.1 Secondly, he continued his cooperation with foundations, especially the Rosenwald Fund, and by the mid-1930s, he was able to expand the work of his department with new government funding supplementing that of the foundations. Finally, he coordinated various demonstration projects where the classroom theory was put to a test and the power elite were given an opportunity to examine pilot projects that might later lead to larger national programs. Prior to the Great Depression, on the national level, much of the South had been in a state of near depression for at least a half century. During the third month of the Roosevelt Administration, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act on May 12, 1933, which allowed for the establishment of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).2 The underlying philosophy of the AAA was the desire to control production of the major staples by paying farmers to limit the acreage they planted. Despite some encouraging improvements in the financial stability of middle- and upper-class farmers, the programs of the AAA often were actually detrimental to the working poor, especially in the South. The chief beneficiaries of the government subsidies to limit crop 109

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production were commercial farmers and owners of large holdings. In meeting the government requirements to reduce acreage, they often forced tenants and sharecroppers off the land. Soon, there developed a large class of itinerant farm laborers in the rural areas and unemployed newcomers in the cities. At about the same time that the AAA was established, Johnson and his associates at Fisk combined with Rupert B. Vance and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina to begin a massive investigation “of cotton culture and farm tenancy in the region commonly known as the Old South.”3 The findings of this Rosenwald funded study were summarized in the short book written in 1935 by Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and Will W. Alexander entitled The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys 1933–35. The text of The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy was undoubtedly drafted by Johnson with Alexander and Embree allowing the use of their names in order to assure that its conclusions and recommendations got a hearing.4 In this short work, Johnson indicted the whole tenancy situation.5 An abominable credit system tied to a single cash crop economy and controlled by the plantation orientation of the past had all been factors in the collapse of the cotton tenancy. When the market plunged downward, a situation already desperate was made nearly catastrophic. Johnson’s interpretation of the tenancy problem was essentially an economic and class analysis. He recommended the reorganization of farming in the cotton states. Sharecroppers must have land of their own and even be subsidized in the beginning. In short, with the support of Embree and Alexander, Johnson called for the government to “buy up huge acreages of farm lands now in the hands of insurance companies, land banks, and others, and distribute this land in small plots of minimum size required to support farm families.”6 In many ways the program suggested by Johnson, Embree, and Alexander was the opposite of what the AAA was doing. From some time before the publication of their book until the passage of the BankheadJones Tenancy Act in 1937, the triumvirate of Alexander, Embree, and Johnson lobbied for a New Deal agricultural policy that would be aimed toward helping the poor enter the mainstream of American capitalism. To gain the ear of the president, Johnson used his personal contact with the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who responded by placing a copy of The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy on President Roosevelt’s nightstand and “insisted that he read it.”7 But even if the president had wanted to sign into law the concepts embodied in the program of the triumvirate, it was first necessary to get Congress to pass the law authorizing such a plan. As a member of the President’s Technical Committee on Farm Tenancy, Johnson at least had his foot in the door.8

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Even before Johnson tried to persuade the chief executive, he was working on the Cabinet and Congress. In January of 1934, he wrote his wife Marie of a nine-hour meeting, apparently in the Rosenwald suite at the Hay-Adams House, with four members of the Department of Agriculture, which did not break up until one-thirty in the morning.9 That night, he told his wife, “It is fantastic. It is unbelievable—we are actually arguing for two billion dollars to reconstruct the tenant system, and by damn they are listening and going to bat on it.” The prospects looked good, as Johnson went on to say: “They go into a huddle on Tuesday with Senator Bankhead of Ala. and the President; on Wednesday draft . . . a bill.” Although the Bankhead-Jones Tenancy Act was still three years off, a beginning had been made. Toward the end of 1934, Johnson was back in Washington again for a conference with Alexander and Embree in the Hay-Adams House. Among those he saw were W. E. B. Du Bois, Frank Tannebaum, and Clark Foreman.10 The latter had been employed by the Rosenwald Fund to direct the Negro Affairs branch of the Department of Interior where Johnson, among others, had been instrumental in persuading Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to innovate some programs directly aiding blacks.11 But his main preoccupation was still the tenancy reform program that he hoped Congress would pass. The process of lobbying for reform was a slow one. Early in 1935, Johnson wrote his close friend Arthur A. Schomburg, “I dashed . . . for Washington, and had conferences with Wallace, Tugwell, Wilson, Grey, et al. on the tenant situation, which at the moment seems more promising.”12 But the program that the triumvirate wanted was still more than two years away. During this period, Johnson found time to write Claude A. Barnett, head of the Associated Negro Press in Chicago, and explain the strategy of the fight for reform.13 Among the points he related to Barnett was the fact that the triumvirate “thought it important to call attention to the fact that the tenant problem was not wholly a Negro problem, because for so many years it has been neglected on this assumption.” At the same time, Johnson added that “the predicament of the Negroes is quite serious, and since most of them are bulked in the southeastern cotton states (and incidentally most seriously affected) there is likelihood of widespread suffering if something is not done . . . and soon.” While Johnson struggled to persuade whites to move on class issues, he knew it was important to continue to hold the support of the black press, which tended to be run by “race men.” He knew his colleague of many years, Claude A. Barnett, would support his case as far as it was politically possible. By April of 1935, it was time to turn to Barnett once again. On the thirteenth of the month, Johnson sent the following telegram to Barnett:

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SENATE BANKHEAD BILL TWO THREE SIX SEVEN DESIGNED TO RELIEVE PLIGHT OF FARM TENANTS BEFORE SENATE MONDAY MORNING WOULD YOU HAVE NUMBER OF PERSONS SEND TELEGRAMS IMMEDIATELY TO THEIR SENATOR URGING SUPPORT OF BILL. CHARLES S. JOHNSON14 The wire to Barnett was one of “about twenty telegrams to strategic points and thirty-five or forty special delivery letters” that Johnson sent off.15 Two days after receiving the telegram, Barnett replied informing Johnson he had acted on his April 13 wire. At the end of the month, Johnson informed Barnett that the bill had suffered a temporary setback and had been “re-committed to committee for certain modifications.”16 Later in the same letter, Johnson characterized the Bankhead Bill as being one of the “most important bits of legislation up; it is more social in its character, and has greater prospect of sound rehabilitation than almost any other bill before Congress.” The fight continued on into 1936. This time, Johnson’s friend Claude A. Barnett was more organized when he got the call. Barnett collected letters from southern black readers, most of whom were supporters of the Bankhead-Jones bill. In thanking the many individuals who supported his campaign on behalf of the bill, he wrote a general letter of thanks in which he explained his approach: “Your letters and those enclosed letters have been sent to 600 key colored people in every congressional district in the Middle-West. These have been asked to contact their congressman and to urge his vote for the measure.”17 Barnett further announced to his supporters that he was undertaking a tour of Detroit, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. It was his hope that the bill would be successful because of the “colored people in one section using their votes to help . . . those in another.” Johnson’s long relationship with Barnett, nourished by little amenities like his note the previous year explaining the program for tenancy reform, appeared to be paying dividends. This time, the bill passed the Senate but failed to reach the House in time to be voted on. The year of success was to be 1937. In February, the President’s Committee on Farm Tenancy issued their recommendations to President Roosevelt. Their findings, which Johnson and the other two members of the triumvirate had been lobbying to influence for some time, became the basis for the Bankhead-Jones Act.18 As The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy had demonstrated two years earlier, things were not good for most of the

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rural South. One-half of the southern, one-third of the northern, and onefourth of the western farmers were sharecroppers or tenants. Hundreds of thousands were unemployed by the 1930s due, in part, to the poorly conceived AAA programs that paid landowners to take land out of production. The unintended consequences led to unemployment for the working poor in rural areas.19 The President’s Committee on Farm Tenancy had recommended to FDR that the old AAA Resettlement Administration be reorganized into the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The Bankhead-Jones Tenancy Act, which was signed into law on July 22, 1937, funded low-interest loans for the purpose of enabling mudsill farmers in the South to purchase farmland, and to prevent those near foreclosure on their tenant farms from losing their land to the Great Depression. Additionally, the act created the FSA, which would replace the moribund Resettlement Administration. It was the FSA that would attempt to implement the reforms that Alexander, Embree, Johnson, Rupert B. Vance, and others envisaged. Essentially, the philosophy of the act was sound welfare capitalism which aimed to include the rural working poor in the mainstream of American capitalism. Unfortunately, it never realized its potential.20 FDR’s New Deal soon became a victim of war clouds in Europe and the growing conservatism in the nation that, after 1938, saw the coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans bring an end to New Deal reforms. President Roosevelt’s desire to aid the bottom third in the economy would eventually be thwarted by war and the conservatives of the Bourbon South voting with big business interests in the North. Johnson and his colleagues had done a yeoman task in getting the Bankhead-Jones Bill introduced and passed. They had shown the way, but the nation chose not to follow. During the war, the activities of the FSA were curtailed, and in 1946, Congress moved the functions of the FSA over into the newly created Farm Home Administration where it was strangulated. Even while Johnson was serving the nation directly as a service intellectual, his work at Fisk went on. In the early years, before he was firmly entrenched in the New Deal, he began a series of studies at Fisk. At that time, funds were scarce and the government was not supporting his programs. Most of the funding came from foundations, with the chief benefactor being the Rosenwald Fund. In fact, during the years from 1928 to 1935, the fund gave about $920,175 to Fisk and the neighboring Meharry Medical College.21 A significant part of that money went to the Department of Social Sciences, which happened to be chaired by the same individual who was trustee for the fund after 1934. The initial studies Johnson undertook followed rather closely the plan that he had submitted to President Thomas E. Jones in 1928 upon coming to Fisk. This meant that at

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first he concentrated on studying Nashville and Tennessee.22 Johnson reported in 1930 that the early field work “covered 1000 Negro families, the Negro churches, play grounds, places of amusement, [and] 150 industries”; in addition, “the city and the Negro areas of the city have been outlined and mapped from the special census data.” Johnson’s first countywide project outside of Nashville was a study of Gibson County, Tennessee, where he sent his first assistants, Ophelia Settle and Annabelle Bloodworth. But by 1931, he had expanded to regional studies. This led him to begin the Macon County, Alabama, study, with Ophelia Settle, Lewis Wade Jones, Josie Sellers, and Ann Savage working under the careful eyes of E. Franklin Frazier, Horace Mann Bond, and Johnson. A study of racial attitudes was also under way for the Social Science Research Council, and early work was being done on the “unwritten history of slavery,” the latter consisting of “autobiographical accounts of Negro ex-slaves ‘written down exactly as they were obtained.’” By the mid-1930s, Johnson was gaining the ear of the Roosevelt Administration. As a result, he had access to large new sources of funding for his research projects. From about 1935 forward, the research done in the Department of Social Sciences expanded, first to include the whole South, and later the entire nation. The government support had a snowballing effect and made foundation funds more easily obtainable. But Johnson paid a great personal price in work and emotional anguish for this added support. A partial review of his activities in the summer of 1935 suggests why. Most of the summer was spent in Washington working with the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Johnson’s task was to direct the study of tobacco workers conducted for the NRA. The study, when finished, was entitled “An Inquiry into the Social and Industrial Economic Position of Selected Classes of Tobacco Workers.” It proved to be one of the most explosive projects that Johnson and his staff undertook.23 For some time prior to the summer of 1935, interviews had been conducted with “approximately 2,000 white and Negro workers engaged in tobacco rehandling under the [NRA] tobacco code in the process of manufacturing cigarettes, smoking and chewing tobacco, and snuff; and selected groups of workers in independent stemmeries not operating under a code.” Once the data from the tobacco manufacturing cities of North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky were collected, it was up to Charles S. Johnson to give it some meaning. But even as Johnson toiled during the summer of 1935, there were indications that his scientific judgments were not what many wanted to hear. In that context, he wrote his wife Marie, “If you could see the terrible delemma [sic] of this study. . . . There is a fight . . . to suppress it . . . and a divisional fight to rush it to completion.”24 At the end of the

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summer, Johnson took the data back to Nashville to write a final draft.25 But the forces to suppress won as Johnson’s secretary Hattie M. Perry recalls that “the text was sent in, but . . . the government never printed it.”26 Although the Roosevelt Administration opted not to publish the tobacco study, Johnson did place a portion of his findings in an article for the American Journal of Sociology entitled “The Conflict of Caste and Class in an American Industry.”27 The study was framed in Johnson’s usual theoretical setting. First, he traced the development of the opinions of tobacco workers, stemming from historically developed attitudes. During slavery times, blacks had made the first shift from the field to the factory in the manufacture of tobacco. Eventually, blacks held a virtual “monopoly of tobacco work, establishing a fixed association of Negroes and tobacco.” With emancipation and a new definition of caste, suddenly whites argued that blacks were not capable of doing the work which they dominated. Thus, at an early point in race relations, caste and status, rather than skill, were the determining factors for employment. As a result, “with each advance in machinery there has been an increase in white male and female labor, and Negro workers have held only those jobs secured to them by low wages, disagreeable dust, and by tasks regarded as too heavy for native-born white Americans.” The advancing economic competition, compounded by the Great Depression, produced a more restrictive definition of caste, and blacks were being squeezed out of the industry. The accommodation, “regarded by white workers as natural and by the Negro workers as traditional, is used by the industry to keep the two groups actively and impotently in conflict.” The consequence was that the bogus issue of race was used to prevent “a solid labor front competent to bargain with capital.” Johnson’s article served to document the absurdity of segregation. As his team moved from Louisville to Winston-Salem to Reidsville, North Carolina, the pattern of segregation was sometimes spatial, sometimes ceremonial, and sometimes temporarily suspended during the Christmas rush. It was clear that race was not the issue. But as long as assimilation of the working forces and unions were denied, poor working whites paid dearly for the status they gained at the expense of blacks. The summer of 1935 was a difficult one for Johnson; his letters to Marie had not been so depressing since the days of isolation in Liberia. In addition to his heavy work schedule for the NRA, he had to keep up with the work at Fisk. For part of the summer, Dorothy Steele, departmental secretary, and Lewis Wade Jones, research assistant, were in Washington to help with the routine of the department.28 Fellowships had to be secured for graduate students, and foundations had to be kept abreast of how Fisk was spending their money. And, of course, Johnson continued to work on and lobby for the needed tenancy reforms. In this context, Johnson wrote

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his wife, “The cotton report has been a tedious matter of revisions and checking. Alexander and Embree have cleared all of this thru me.” Apparently, most frustrating to Johnson was the need to work with a bureaucracy that he did not control. As he wrote his wife, “This man’s government cannot see that in half the time with my staff I could do what I am expected to do here without it.”29 During the same month, he again wrote, “I’m damned tired of this place, of NRA . . . and of knocking around, while the summer counts down upon my head.” The one thing that seemed to keep Johnson going during the lonely and hard-working summer of 1935 was the prospective trip to Europe that he and his wife planned in August.30 The Rosenwald Fund was paying the bills for him to travel to Europe. While there, he was to give special attention to Ireland and Denmark as they related to the land tenancy question.31 Apparently, it was to be a working vacation. There is some indication in the correspondence that President Jones of Fisk was not overly happy at Johnson’s spending the summer away from Nashville.32 For example, Jones made it unusually difficult for Johnson to coordinate the department’s budget with that of the university. And there appears to have been some dispute on how the New Deal funds were to be handled at Fisk. In the end, Johnson seemed to have won his point. But after a summer’s hassle, it was not a propitious time to ask Jones for a vacation on company time. Therefore, he planned the trip to coincide with his regular vacation in August. In view of his disputes with Jones during the summer of 1935, it is interesting to note that in June he wrote Marie, “[I]t is possible that the personal check for 1000 will come in the same mail. This is for Ireland overhead and should neither be mentioned nor turned over. They do such funny tricks with money, and it gets lost in the general budget so easily.” But the trip was a pleasant one, and the one-thousand-dollar stipend made it possible for him to take his wife with him. It appears that Johnson ended up doing more work than he had anticipated.33 The trip lasted about a month and a half, and Johnson arrived back on campus a week late for school.34 The next few months were given over to finishing the draft of the tobacco study. By the fall of 1935, the Department of Social Sciences was headed in a new direction. Johnson had made a deep impression upon the inner circle of the New Deal. With new sources for funding, he expanded his programs in the department until, by the end of his tenure, it was one of the finest research departments in the South. Of the many agencies funding Johnson’s work after 1935, one was the Work Projects Administration (WPA).35 One of the first such WPA studies was confined to Tennessee and “designed to provide social information useful to the State, to private organizations, and to individual students, as a basis for more efficient social administration.” In all, over nine

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thousand families in seven counties were studied. Johnson and his staff made a similar but more ambitious study for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The major concern in the latter study was to determine the effect of the TVA upon the economic and social institutions of blacks. For example, what did relocation mean for the black family? Often, such studies as those for the WPA and the TVA were undertaken against the will of the state officials. For example, Johnson wrote Claude A. Barnett of the difficulties he was having with the first WPA study: “The truth of the matter is, we have had sufficiently serious difficulties drawing this study through the state office and getting it established under unchallengeable standards of scientific validity, it has been felt by the State that this was too large a project for Negroes and involved too large a sum for nonmanual Negro workers. They have very much wanted these funds for other purposes, and these young men have been providing the kind of excuse that would justify diverting them to other channels.”36 In 1936, Johnson and his staff cooperated with the Department of the Interior on another research venture known as the “white-collar” study; it was later published as The Urban Negro Worker in the United States, 1925–1936.37 Ira DeA. Reid and Robert C. Weaver directed the study, conducted by Johnson and Preston Valien, which aimed to “ascertain the type and amount of training ‘white collar’ and ‘skilled’ Negro workers have received, the relationship between this training and their occupational experiences, and the methods by which they secured their basic training.” The white-collar project was especially significant for the professional growth of the department. By this time, Johnson had firmly established a complex statistical laboratory, and students were being given “training in the use of statistical equipment, computing machines and Hollerith tabulating machines.” Eli S. Marks was directly responsible for the laboratory. Under his guidance, Preston Valien and Lewis Wade Jones soon became accomplished statisticians. At the end of the summer of 1936, Johnson was able to report to Edwin R. Embree that in two and one-half months, 250,000 schedules of the study had been processed by Fisk. Despite a long and work-filled summer, Johnson wrote Embree, the “funding here of data that cost a third of a million dollars to assemble, and the opportunity to work up materials of so substantial a sample, are compensations for the present.” From 1935 until the eve of World War II, Johnson and his staff engaged in many research ventures. The multiple studies that were produced at Fisk during these years merit a major monograph in themselves. Here, we can only cite a few examples. Johnson encouraged his staff in their own research, although it usually related to the more general research that his department was doing.38 For example, Harry J. Walker found time to do a study of “Negro Benevolent Associations” in New Orleans for a private

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agency, and Herman H. Long did a study of the Armstrong Association, a quasi-Urban League organization in Philadelphia. More typical was the study done by Lewis Wade Jones on the “Diet and Eating Health Habits of Rural Children” in Johnston County, North Carolina.39 Jones’s investigation was an outgrowth of the department’s extensive study of life in the rural South. The program, which was funded primarily, but not exclusively, by the Rosenwald Fund, was known by many titles, but Johnson usually gave it the general rubric of “Southern Rural Life Series.” It was this general program that produced the massive data on the study of cotton tenancy conducted by Johnson’s staff and Rupert B. Vance. The Southern Rural Life Series included an “. . . analysis and interpretation of a large volume of data on the economic organization of the cotton belt, standard of living of tenants and share croppers, income, the credit structure, trends in population growth, land utilization, State and Federal legislation.” In addition to the study of cotton tenancy, which contributed so much to the creation of the FSA, the Department of Social Sciences engaged in a number of other projects initiated by the Rosenwald Fund. The study of racial attitudes, begun under the Social Science Research Council, was continued: “A Source Book for the Study of the Negro—Suitable for Use in Both White and Negro Colleges” was undertaken; the roles of teacher training and rote learning were studied; and other studies of rural social life were included. The list goes on and on. For example, in 1937, Johnson began collecting materials for a biography of Mary McLeod Bethune. In many ways, Johnson’s program at Fisk came to fruition in the Louisiana school study, which exemplified most of the general characteristics of the department’s work from 1935 to 1941. On the eve of World War II, Johnson was called upon to aid in a larger Louisiana educational survey.40 At that time, he had an unusually mature group of Special Fellows, supported by the Rosenwald Fund, ready to go into the field to do survey work. The study started with a thorough orientation in Johnson’s seminar in clinical sociology. Before departing for the field, a careful examination was made of existing information on Louisiana from such sources as the Fisk data bank and the United States Department of Agriculture. Since Johnson conceived the study in his usual broad context, geographical, political, ecological, social, economic, and political factors were all considered in selecting representative counties to study. His objective in the study was to observe the impact of an institution, in this case segregated black schools, upon the life of the individual as well as upon the larger society. The study was as concerned with the political, social, and economic framework in which the schools were operating as it was with what went on in the classroom. In many ways, the student was a case study of Robert E. Park’s marginal man. In the classroom, the marginal man was being

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given one set of values, but at the same time, he brought into the classroom a set of values learned from his parents back on the plantation. The key was to understand the relationship. Johnson’s task in the Louisiana study was threefold. First, he conceptualized it as a sociologist. Second, he assigned personnel to the survey. From his impressive staff, he named as supervisors and interviewers Edmonia Grant, who had worked in the department on a number of major studies during much of the 1930s; Herman H. Long, a young Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, who was being given his first major assignment; and Claudius Anderson Turner, who held an M.A. degree from Atlanta University and had been a high school principal in Arkansas for six years. Grant, Long, and Turner were supplied with a team of seven “observers and interviewers” who divided their research. The family was studied by William H. Hale and Alice C. Reid; classroom observations and the one- and two-teacher schools were undertaken by Minerva H. Johnson and Alma O. Potts; Elizabeth McDougald studied vocational objectives and guidance; and Stanford J. Harris was concerned with rural organizations. Finally, Charles T. Steele researched race relations. The third task for Johnson in the study was one of coordination. In October 1941, Johnson spent about ten days in Louisiana getting the necessary procedures worked out locally. He also had to coordinate the study by Fisk, later entitled “The Negro Public Schools: A Social and Educational Survey,” which was a part of the massive, seven-volume Louisiana Educational Survey: Survey of Elementary and Secondary Education. The chairman of the Louisiana Educational Survey Commission was John M. Fletcher of Tulane University. Johnson, however, had most of his contact with Carleton Washburne, who was superintendent of schools in Winnetka, Illinois, and was employed by the Louisiana Educational Survey Commission as director of the division dealing with elementary and secondary education. Fisk’s contribution to the larger Louisiana Educational Survey numbered nine chapters and 256 pages. It appears that Johnson and the Fisk team did all the research and writing, with the exception of a chapter of recommendations where Washburne’s initials appear. Johnson’s appreciation of applied sociology was never more evident than in the various demonstration projects that he coordinated. One such example was an FSA pilot program in which Johnson coordinated a project to cultivate black leadership for rural areas, combining the resources of both Fisk and Tuskegee Institute with the more radical goals of the FSA. Johnson had labored indefatigably in the mid-1930s to bring about the tenancy reforms. He understood that if black ownership of farms was to be realized, it was important to develop indigenous black leadership in the FSA. But once the FSA was established, it soon became apparent that it

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had no positive plans to recruit and employ blacks in staffing the program. Johnson, with the assistance of Alexander, set out to remedy this situation.41 Shortly after the establishment of the FSA, Fisk faculty member Giles A. Hubert was employed jointly by Fisk and the FSA. His task was to locate and to study existing black farm communities. He was to give special attention to existing land tenure and home ownership laws. At the same time, Hubert’s main concern was to locate and develop potential black leadership for rehabilitating black communities through the FSA. By the late 1930s, southern agriculture was undergoing a revolution, as mechanization was replacing hand labor. As Hubert recalls, “Many black farming communities did not have the capital or technical know-how or leadership to make the change.” Under the careful tutelage of Johnson and Alexander, Hubert, along with Lewis Wade Jones and Joseph R. Otis, crafted a recruitment and training program to give the FSA program a new direction which would include significant black involvement. Hubert spent a good deal of his time commuting between Washington and Nashville. Jones, in his capacity as a rural sociologist, was the mainstay of the program at Fisk, and Otis served in a similar capacity at Tuskegee Institute. The project was funded by a grant from the General Education Board and was supplemented by the Rosenwald Fund.42 During the first semester of the program, the students spent most of the time at Fisk, where the work was designed to “help the student, through a broad social organization, to an appreciation of the problems of rural peoples, the organization and functioning of rural communities, and the relationship of the teachers of agriculture to the organization and development of rural life generally.” Once again, Johnson employed the general seminar method to unite the projects of various students. In addition to the seminar, students were allowed to select related but practical courses from ones like farm bookkeeping and accounting, to the more theoretical ones dealing with labor problems and cooperatives. A number of field trips were a part of the curriculum. Giles A. Hubert, for example, took the group to the FSA projects in Jackson, Tennessee. The second semester’s work at Tuskegee was even more practical in its orientation than that at Fisk; it stressed farm management and agricultural workshops, but continued the seminar in rural problems begun in Nashville. At the completion of the second semester, the students were “turned over to the Farm Security Administration and sent for their internship to areas chosen by the Administration, and apprenticed to workers which they select[ed].” This on-the-job training continued for the summer. It was Johnson’s hope that the experience of the program would be “exceedingly helpful not only to those who might become employees

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of the Farm Security Administration but also to those who are interested in a wide variety of rural leadership activities.” During its short existence, the program helped provide leadership in thirty or more communities scattered throughout the South, all the way from Louisiana and eastern Texas to South Carolina.43 Typical of the more successful projects were St. Helena Island in South Carolina; Gee’s Bend, near Selma, Alabama, on the Tombigbee River; and the Log Cabin Community in Hancock, Georgia. But like so much of the New Deal, the FSA lost its funding with rising southern conservatism in the 1940s and the coming of World War II. In the mid-1940s the FSA became the Farmers Home Administration, and under its new orientation, there was no place for the program that Johnson and Alexander had conceived and that Hubert, Jones, and Otis had carried out.44 Nevertheless, the FSA project had demonstrated a potential for the improvement of the lot of the poor with affirmative government support. The program with the FSA and Tuskegee was the most ambitious— but only one of many in which Johnson involved his department. Nor was such involvement limited to the South.45 For example, a group of his students, directed by Cleo Blackburn and including Paul Phillips, Joseph Taylor, and Josie Sellers, did a sociological study of fifteen hundred families in Indianapolis, Indiana. From that study emerged the plan for the settlement house named Flanner House. And as early as 1936, even before Johnson and Alexander conceived the program to train rural workers, Johnson had a number of students working as interns in the Tennessee Valley area.46 Graduate students were involved in projects where “the living community is the laboratory and the students spend the time as participating residents, taking part in and observing the social process in actual community life.” In reporting on this project, Johnson summed up his approach to applied sociology when he wrote, “It is an attempt to bring into more intimate relationship the theories of the classroom and the actual socio-economic conditions in the Tennessee Valley Area, so that the students may have a better opportunity to integrate the two into working principles.” One of Johnson’s rewarding projects on the local Nashville level was the Fisk University Social Center. In many ways, it was a precursor of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program more than a generation later. During the first half of the twentieth century, Nashville had built a strong tradition of settlement houses. As early as 1923, Bethlehem Center, largely through the unheralded but heroic efforts of a black woman, Sadie Hill Sawyer, had been opened.47 Later, the South Street Center in South Nashville and the Youth Center in North Nashville were developed.48 Johnson built on this tradition. In 1937, he secured for Fisk the former

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Bertha Fensterwald settlement house. It was located in a “transitional” neighborhood and had previously been maintained by the Jewish community.49 The social center was financed through numerous sources. Many of the facilities were paid for by the Community Chest.50 The faculty, staff, and general labor were usually paid out of the foundation funds, most commonly from the General Education Board or the Rosenwald Fund. Johnson’s use of the social center was consistent with his other projects. As he reported at the end of the first year: “Although its direct services will be in the nature of social programs for the community, it provides a long-needed social laboratory for graduate students interested in social problems and for students generally whose education can be expanded through contact and experience with the real life situations of various social groups.”51 Despite Johnson’s concern for a social laboratory, the social center was directed more toward social work and community service than many of his programs. It conducted health clinics, provided the area with a communityoriented library, conducted a recreation program for children, and even started an informal community news bulletin. The center also sponsored a community adult education program, which attempted to “work out educational procedures, taking into account cultural factors influencing the learning processes.” People’s College, as Johnson called the adult education program, was a pioneer venture in an area that social scientists would move into with great enthusiasm a generation later. In 1940, Johnson added the Institute for Youth Study to the social center.52 It was a joint program under the auspices of the Fisk University Social Center, the Department of Education at Fisk, Meharry Medical College, and the Nashville Juvenile Court. Considerable time was spent in the study of personality and culture under the direction of Bingham Dai, a trained psychiatrist. Dai and his staff were testing the hypothesis that “the individual personality is a unique psychophysical organization that results from the interaction between the individual’s native endowment and his social and cultural environment.” During the brief period that Dai was conducting his study, the program, centered on the children’s institute, was extensive. It included “physical examinations, mental tests, personality tests, psychiatric or modified psychoanalytic interviews, and social case studies.” The combined work of Dai, Johnson, and the Nashville Juvenile Court served a number of purposes. In addition to being a research center in personality and culture, it acted as a clinical training laboratory for students in sociology, social work, education, psychology, and other fields. Of more immediate consequences was its program to “aid the legal, educational and social agencies in the community, . . . to give counsel and guidance to individual youth who may voluntarily apply for such; and to promote preventive mental hygiene measures in

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the community.” The Fisk social center continued to operate beyond Johnson’s tenure as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences until it fell victim to urban renewal in 1950. While the social center served as a miniature social agency, this was not its chief significance. More important was its function as a laboratory for Fisk social science staff and students. In addition, it demonstrated what could be done. And for those who were interested, the social center provided a model for later-day large-scale programs. The multiple studies and demonstration projects carried on during the 1930s and 1940s by Johnson and his staff gradually established at Fisk University the largest data bank of information about race relations in the nation. More and more scholars, foundations, and governmental agencies seeking such information journeyed to Nashville.53 It became a policy with Johnson that “funded social data is kept on file for all studies completed in the Department . . . [including] schedules, interviews, and other accumulated social data.” In addition, largely as a result of the work of Dorothy Steele and Bonita H. Valien and the contribution of Robert E. Park, a large book, periodical, and document library was established. It is not surprising, then, that many of the books written on race relations during this era drew much of their material from the Fisk data bank. This was true, for instance, of E. Franklin Frazier’s Free Negro Family (1932), Horace Mann Bond’s Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (1934), Arna Bontemps’s Black Thunder: Gabriel’s Revolt, Virginia, 1800 (1936), Sterling Brown’s Negro in American Fiction (1937), Bertam W. Doyle’s The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (1937), and Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell’s Black Workers and New Unions (1939)54 Among the foundations using the Fisk resources, the Carnegie Corporation was the most conspicuous. Besides engaging Johnson and the department to do research on segregation, Gunnar Myrdal sent Doxey A. Wilkerson to gather information for the educational section of what was to become An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Wilkerson made use of the basic data at Fisk for his memorandum on “Special Problems of Negro Education.”55 Again in the area of education, Fisk, under the guidance of Horace Mann Bond, cooperated with Doak Campbell and J. E. Brewton of Peabody College to conduct extensive studies of rural schools. In fact, the data proved to be so important that the U.S. Office of Education, under the direction of Ina Corinne Brown, worked closely on the eve of World War II with Johnson and Fisk in the preparation of a volume entitled Socio-Economic Approach to Education Problems. As one looks back at Johnson’s contributions to the field of social work through his applied sociology, his role appears to be almost ubiquitous. Despite this salient legacy, projects like the Louisiana school study

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and the Fisk social center demonstration project were not Johnson’s first love. As Lewis Jones recalls, Johnson believed that social work applied a formula already worked out by sociologists.56 Johnson found searching for the formulas far more stimulating and challenging. With this orientation, it is not surprising that the most frequent use made of the Fisk data bank was by Johnson himself in his own seminal publications.

Chapter 10

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harles S. Johnson’s tenure was less than two years old when he indicated the role he envisioned for the Department of Social Sciences with the publication in 1930 of The Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research.1 The Fisk sociologist’s publication was an outgrowth of the National Interracial Conference held in Washington, D.C., in December 1928. The conference itself evolved over a two-year period as sixteen different organizations, from the NAACP and the National Urban League to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, initiated a serious study of race relations. George E. Haynes acted as executive secretary, with Johnson as research secretary. The program for the conference read like a Who’s Who in race relations. The list included Will W. Alexander, W. E. B. Du Bois, Clark Foreman, John M. Hope, James Weldon Johnson, Margaret Mead, Howard W. Odum, Robert E. Park, Channing Tobias, Walter White, and Monroe N. Work. With the encouragement of Mary Van Kleeck, a representative of the Russell Sage Foundation who served as chair of the executive committee, and Howard W. Odum, Charles S. Johnson was given the task of synthesizing the conference’s various studies into a book. Johnson’s objective was to establish a “sound basis for planning programs of improvement.” As was the case with The Negro in Chicago, the old racial stereotypes of biological inferiority, physical unsuitability, and mental limitation were rejected—albeit very dispassionately and cautiously. The emphasis was on changing the environment. The Negro in American Civilization was heavily laden with Johnson’s trademark of statistics, economics, and other general demographic information. After the program for the conference was under way, Johnson moved the National Urban League to Fisk University. One of President Thomas E. Jones’s concessions made to Johnson in recruiting him was that he be given time while at Fisk to work as research secretary for the National Interracial Conference.2 With the materials he had brought with him to Nashville and 125

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the subsequent publication of The Negro in American Civilization, the emphasis on publishing—characteristic of the Department of Social Sciences in the years that followed—was established. During the more than a generation that Johnson was active as a social scientist, he published prolifically. Such works as Race Relations and The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy are reviewed elsewhere in this text. Johnson published a number of strictly race relations books aimed at educating the layman. In addition to those discussed in other sections of this work, such as To Stem This Tide and Into the Main Stream, he published A Preface to Racial Understanding. It was written in a popular vein and directed chiefly toward church-oriented people. In the waning years of his career, Johnson summarized his ideas on education in Education and the Cultural Crisis. But the work, published during the fourth year of his presidency of Fisk, was again for the educated layperson and did not break any new ground for scholars. Far more important in the field of education was his work The Negro College Graduate, which was the result of almost a decade of research. Essentially, The Negro College Graduate was a statistical narrative. Financed by the General Education Board, it provided a sound basis from which to evaluate the black elite and middle class. Again, it revealed Johnson’s concern for demographic information. Insofar as it was interpretive, The Negro College Graduate sought to measure the degree of acculturation by black graduates into the mainstream of the United States. At the same time, it was a tour de force in showing the accomplishments of blacks when given the opportunity of education.3 Despite these impressive publications, Johnson’s greatest contribution as a sociologist was in the field of the sociology of the South. Here, combining the case study method, the survey method, and statistical analysis, he produced four seminal volumes. Three were on life in the South and one dealt with segregation. The latter work was set in both a southern and a national context. If all of Johnson’s other achievements during his career were put aside, he would rank high in the history of American academia solely on the basis of Shadow of the Plantation (1934), Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941), Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties: Listing and Analysis of Socio-Economic Indices of 1104 Southern Counties (1941), and Patterns of Negro Segregation (1943). Much of the research done for Johnson’s most important works on the South and segregation was a cooperative venture in the style that Gunnar Myrdal and Harry S. Ashmore later popularized. Over the years, Johnson had selected certain representative counties in the South for detailed study. With each new grant or project, he would send his team back to the same area for a more in-depth study until, after more than a decade of examination, he had compiled an authoritative catalogue of information

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for representative counties of the southern region.4 The most intensive part of Johnson’s studies was concentrated in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Basically, he concentrated on five types of representative counties. Bolivar and Coahoma counties in Mississippi were studied as the most “active and . . . flourishing plantation areas not yet seriously affected by the forces which have brought about disorganization in the other areas.” Macon County, Alabama, and Greene County, Georgia, were areas in which the “plantation system has been in the process of disintegration. In these areas, the collapse of tenancy has produced a shift to smaller ownership units, increased use of wage laborers on farms, and increased insecurity for owner and tenant alike.” Shelby County, Tennessee, was an “urban type of cotton county . . . [where] the city of Memphis . . . presents an interesting combination of the dominant cotton culture and the influence of urbanization.” Davidson County, Tennessee, was important, not only because Nashville was an urban center, but because its economy was based on diversified farming. Another representative of diversified farming often investigated by Johnson was Johnston County, North Carolina. Finally, the Fisk sociologist selected counties for comparative purposes, depending on the particular study that he was working on. In this way, from time to time counties like Conway and Poinsett in Arkansas or Harris in Texas were surveyed. Johnson’s first major study on the South from the data bank was Shadow of the Plantation.5 In 1931, he was invited by the Rosenwald Fund to aid in the study of venereal disease in Macon County, Alabama. The Rosenwald Fund and the United States Public Health Service in St. Louis were using schoolhouses to set up public clinics in the days before “wonder drugs.” Johnson’s task was to enlarge upon the purely medical venture and to conduct a social and economic study of the county. With a research team that included Horace Mann Bond, E. Franklin Frazier, Lewis Wade Jones, Ophelia Settle, Josie Sellers, and Ann Savage, Johnson launched the Macon County, Alabama, study in 1931. The sociological research of Johnson and his team was done prior to the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (Tuskegee Study). Johnson’s work was an outgrowth of a larger medical health study which the Rosenwald Fund assisted in 1930–31. In 1930, the Rosenwald Fund made a $50,000 grant for a project known as Demonstrations of the Control of Venereal Disease and conducted in the rural South. The grant was made in cooperation with the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and with state and local authorities.6 The grant was for demonstrations programs in Scott County, Mississippi, Tipton County, Tennessee, Glynn County, Georgia, Pitt County, North Carolina, Albermarle County, Virginia, and Macon County, Alabama.7 In

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1931, the Rosenwald Fund made a second one-year grant of $10,000 for a more intensive demonstration project in Macon County, Alabama.8 The project was a cooperative venture of the Rosenwald Fund, Macon County health officials, and PHS and was endorsed by Tuskegee Institute.9 The syphilis demonstrations control program was conceived to combine treatment with scientific medical research. By the 1930s, the Rosenwald Fund was directing its resources more towards education and less towards areas such as health.10 By 1931, the Rosenwald Fund questioned whether it should commit additional resources to the Macon County project. To assist the Rosenwald Fund in determining whether to fund the project beyond 1931, the Fund employed H. L. Harris, a black medical doctor, and Johnson, a sociologist, to review the project.11 In October 1931, Harris reported that without a comprehensive health and social welfare program, it was “useless to attempt to cure syphilis in the rural Negro population in Macon County, Alabama.”12 Prior to Dr. Harris’s report in April 1931, Johnson had submitted a preliminary report to the Fund describing the social and economic conditions of the black families in rural Macon County.13 Johnson’s report became the basis for Shadow of the Plantation. In the spring of 1933, after receiving the reports from Johnson and Dr. Harris, the Rosenwald Fund withdrew its support and funding for the Syphilis Demonstrations Control programs in Macon County, Alabama.14 Once the Rosenwald Fund withdrew support, it was assumed that the project would be dissolved. However, Dr. Taliaferro Clark, a white Virginia Bourbon, revived the moribund program by changing the nature of the project. Dr. Clark began the Tuskegee Study.15 For the next forty years, the Tuskegee Study, with few exceptions, was controlled by whites experimenting on black subjects without informed consent. For four decades, treatment was withheld, despite the emergence of penicillin in the 1940s. The project was shrouded in a conspiracy of silence. As one of the white doctors, Raymond Vondelehr, acting director of PHS Division of Venereal Diseases, wrote a colleague in 1933, “[E]veryone is agreed that the proper procedure is the continuance of the observation of the Negro men used in the study with the idea of eventually bringing them to autopsy.”16 This chilling disregard for human life is reminiscent of the attitude of Nazi doctors at Auschwitz and Dachau. When the conspiracy of silence was uncovered in 1972, ABC newscaster Harry Reasoner graphically characterized the Tuskegee Study as one that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a . . . study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”17 Details of the chilling Tuskegee Study, which is beyond the scope of this biography, is told in James H. Jones’s compelling book, Bad Blood.18

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Shadow of the Plantation attempted to “portray realistically the life of a rural Negro community under the influence of a plantation economy.”19 Johnson went to great lengths to stress the point that most of the 612 black families that he was studying were living in isolation from the dominant culture. Like most of his other studies, this one was first placed in its historical setting. It was Johnson’s contention that much of what he found in the black plantation community in Macon County in 1931 could be explained by the legacy of slavery. Next, he devoted considerable space to a study of institutions within the black community. One of the most impressive virtues of the study was its value-free analysis of the family structure. In this respect, Johnson wrote, “The community tends to act upon the patterns of its own social heritage. This is true of sex relations as well as of economic relations.” Johnson went on to note that “unique moral codes may develop from isolation.” He reminded his readers that “even in America there have developed patterns of sex relations among white communities not very different.” And certainly in “rustic villages of Bavaria, Austria, Norway, and Switzerland the presence of illegitimate children is not a handicap to women who wish to marry, but the conditions there have been different.” In fact, Johnson implied but did not state that the attitudes of the isolated black community on the plantation were more humane than those of the dominant culture in respect to children born out of conventional wedlock. He wrote, “There are few families, indeed, however poor, that would not attempt to rear a child left with them. Adoption, in a sense, takes the place of social agencies and orphans’ homes.” He went on to make the point even more cogently that “sexual unions resulting in the birth of children without the legal sanctions are of several types, and cannot properly be grouped together under the single classification of ‘illegitimate.’” The key was to understand that “children of common-law relationships are not illegitimate, from the point of view of the community or of their stability, for many of these unions are as stable as legally sanctioned unions.” After a detailed account of the historical setting of the Macon County families and the development of the family within that setting, Johnson analyzed other relevant economic, educational, and religious institutions. In addition, he went to great lengths to compare the plantation families with black families in Macon County residing at Tuskegee Institute. The Fisk data bank also had a study of 736 families in Gibson County, Tennessee, which was an area of diversified farming. Drawing from this data, Johnson argued against those who contended that blacks represented a culture which was “widely different from that of the Euro-American culture in which they now live.” In support of this point, Johnson directed the neutral observer to Tuskegee Institute, where the accomplishments of George

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Washington Carver, Monroe N. Work, and Robert Russa Moton refuted the racial stereotypes of the day. The second volume of Johnson’s study of life in the South Growing Up in the Black Belt was completed in 1941. In the mid-1930s, the American Youth Commission was conducting a general survey of American youth. Fearing that blacks would be obscured or misrepresented in the general study, the National Education Association delegated to Johnson and Charles H. Thompson of Howard University the task of drafting a proposal for the inclusion of a study of black youths.20 By January 1938, Johnson was able to write Homer P. Rainey, director of the American Youth Commission, stating that he would “be glad to assume responsibility for the direction of this study, and we are at present organizing certain suggestions growing out of such experience.” Once again, the Fisk team journeyed to Macon County, Alabama; Greene County, Georgia; Coahoma and Bolivar counties in Mississippi; Johnston County, North Carolina; and Davidson and Shelby counties in Tennessee. Madison County, Alabama, was added to include a single-crop cotton county outside the direct influence of the plantation. Many of the old familiar names went into the field again, including Edmonia Grant and Ophelia Settle. They were joined by others, such as Joseph Douglass, Anne DeBerry Johnson, Edward N. Palmer, and Paul Phillips, whose names later became familiar inside the Department of Social Sciences. Once the field work was completed, the statistical and technical coding was done by Eli S. Marks, Melissa E. Forrester, Estella H. Scott, and Bonita H. Valien. Essentially, Growing Up in the Black Belt was a “study of the personality development of southern rural Negro youth.” In order to measure this intangible phenomenon, Johnson obtained the expert advice of psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, along with that of Lily E. Brunschwig, an educator at Fisk, and fellow sociologist Hortense Powdermaker. They devised a series of tests which were administered to over two thousand black youths in the rural South. Johnson then had his staff follow up with “intensive interviews of about 20 per cent of these youth and, in addition, 916 of the families of these youth were interviewed.” When it came time to draft the youth study, Johnson changed his normal order of presentation. First, he sketched a “personality profile” of ten youths who were “typical and [had] problems common to the section.” Next, he developed his usual section on the historical setting and the development of attitudes affecting opinions. Here, he was concerned with the opinions that black youths had of themselves, of their peers and parents, and of the world in which they lived. Considerable time was devoted to a discussion of social, economic, and religious institutions and mores within the black community. After a chapter on the subject of “Color and Status,” Johnson concluded with a discussion of “Relations with Whites.”

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The value of Growing Up in the Black Belt was manifold.21 First, Johnson compiled a large amount of information about a topic little studied. The oppression of the white society that made escape the “primary goal of individual activity . . . sought in sex and shouting religion by some; in physical flight from the country to the city and from South to North by many” went far to picture the environment in which black youths grew up in the rural South between the wars. The spirit of hope displayed by a “persistent and almost pathetic faith in education as the magic key to attainment of ‘a better life’” belied the argument of whites of the era that blacks were contented with a caste relationship. The desire to escape from both poverty and racism, as exemplified in the striving for dignity and status in both employment and intragroup relationships, despite “a social system that makes them ambivalent toward themselves and other Negroes,” offered great insight into the region. Second, Johnson told his readers much about the future in his discussion of the unwillingness of blacks to accept caste status. Finally, by putting the massive data in a sociological and psychological framework, Johnson gave new meaning to existing knowledge. His emphasis on the role of environment in personality development did much to refute the literature of the time. And so did his documentation of the fact that “Negro youth do not as a rule take pride in the qualities for which Negroes are most appreciated by the white. Only a few of them, for example, recognize loyalty, uncomplaining industry, and patience as having racial prestige value comparable to the importance given these traits by the white group when they wish to speak favorably of Negroes.” Perhaps the outstanding feature of Growing Up in the Black Belt was the same as that of Shadow of the Plantation; black people were subject instead of object. Johnson went beyond white attitudes and opinions to determine what blacks felt and thought. His insistence that all interviews be in the first person and that they follow the “own story” method gave these two works a kind of authenticity and spontaneity that is rare in books on race relations.22 In 1934, the year of the publication of Shadow of the Plantation, the Rosenwald Fund organized the Council on Rural Education.23 Its primary purpose was to prepare the groundwork for “reforms in school procedures” in the southern region. The first task was “exploration of the rural school and the rural scene in the South.” The Fund selected sixteen “young people, both white and Negro, . . . [to live] for a year each in various types of southern communities in order to gain intensive first-hand insights into the conditions of the southern countryside and the southern version of the Little Red Schoolhouse.” At the same time, sociologists, economists, and educators “were studying the rural South as a whole and were assembling and interpreting the materials made available by . . . explorers and by many

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authoritative scholars throughout the region.” In addition to the new research being done, the work of Howard W. Odum in Southern Regions and of Rupert B. Vance in Human Geography of the South was used. As the investigation developed, a special committee of the Council, composed of Charles S, Johnson, W. Lloyd Warner of the University of Chicago, and Edwin R. Embree, began work on the social implications of the various studies. The committee “outlined the research, interpreted the findings, and laid out a plan for a compendium of information on southern counties.” After the project was under way, it was centered at Fisk University under the guidance of Johnson and his staff, with Warner and Embree serving as consultants.24 From the eleven-volume study of the Council on Rural Education emerged the Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties: Listing and Analysis of Socio-Economic Indices of 1104 Southern Counties. In this work, Johnson, in what was the epitome of cooperative research, combined the sophisticated statistical laboratory at Fisk, the consummate skills of Lewis Wade Jones, Eli S. Marks, and Preston Valien, and the assistance of Warner’s student, Buford H. Junker. The earlier extensive studies of key southern counties by Johnson and his staff had provided a good background for the Statistical Atlas. By studying the key counties across the South, one could begin to discern a definite pattern upon which to generalize about the various subregions inside the South. For example, as Edwin R. Embree wrote in the preface, “a cotton plantation county in one state presented a picture almost identical to that of a cotton plantation . . . a thousand miles away.” At the same time, Embree noted that the same cotton county presented a “strikingly different picture from a county directly adjoining it in which there was a busy market town or some different pattern of farming or industry.” Once the crop system and degree of ruralization were identified for a certain county, it was possible to describe “with astonishing accuracy” the many varied social conditions in the county from the state of public health and economic order to the kind of school system and the “relations between the races.” Embree went on to note that once a comprehensive county index was compiled, the researchers realized that they “would have an excellent guide to conditions which vitally affected education and all other social relationships throughout the region.” The Statistical Atlas gathered data from 1,000 counties in the twelve states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Furthermore, the 104 counties in Texas where the population was at least 5 percent black were included. These thirteen states were selected because they had segregated school systems “for which data are available separately by race in the reports of the state superintendents of public schools.” The

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1930 U.S. Census data were used as the basis for much of the demographic evaluation. The statistical narrative was organized into three chapters and two lengthy appendices. The study built upon the work done by Howard W. Odum and Rupert B. Vance. Johnson and his staff divided the counties as either agricultural, based on major crop, subcrops, and degree of diversification in basic economic activities, or urban-industrial, based on the extent of urbanization and industrial or trading activities. The work contained a plethora of economic, social, racial, educational, and general demographic data. For many years, the monumental Statistical Atlas, along with the earlier works of Odum and Vance, served as the definitive reference work on the South. In 1943, Charles S. Johnson published what was really his last scholarly book as a sociologist. His fourth seminal volume within a decade entitled Patterns of Negro Segregation forecast a subtle shift in his concentration. Previously, he had spent most of his time studying the rural South and economic issues as they related to race relations. With Patterns of Negro Segregation, he began to modify his emphasis. Now, not only did he concentrate more upon the urban areas, including a discussion of relevant conditions in the North, but he directly confronted segregation as an equal, if not greater, issue than economics.25 In the spring of 1937, Frederick P. Keppel, president of the Carnegie Corporation, had engaged Gunnar Myrdal to be director of “a comprehensive study of the Negro in the United States.” Over the next few years, Myrdal employed an extensive staff of sociologists and educators to write major memoranda to supplement the cooperative research venture. To Charles S. Johnson and Fisk University fell the task of studying segregation. The memoranda which Johnson and his staff prepared were later published as Patterns of Negro Segregation. Again, Johnson’s highly skilled staff went into the field for interviewing. The brunt of the field interviewing was done by Lewis Wade Jones, Harry J. Walker, Joseph Taylor, Edmonia Grant, and Anne DeBerry Johnson. While the field work was being carried out, Estella H. Scott, Bingham Dai, Lewis C. Copeland, Preston Valien, and G. Franklin Edwards were engaged in researching the necessary legislative, judicial, psychiatric, and related source materials. Patterns of Negro Segregation concentrated on four areas: the rural South, the urban South, border areas, and the urban North. The Fisk research team went out into the field to test the laws and customs of segregation. Typical was the work of Joseph Taylor and Harry J. Walker.26 Among the places they visited were Poinsett County, Arkansas; Bolivar County, Mississippi; Cook County, Illinois; and Harris County, Texas. Before going to an area, they familiarized themselves with the laws, customs, and mores of local racial etiquette. They would then go into a locality and, using a suitable pretext, naively challenge the existing traditions to

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see what would happen. In Greenville or Cleveland, Mississippi, for example, they would use the white entrance and order a sandwich. Or in other cases they would use the white restrooms. They measured all kinds of patterns and relationships between black and whites from parasitic and intraracial alignment to cooperation between the races. For the more detailed studies in areas like Bolivar County, Mississippi, and Poinsett County, Arkansas, Johnson followed a custom that he had established during the earlier studies of the rural South: he armed the field workers with letters of introduction to the local sheriffs. If the sheriff gave his approval, then cooperation was usually assured and, just as important, the physical danger ever present to a strange black man or woman asking questions was reduced. As Taylor recalls, the letters of introduction that Johnson wrote were “gems which said absolutely nothing but took two or three paragraphs . . . of beautiful words.” These studies in non sequiturs, carried by field workers like Taylor and Walker, posed a real dilemma for the poorly educated white sheriffs. More than likely the sheriff had not even heard of Fisk University. Furthermore, in most cases he was lost after the first sentence of the letter. But years of indoctrination in racial etiquette had taken its toll. As Taylor recalls, “[I]f I knew it, a white man has to know it. . . . No black person is supposed to be able to write something a white person cannot understand.” As a result of “putting ole Massa on,” the Fisk teams were able to go almost everywhere and to investigate areas restricted to most academicians, governmental agents, and social workers. Taylor used this method to get the courthouse records in Cleveland, Mississippi, the county seat for Bolivar County in which Mound Bayou, an all-black town, is located. In fact, the sheriff’s attendant took Taylor to a room and told the man to “let this boy use these records.” Taylor was then left alone in the record room as the attendants went to lunch. Apparently, the courthouse gang in Cleveland assumed that Taylor, who had first done graduate work under Howard W. Odum when the latter was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois, and who had later worked under Johnson, was no threat to the existing social system. The tone of Patterns of Negro Segregation was set by Johnson in the introduction.27 Here, he set the work in the basic theoretical framework that he had developed over the years. The cycle of race relations was in flux between accommodation and assimilation. He believed that assimilation was inevitable, but in his research Johnson was more concerned with reporting what happened on a day-to-day basis than with predicting the future. After placing his subject in the proper historical and sociological context and suggesting how attitudes have served to form opinions, Johnson examined the various forms of segregation. First, he treated customs as “codes and rules of conduct which become embedded in the conventions

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and the established racial etiquette.” Second, he dealt “with the attempts to regulate race contacts and relations by legislation.” Third, the Fisk sociologist spent considerable time discussing the role of status in segregation. In this respect, he stressed the different kinds of spatial and symbolic segregation which had no relationship to physical reality but were vital to the key issue, which was the definition of status. The problem was further compounded by the inconsistency of segregation, which was more psychological than physical. On this point, Johnson wrote, “The ubiquitous color line in the United Status thus tracts a varied and complex pattern. It is less often seen and defined than discreetly or defiantly sensed by Negroes, and imperiously or indefinitely felt by whites. Irrational and intangible in many relationships, devoid of defensible logic in a theoretically democratic society, it is, nevertheless, one of the most positive realities in American life. It is uniquely, persistently, and universally an American institution.” The final section of Johnson’s work was given over to a discussion of the effects of segregation upon blacks. Again, as in Johnson’s earlier works, blacks became actors instead of objects being acted upon. In this section, as Johnson wrote in the introduction, “an attempt is made to describe and interpret the behavioral responses of Negroes to segregation and discrimination, their personal behavior in varying types of interpersonal relations with whites, and some of the psychopathological phenomena resulting from the efforts of Negroes to make satisfactory individual and racial adjustments.” Here, Johnson considered such factors as class, regional, and cultural setting as determining many responses. The degree of accommodation, on the one hand, and of conflict, on the other hand, varied from individual to individual and from situation to situation. In some cases, avoidance of conflict was the approach; in others acceptance of existing mores was used. In still others, hostility and aggression were the responses. But even in the case of individuals who practiced avoidance and acceptance for survival purposes, there was a kind of passive resistance. For example, one “shrewd Negro who ran through a red stop light . . . explained to the officer that he saw the white folks going through the green light and thought that the red light was for colored folks.”28 The final chapter of Patterns of Negro Segregation was essentially a statement of the “American dilemma,” with democracy and segregation juxtaposed. Although still objective in tone and scientific in approach, Johnson’s Patterns of Negro Segregation caused at least one reviewer to comment, “Dr. Johnson is more outspoken in his conclusions than in . . . other of his earlier works.”29 Johnson was beginning to point in the direction he would follow for the remainder of his career. The following year Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma appeared with many of the same recommendations made in Johnson’s work of 1943.

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A common criticism of a scholar who published as voluminously as Johnson is that much of the work was actually not his own and that he exploited the work of his staff and graduate students. According to oral tradition, E. Franklin Frazier is reported to have told a colleague, in what may be an apocryphal story, that he left Fisk for Howard University because “I’m just not going to work on Massa Charlie’s plantation.”30 There is no doubt that Johnson was in full command of the operation at Fisk and that he worked his staff hard.31 That may have been one of the reasons that from time to time outstanding individuals like Frazier left Nashville. But to jump from that premise to charge that he expropriated others’ work and presented it as his own is another matter. If such an indictment is true, apparently the supporting evidence will be carried to the grave by his loyal associates and staff. More likely, many such allegations stem from a misunderstanding by many people of the nature of cooperative research. Most of Johnson’s staff members at Fisk were employed to do field research and to complete their training as social scientists. Much of the research was done with the idea that it would go into the data bank. Johnson recruited the funds and conceptualized the studies. He approached research as the director and organizer of a cooperative venture. He sent his staff into the field to test his hypotheses. The staff’s major task in the field was to send back reports. At that stage, Johnson reviewed the reports and then distributed them to the more experienced staff members, like Preston Valien, Lewis Wade Jones, and Eli S. Marks, to develop further. At the same time, Johnson would also begin writing a draft. Finally, he would consolidate the many drafts and place them in their theoretical models. Of course, the better one wrote in the field reports and the early drafts, the more of his materials was used. Those who worked most closely with Johnson, like Jones, the two Valiens, Hubert, and Grant, vigorously deny the charge that Johnson did not do his own work. In fact, they are quick to point out that his approach was actually the pioneer model for the large-scale work done by Myrdal and Harry S. Ashmore. The one work of Johnson’s in which he might have been more generous with authorship, according to the oblique suggestions of his inner staff, was the monumental Statistical Atlas. The title page listed Johnson as the author, with “associates” Lewis Wade Jones, Buford H. Junker, Eli S. Marks, and Preston Valien, and “consultants” Edwin R. Embree and W. Lloyd Warner. Considering the statistical nature of the work, the contributions of Jones, Junker, Marks, and Valien were apparently not given their due. An additional theme that echoes throughout the inner staff is the suggestion that Johnson borrowed heavily from Jones. Jones himself vigorously denies the suggestion. Bonita H. Valien, Johnson’s alter ego, who admits to ghosting some of his routine speeches, says, “Because I

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was always the person who put the thing to bed, I know what each person contributed. . . . People who went into the field did not write his books.” And while Valien acknowledges that Johnson relied heavily upon his staff, there was “nothing people did for him that he could not do himself as well or better.” At the same time, it was not Johnson’s policy to allow what the department produced to be published under the name of the fellows. He saw their role as one of learning the skills of a social scientist while contributing to the databank. In turn, his role was funding the program, training students, conceptualizing and designing studies, and publishing the final project, which he had guided from germination to fruition. Perhaps his first assistant, Ophelia Settle Egypt, best summed up the answer to those who question Johnson’s authorship of the numerous publications that came out of Fisk under his name when she wrote, “I think all of us . . . did some initial writing and preparation of statistical tables for Dr. Johnson. But in his own books, articles, speeches, etc., the final draft was uniquely his own.”32 While the works appearing under Johnson’s name when he was chair of the Department of Social Sciences appear to be his own, no such claim can be made for the many publications of the Department of Race Relations and for those that appeared under his name once he became president of Fisk. For example, August Meier, who served Johnson as a research assistant for a brief period at mid-century, still harbors mordant memories of failing to receive adequate credit for the work he did for the Fisk president.33 Meier informed the writers that “From my own personal experience . . . I can say categorically that Johnson did tend to this practice (of not doing his own writing).” Meier went on to say, “I wrote the article that appeared over his name on the Negro in America in the Encyclopedia Americana; I drafted one or two book reviews for him and then I was asked to ‘draft’ the new edition of The Negro in American Civilization. Johnson tended to use my things verbatim, with only minor emendations. . . . At the end of about six months . . . our scholarly relationship ended.” Johnson’s achievement during the years he chaired the Department of Social Sciences were Herculean in scope. Despite this fact, the gods gave him a tragic flaw that deprived later generations of many of the benefits his type of programs might have provided.34 Johnson was almost obsessed with keeping his own counsel. He had many acquaintances but few friends and almost no cronies. Among the many white liberals with whom he worked, Will W. Alexander had his great respect but, perhaps, only Edwin R. Embree could be considered a friend. Among those of his colleagues and protégés whom he considered closest were Arna Bontemps, Aaron Douglas, Giles A. Hubert, Langston Hughes, Lewis Wade Jones, Bonita H. Valien, Preston Valien, and John Work. He also had a great admiration

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for Paul Robeson, whose picture hung in his office. But with the possible qualified exception of Arthur A. Schomburg, the only close friend—crony if you will—was Frayser T. Lane of the Chicago Urban League, whom he had known from the early days in Chicago. Late one night in his study during a coffee break, Johnson told the young Lewis Wade Jones that his formula for success was “always treat your friends as if they will someday be your enemies, and your enemies as if they will someday be your friends.” This approach did not allow for many confidants. No one but the sociologist really understood how the “Johnson machine” worked. So long as he was alive and on top of things, the funds poured into Fisk, and the curricula of race relations, sociology of the South, and African studies reacted to the needs of the times. When a knowledgeable service intellectual was needed to advise the government, conduct studies, direct demonstration programs, or write seminal books, he performed the task. Tragically, Johnson, who was a master at training researchers, scholars, diplomats, and administrators, was never able, or perhaps never willing, to pass the skill of “grantmanship” on to his protégés. Most of Johnson’s associates remember him as almost pathologically shy. Despite his many achievements, he was never totally sure of himself. To share too many confidences, to develop too many similar entrepreneurs, would be to endanger the status and the plans of Charles S. Johnson. As a result, no one was allowed to view the total picture. Individuals only knew the part of the machine that directly concerned them. No one person had full access to the inner workings of Johnson’s machine. When he was no longer at the helm, the machine, like that of Charlemagne after the emperor’s death, disintegrated. In the mid-1930s, at the time that Johnson’s Department of Social Sciences was approaching its zenith, his protégé from the Harlem Renaissance, Arna Bontemps, visited him in Nashville.35 Bontemps had left New York after the Depression for a teaching job at what is today Alabama A&M near Huntsville, Alabama. The restraints on a black intellectual in northern Alabama at the time of the Scottsboro trials in nearby Decatur, Alabama, were beginning to tell on the young Renaissance writer. Bontemps writes, “I was, frankly, running scared when an opportunity came for me to visit Fisk University, . . . about a hundred miles away.” In recalling his visit to Fisk, where Charles S. Johnson had arranged for a reunion of Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Arthur A. Schomburg, Bontemps writes, “All in a sense, could have been considered as refugees living in exile, . . . but privately . . . dreaming of planting an oasis at Fisk.” The Fisk that Bontemps writes of in the 1930s was “surrounded by bleak hostility in the area, the region, and the nation, if not indeed the world.” Despite these staggering odds, Charles S. Johnson and his colleagues were

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working not only to survive, but to “keep alive a flicker of the impulse they had detected and helped to encourage in the black awakening in Renaissance Harlem.” During his stay in Nashville, Bontemps discovered in the Fisk Library “a larger collection of slave narratives than I knew existed.” From this sojourn, Arna Bontemps conceived of his pioneering novel in protest based on the Gabriel Prosser Revolt of 1800 and entitled Black Thunder. He soon left Alabama for California to write free of the immediate opprobrious race relations, southern style. After the short reunion, Arthur A. Schomburg returned to New York. James Weldon Johnson, who was by now an elder statesman, had an attractive part-time appointment at Fisk that required him to be in residence only from January to June—the rest of the time was his to spend in the East he so loved. Meanwhile, Charles S. Johnson remained in the South to deal with the realities of Jim Crow and all that it implied. One of the major responsibilities was dealing with the powers that be in a region where all but the most bold dared not challenge segregation nor the larger etiquette of race relations.

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Chapter 11

The Best of Booker T. Washington

I

n evaluating black leadership for the second quarter of the twentieth century, one crucial factor differentiates Charles S. Johnson from outstanding leaders like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Walter White, or even for the most part W. E. B. Du Bois. Johnson’s base of operation was Nashville, Tennessee, which, if not the deep South, was at least the gateway to that region. He was forced to function on a day-to-day basis with white southern leaders. The twenty-eight year struggle that he engaged in from his base at Fisk was tedious, lacking in immediate rewards and anything but glamorous. Yet without his many years of yeoman service, the dramatic events that began to crystallize in the mid-1950s around a young preacher from Montgomery, Alabama, may have been delayed for several more years. At the same time that Johnson was building strong programs in the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk, he was attempting to act as a regional entrepreneur in race relations. With this fact in mind, as one reviews the history of race relations in the South prior to the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., it does not seem an exaggeration to claim for Charles S. Johnson the dominant role between the years of Washington and King. In many ways, he acted as a bridge between the two giants. He salvaged much that was valuable from the Washington legacy—as, for example, using the financial support of the Rosenwald Fund to develop his programs at Fisk—and at the same time he pointed the way toward the Freedom Movement with his sociology of tensions. The realities of the South prior to World War II were at best chilling. Liberalism, which one would assume to be a basis for change in most regions, was greatly inhibited. As Gunnar Myrdal wrote in 1944, “Southern liberalism is not liberalism as it is found elsewhere in America or in the world. It is a unique species. It is molded by the forces of the region where 141

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it carries out its fight.”1 In short, every move for change must counter the twin themes of poverty and segregation in the twentieth-century South.2 Insofar as the South remained agricultural, it suffered the evils of a one-crop economy, as was the case with cotton and tobacco. More than one-half of the South’s farmers were placed in the status of tenants, many of whom were on the edge of economic disaster.3 In this environment, malnutrition and dietary diseases were commonplace among tenants, and syphilis, malaria, and pellagra flourished. On the eve of World War II, onehalf of the nation’s farm population was located in the South. Of this group, 4.5 million, or one-fourth of the southern farm population, was black, but “only 8 percent of the Southern farm land was operated by Negro owners, tenants, and croppers, and their share in the value of Southern farms, buildings, implements, and machinery was equally small.” The urban and industrial South did not fare much better. In an attempt to build a manufacturing economy, the South had sacrificed its natural resources, bowed to discriminatory differential freight rates, and allowed the nation to exploit its supply of cheap labor. The end result was the development of a colonial economy controlled by northern capital. At the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first election in 1932, life in the South was characterized by malnutrition, an average annual farm income of $500 to $1,000 with most of the income going to the landlord, primitive rural housing with no running water, no electricity or appliances, no insulation in the houses, and no window screens in those houses having windows.4 The poor southerner’s clothing was not adequate; shoes were a luxury. The diet consisted of salt pork, lard, sorghum, molasses, cornpone, biscuits, grits, white gravy, and a few boiled vegetables. In such conditions, poor health was inevitable and few doctors were available.5 In the words of one scholar, “[O]f the nine million blacks and a substantial majority of the twenty-one million whites . . . it . . . [seems] elementally fair and honest [to characterize them as] . . . dirt-poor.”6 Twentieth-century southern leaders from Josephus Daniels to Will W. Alexander labored to change the conditions inside the South and the status of the South in the nation, but attempts to alter the colonial economy were closely tied to race relations and the institution of segregation. Labor unions, a more equitable tax structure, and federal aid to education necessary to improve economic conditions were all avoided, at least in part because they were viewed by many as a threat to segregation. The cardinal rule among the overwhelming majority of white leaders in the twentieth-century South prior to World War II was that any reform movement must first be sure that segregation would be honored. If Jim Crow was not endangered, then reform, even in the area of race relations, was to be encouraged by southern liberalism. In fact, over the years,

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groups like the Southern Sociological Congress and the Commission on International Cooperation had organized within the context of segregation to improve certain conditions for blacks while not affecting the status of blacks in Jim Crow.7 But even allowing that most white liberals of the region did not challenge segregation, liberalism was a complex phenomenon. For the purposes of discussion, we can identify a wide range of different liberal positions on the race relations continuum. The extremes were occupied on the right by the traditional Southern liberals and on the left by the economic integrationists. Examples of the former would include figures like Robert B. Eleazer, M. Ashby Jones, and Willis Duke Weatherford, all of whom were active in founding the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. The traditional Southern liberals opposed such dastardly crimes as lynching, but otherwise they were at best paternalistic. Beyond a concern for life and stewardship, their chief concern was that blacks never go beyond the status the white South had defined for them. To the far left of the continuum of liberalism was a small but dedicated group of white liberals who accepted integration as a matter of course, either because it was morally right or because it was strategically necessary. The lives of Joseph S. Gelders of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Harry Leland Mitchell of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, and Lillian Smith, the author, exemplify this position.8 The economic integrationists were the one element of liberalism in the South that dared confront segregation. But like the Populist movement half a century earlier, they failed, at least in their time, to achieve their desired end. Nevertheless, this group left as a legacy a model demonstrating that blacks and whites could work together for common economic ends. The largest part of the continuum of liberalism was occupied in the center by what we might call the benevolent segregationists.9 This group supported the improvement of economic conditions for blacks, but usually not the improvement of the status of blacks—at least not in the sense that the sociologist uses the word “status.” The chief thrust of this mainstream of southern liberalism was directed toward moving in the direction of the fulfillment of both parts of Plessy v. Ferguson: the separate part and the equal part. In the 1940s, when the challenge to segregation became more evident, this group divided into two factions. Some, like Ralph McGill and Will W. Alexander, cautiously moved toward supporting integration; others, like Virginius Dabney and Mark Ethridge, with the hope of preserving segregation, moved to positions more conservative than the ones they had held in the 1930s. But at least until the 1950s, the division within the ranks of the benevolent segregationists was usually expressed in private. In public, more often than not, the various factions

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united behind programs like the Southern Regional Council that did not appear to challenge Jim Crow. In relating to Southern liberalism, Johnson was faced with a paradoxical and Herculean task. Privately, he was committed to the position of the economic integrationist, but this position did not offer much of a power base either for regional leadership or for his program at Fisk. For many years, he was not in a position to challenge publicly segregation in regional ventures which gave the deceptive appearance of biracial leadership. Many outside the region, like the journalist Roi Ottley, criticized Johnson for being the black pawn of white leaders.10 Others, like Lewis W. Jones, who both lived in the southern region and understood Johnson as much as anyone ever did, saw Johnson as a shrewd man building Trojan horses in the center of Jim Crow.11 Johnson himself characterized his position best, perhaps, when he told an audience toward the end of World War II that “there is not enough recognition of the fact that the most strategic pressures are those that are best timed and most carefully applied; not a random, uncalculated and hectic scattering of protest and opposition.”12 Johnson’s strategy seems to have been to close no doors while at the same time pushing steadily toward the left. When necessary, he politely appeased the traditional Southern liberals without being obsequious. One of the more practical rewards from this approach was the book Race Relations that he wrote with Willis Duke Weatherford. There does not seem to have been any other way that the majority of white students studying sociology in the South could have been exposed to the Park-Johnson model of race relations. On the other hand, Johnson seemed to have had an understanding with the economic integrationists. They did not pressure him, and in return he supported them—publicly if possible, privately when necessary. For instance, if possible, he gave public support to programs like the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW). In 1938, when the SCHW was founded, Johnson attended the organizational meeting in Birmingham. At a time when Frank P. Graham of the University of North Carolina was president of SCHW and President Roosevelt and the First Lady gave it their support, Johnson wrote a positive commentary on the organization for Crisis.13 In 1942, when SCHW held its convention in Nashville, Johnson had the controversial Paul Robeson as his houseguest. In addition to giving public support, Johnson tried to secure funding for the continuation of SCHW. For example, on May 31, 1945, he wrote Embree of the Rosenwald Fund recommending “that a grant of $2500.00 be made to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, both as a contribution to the support of its enlarged program, and a useful gesture of confidence in the movement.”14 In later years, the SCHW fell on bad times and its base of support crumbled. Even after it became apparent SCHW had

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lost its potential to be a base for immediate change in the South, Johnson continued to work quietly to help it survive in hope that it might act as a pressure group to keep the South from moving too far right. In this respect, he was always available for consultation with SCHW leaders like James Dombrowski.15 While not closing the doors on either the traditional Southern liberals nor the economic integrationists, Johnson felt that the key to change from inside the South was with the benevolent segregationists. Borrowing a page from Booker T. Washington’s book, Johnson reasoned that if he could command the respect and support of this group without losing his integrity, he could continue to secure the funding necessary to carrying on his work at Fisk University. Meanwhile, when the opportunity for arriving at a new definition of race relations came, as it appeared to in the 1940s, Johnson felt he would be in a position to provide significant input to that new definition. In working with the benevolent segregationists, Johnson adopted much of the rhetoric and strategy of Booker T. Washington. Nevertheless, as virtually all of his writings demonstrate, he did not philosophically believe in the accommodationist position that most historians attribute to Washington. More often than not, Johnson’s employment of the Washington strategy was subtle. One notable exception was an article he wrote for Opportunity in 1928 on the eve of his departure to the South.16 Critics of Johnson, who fail to view his career in its full context and often make a superficial evaluation of his race relations strategy, are fond of citing Johnson’s magazine article with the implication that accommodation was the major thrust of his approach.17 Viewed out of context, the magazine piece, written in 1928, does appear to place Johnson in the camp of those who used the obsequious side of Booker T. Washington’s strategy. Johnson praised the obeisant Washington, whom whites best remember for his conciliation in the Atlanta Compromise of 1895 and his work ethic at Tuskegee Institute. Earlier, Du Bois had characterized Washington as leaving the impression that “the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation.”18 In contrast, Johnson pointed out that Washington did not have a power base for “aggressive tactics in race relations.” Despite this weakness, Washington had an awareness of the need for an economic base stemming from land ownership, hard work with dignity, and education. Johnson went on to compare Washington’s approach to education with that of John Dewey and Marie Montessori. In the area of politics, Johnson wrote that Washington was being practical when he argued that “a man who is broad enough to be fair to Negroes is most likely to be the one most social minded, and capable of administering the affairs of a community.”

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Much of what Johnson wrote about Washington was not in violation of his own approach. Certainly, Johnson did not oppose blacks fighting for land ownership; nor did he oppose hard work and selected vocational education. In fact, his main interest in sociology was in the applied area. On the other hand, an examination of his later works, such as The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, which called for governmental redistribution of land, was hardly the accommodationist orientation of Booker T. Washington’s laissez-faire economics. Although Johnson avoided partisan politics throughout his life, the general editorial orientation of Opportunity in the 1920s establishes that he wanted all political rights for blacks. But that did not seem like a feasible goal in the South of the 1920s. More likely than not, Johnson’s article was written for the foundation audience that supported the Urban League and for the southern leaders whom he would soon be confronting on a day-to-day basis. It was not consistent with Johnson’s approach to announce himself as a radical at the outset of a new race relations venture. Furthermore, with the exception of the compromising comment about politics, the chief criticism of Johnson’s writing should be directed not at what he said, but what he did not say. For even the most vocal of Washington’s critics acknowledge that the man from Tuskegee was not without merit. Far more misleading to understanding Johnson is the attempt by critics to take one article by Johnson and use it to describe the totality of his philosophy. At any rate, once Johnson located in the South, his application of the Washington strategy became more subtle. During the 1930s, he devoted much of his time developing the Department of Social Sciences and serving as a service intellectual in the New Deal. For many years he did not make a frontal assault upon segregation, but, as we note elsewhere, his published works and unpublished government reports were consistent with the sociology of tensions. As August Meier noted in a letter to one of the writers, Johnson was “a man who was publicly always just a step or so in advance of the most enlightened scholarly or southern white public opinion. By being this step or so out in front, he could appear to be moderate, and yet push people in certain directions.”19 Typical of Johnson’s employment of the strategy of Washington, while rejecting the philosophy of accommodation, were the events surrounding the creation of the Southern Regional Council. During the early years of World War II, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation was moribund. Founded at the end of World War I, by the late 1930s it was in decline due, at least in part, to a failure to incorporate new leadership and an unwillingness to recognize new changes taking place in race relations under the New Deal. As Gordon B. Hancock wrote some years later, “[T]he old Commission on Interracial Cooperation did a good job in its day but finally lost influence with

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Negroes—and whites—too many of whom came to feel that its chief functions was to keep the Negro ‘quiet.’”20 In the mid-1930s, Will W. Alexander, who had founded the Commission, was spending most of his time in Washington working for President Roosevelt’s New Deal in the Resettlement Administration and later in the Farm Security Administration. More and more, the Commission came under the influence of Howard W. Odum and Jessie Daniel Ames. Odum had long dreamed of making the Commission the basis for the implementation of his sociology of regionalism, but by 1938 it was apparent that he could get neither the funding nor the support needed for such an ambitious venture.21 When he failed to get the necessary backing, Odum directed most of his energies toward his Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. More and more, the Commission came under the direct influence of Ames. Jessie Daniel Ames was among the best of the benevolent segregationists. Ames’s correspondence and public statements suggest that her approach was to avoid the issue of segregation, while pushing for improved conditions for black people in the South. There is some indication that she would have welcomed the end of segregation, but that she did not think that day would be soon.22 By the time Ames assumed control of the Commission, it was little more than a paper organization.23 In the 1940s, its main function was to serve as an education agency through its monthly publication The Southern Frontier. It was through the pages of The Southern Frontier that Ames set the wheels in motion for the creation of the Southern Regional Council. The best published account of what became known as the Durham Conference of 1942 and ultimately led to the creation of the Southern Regional Council is found in John Egerton’s awardwinning book Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.24 Of course, the memoirs of Durham Conference participant Benjamin E. Mays are still very valuable historical documentation and of enormous assistance in understanding the founding of the Southern Regional Council.25 In 1941, Ames was impressed by an article written for the Associated Negro Press by Gordon B. Hancock. In addition to his duties as dean at Virginia Union University and his teaching load as a member of the Department for Economics and Sociology, Hancock was the author of a syndicated column.26 As Egerton writes, Hancock had described the mounting racial tension in the United States in his column under the caption “Interracial Hypertension.” In his pessimistic analysis of race relations, Hancock compared the American society, “with its racial tensions, to a man suffering from high blood pressure which, if not soon treated, would result in disaster.”27 In the spring of 1942, Ames opened the pages of The Southern Frontier to Hancock and invited him to enlarge upon his previous column. He

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did so in an article entitled “Needed . . . A Southern Charter for Race Relations.”28 After Hancock’s article appeared, Jessie Daniel Ames apparently took the initiative and urged Hancock to “get together a committee of Negroes to draft what they believed were the minimum advances that Southern Negroes should make while the war was still in progress.”29 Ames promised Hancock that if a group of southern blacks met and made a formal statement, she would “guarantee that a similar group of Southern white people would meet to discuss their statement and appoint a similar body to meet with a committee from their body.” In the ensuing months, Ames and Hancock continued to keep in touch, and on one occasion she visited him in Richmond.30 Over the next few months, Hancock began to make serious preparations for calling an all-black conference of southern leaders. Apparently, the first person Hancock involved in the project was Plummer B. Young, better known as P. B. Young, editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide. In May of 1942, Hancock, who by that time was working closely with Young, “sent out a ‘feeler’ to eighteen prominent Negroes throughout the South two from each state.”31 In June, in Richmond, Virginia, a preliminary conference to plan for the regional conference was held.32 Although the surviving records in the Ames Papers do not indicate to whom Hancock wrote his first group of letters, it is possible that one of them went to Charles S. Johnson. The remaining documents do indicate that at least by the end of June 1942, Charles S. Johnson was involved in planning the larger conference to be held on October 20, 1942, at Durham, North Carolina.33 Hancock instructed those who were invited to the Durham conference to submit in advance a list of the five most “pressing needs of the Negroes of the South.” These lists were then compiled into a manageable agendum by Charles S. Johnson. For the next several months, Johnson was very much involved in the Durham conference, the public statement later issued by the conference, and the further attempt by black southerners to push for a more democratic definition of race relations. Johnson apparently comprehended what was happening in the South. Prior to the period of war tension, a new definition of race relations was not possible. Consequently, as an individual who understood power, Johnson operated within the old accommodation. But the early 1940s appeared to be a new day. The tension created by the onset of World War II was just the kind of “impersonal force” that (in the Park mode) could provide an opportunity for change. For a period of less than two years, Johnson threw himself into the struggle to provide the South with a new definition of race relations. His goal was to move key white liberals in the South beyond benevolent segregation. But between the time of the Durham conference in October 1942, when blacks challenged the status quo, and the founding of the Southern Regional Council in January 1944, it was to become apparent that Johnson’s hope of

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getting the mainstream of white liberalism to make at least a qualified endorsement of desegregation was premature. Once this happened, Johnson returned to his earlier formula of building Trojan horses inside Jim Crow. Despite his failure to crack Jim Crow a decade before Brown v. Board of Education, the story that led from Durham to Atlanta during the many months of struggle is important in understanding Johnson’s role as regional entrepreneur of race relations. The Durham conference represented a wide spectrum of southern black opinion. Those in addition to Johnson, Hancock, and Young who attended or sent letters of support included such diverse figures as Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse; Horace Mann Bond, president of Fort Valley State College; Charles C. Spaulding, president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank in Durham; Ernest Delpit, a union leader from New Orleans; and many others. As the conference got under way, it soon became obvious that a group consisting of fifty-nine participants was too unwieldy to draft a statement. At the suggestion of Benjamin E. Mays, a drafting committee, which became known as the Editorial Committee, was selected.34 Charles S. Johnson was named chairman.35 For two months after the Durham conference, the Editorial Committee, which had a mandate from the conference, labored over a statement expressing the views of the conference. It appears that Johnson, as chairman, carried much of the burden of drafting the Durham statement. Mays, who was a member of the Editorial Committee, remembers that “Charles S. Johnson was one of the chief architects of the Durham statement.”36 Young provided additional evidence suggesting that Johnson played a strong role in preparing the Durham statement. For example, prior to the statement’s release, Young, who was also a member of the Editorial Committee, wrote Ames that “several days ago I had a letter from Dr. Charles S. Johnson, chairman of the committee, to the effect that he was working on the document, and expected to have a draft ready for release to members of the committee for their final check-up within a few days.”37 The document produced by the Editorial Committee of the Durham Conference was typical of Johnson’s employment of Booker T. Washington’s strategy without endorsing the philosophy.38 Its tone was serious and firm, and in some places it expressed an unusually forthright militancy. At the same time, it was not abrasive. Most importantly, it reopened the whole question (which for blacks had never really been closed) of segregation. The long preamble set the tone. The writers wanted to be certain there would be no mistake that these were the sentiments “of many of the Negroes of the Nation as well as the South.” The black leaders reaffirmed

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their loyalty to the war effort, but at the same time noted that this loyalty did not “preclude consideration now of problems . . . in race relations essential to . . . the war effort, and . . . the inevitable problems of post-war reconstruction, especially in the South where we reside.” Although one-third of the southern population was black, the preamble noted, the pattern of race relations in the region was “invariably and universally associated with racial discriminations.” As the preamble continued, it became apparent that the essence of the Durham statement was the following: “We are fundamentally opposed to the principle and practice of compulsory segregation in our American society, . . . however, we regard it as both sensible and timely to address ourselves now to the current problems of racial discrimination and neglect, and to ways in which we may cooperate in the advancement of programs aimed at the sound improvement of race relations within the democratic framework.”39 The preamble went on to lament that the “simple efforts to correct obvious social and economic injustices continue . . . to be interpreted as the predatory ambition of irresponsible Negroes.” Finally, the preamble reaffirmed a faith in the possibility of a way of life in the South “consistent with the principles for which we as a Nation are fighting throughout the world.” The body of the Durham statement was a detailed examination of conditions in the South and the nation as they related to the position stated in the preamble. It discussed the needs and desired rights of blacks in the areas of political and civil rights, industry and labor, service occupations, education, agriculture, military service, and social welfare and health. If the preamble captured the essence of the statement, Claude A. Barnett of the Associated Negro Press, who was represented at Durham by letter, captured the reactions of many blacks when he wrote to Charles S. Johnson, “There are few Negroes North or South who cannot subscribe to what this document says.”40 In many ways, the Durham statement was a Trojan horse. Although the statement bore the caption, “A Basis for Interracial Cooperation and Development in the South: A Statement by Southern Negroes,” it became known as the Durham Manifesto.41 It put southern blacks, many of whom had reputations as moderates or even conservatives, on record as opposing the principle of segregation. When the white South reacted, black southerners might continue to work within the pattern of segregation, but it was with the public knowledge that this was the desire of whites and not the choice of blacks. At the same time, it set the stage for some improvements in the conditions of blacks within Jim Crow. The northern press, both black and white, made much of the apparent acceptance of segregation and chose to play down the rejection of the principle of segregation. Nor was the southern black press unani-

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mous in supporting the Durham statement. Most notable in criticizing it were the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch and the Baltimore Afro-American.42 Many of the more militant black Southern leaders were not wholly comfortable with the Durham statement. For example, Benjamin E. Mays recalled that he wanted an outright call to end segregation, but when outvoted, Mays publicly supported the Durham statement.43 Shortly after the Durham statement, Roi Ottley’s book New World A-Coming summarized these criticisms. Ottley took Johnson, Hancock, Mays, Bond, Rufus E. Clement, and James E. Shepard, president of North Carolina College for Negroes, to task for being essentially accommodationists in the Washington fashion and as men who were “sometimes, called ‘Uncle Toms’ by the more radical Negroes.”44 The quiet Johnson responded to Ottley and his criticism of the Durham statement in a letter to Bertsch Doan, who had consulted him for background information for an article that she planned to write for the Nation.45 A review of Johnson’s remarks goes far toward revealing the strategy that he was following. Johnson wrote that “Negroes are citizens of the United States of America. As such, they have the right and the desire to share in an absolutely equal basis in the privileges, the opportunities and the duties that are the heritage of all Americans.” Johnson went on to deal with the reality of the South in the 1940s and noted that such privileges and opportunities “will never come to pass under a system of segregation.” In this respect, he noted that this viewpoint “is just as clearly and positively expressed by Gordon B. Hancock and Dr. F. D. Patterson . . . as by A. Philip Randolph and Walter White.” But the different regions called for different strategies. Thus, Johnson wrote, “differences in temperament, and in field of endeavor of course produce differences in phraseology and in technique.” The conflict sociologist, who more often than not shared Myrdal’s principle of cumulation, closed by pointing out that “each gain whatever it may be . . . makes progress easier in other directions.” In December 1942, the Durham statement was released to the press.46 For the next few months, the attention shifted from southern blacks to southern whites. As she had promised, Jessie Daniel Ames was able to coerce enough support from white liberals to call a conference to reply to the Durham statement. On April 8, 1943, with Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, presiding, a group of more than one hundred whites met in Atlanta to respond to the Durham statement. The Atlanta meeting issued a public statement that formally recognized the Durham statement, accepted the validity of many of its major points, and authorized a committee to represent whites, which would meet later with a similar committee of blacks from the Durham conference.47 The stage was set for the interracial meeting in Richmond, Virginia, on June 16, 1943.

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On the surface, it appeared that the Richmond conference was a progressive step in race relations.48 The conferees were an impressive group of regional leaders. Blacks, in addition to Johnson and the early organizers of the Durham conference, like Hancock and Young, included such names as the educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown of Sedalia, North Carolina; Albert W. Dent of New Orleans; Mordecai W. Johnson, president of Howard University; Benjamin E. Mays; and Carter Wesley, editor of the Houston Informer, Dallas Express, and New Orleans Sentinel. Among the white southerners in attendance were Howard W. Odum, Virginius Dabney of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Jessie Daniel Ames. At the last minute, Ralph McGill, who had chaired the all-white meeting in Atlanta, was summoned to Washington by President Roosevelt, but he sent his full support. On June 16, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, the vital question concerning the nature of the new definition of race relations that was being forged during World War II was answered. The statement issued by the Richmond conference was publicly optimistic.49 However, the key to understanding the statement was found in the following sentence: “We face, therefore, the double crisis of standing firm for the conservation and preservation of human rights; yet to seek these ends by the way of peace and planning rather than by conflict and revolution.” In short, Jim Crow would not be challenged. Even though segregation was accepted, the Richmond conference went far toward approving the Durham statement. In order to formulate and implement the machinery necessary to answer the needs voiced by blacks at Durham, the Richmond conference charged a committee with the “responsibility for working out methods and practical means of approach.”50 The collaboration committee was under the direction of cochairs Charles S. Johnson and Virginius Dabney.51 Shortly after the Richmond conference, Dabney, who was becoming uncomfortable with what he saw as a too liberal organization, begged off as cochair.52 He continued, however, to support the movement publicly. Odum was persuaded to take Dabney’s place. For the next few months, during the formation of what became the Southern Regional Council (SRC) and later during the remainder of the decade, blacks and whites who were not privy to the inner forces of the SRC continued to push for a stand attacking segregation. Both in public meetings organized to elicit support for the movement and in annual meetings of the general membership of the council, the question of segregation was raised, but it was always tabled.53 During the six to eight months following the Durham conference, Johnson, Odum, and Alexander, supported by others like Ralph McGill, Virginius Dabney, Gordon B. Hancock, and P. B. Young, labored long and hard to establish the Southern Regional Council. On August 4, 1943, the

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collaboration committee named at Richmond and now chaired by Odum and Johnson met in Atlanta and adopted the “Resolution of the Southern Regional Council.”54 A few days later an optimistic Johnson wrote Claude A. Barnett, “It is significant, I think that the meeting, attended by sixteen whites and thirteen Negroes, representing an excellent cross section of Southern leadership, constituted itself into a Southern Regional Council with a blueprint for a thorough-going program of action in the field of race relations, and related problems of labor, education and social welfare.”55 In December, Odum reported to Edwin R. Embree that “Charles Johnson was elected chairman of the Executive Committee and Alexander chairman of the Board.”56 On January 6, 1944, the Southern Regional Council was chartered as a nonprofit organization under the laws of Georgia with Rufus E. Clement, Ralph McGill, Arthur J. Moore (a white clergyman), Charles S. Johnson, and Howard W. Odum as the incorporators.57 On February 11, 1944, the incorporators met and designated about 270 charter members. Of those invited to become charter members, over 90 percent accepted and 205 were present, either in person or by proxy, at the charter meeting held February 16–17 in Atlanta. After the launching of the Southern Regional Council, Johnson’s involvement became more ceremonial and perfunctory than substantive. He left the task of directing reform in race relations within the system of segregation to the excellent leadership provided the SRC by its early executive directors, Guy B. Johnson and George S. Mitchell. But by the late 1950s, the Southern Regional Council was experiencing hard times. It never was able to secure revenue from regional sources.58 The decision was made early to follow the familiar pattern of race relations organizations in the South and to turn to northern foundations for support. For example, of the original budget of $40,000 for 1944, all but $2,000 came from the Rosenwald Fund and the General Education Board.59 In 1948 the Rosenwald Fund was liquidated, and the SRC became desperate for future funding. In 1949, Johnson wrote the University of Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth that “the Southern Regional is broke.”60 The council continued to muddle on through the 1950s and after. In 1947, George S. Mitchell became the executive director. For the next several years, he waged a heroic battle for the survival of the agency. In one of his last active involvements with the council, Charles S. Johnson utilized his many philanthropic contacts across the nation to help Mitchell secure enough funds to keep at least a skeleton organization going. This campaign met with limited success as Johnson contacted such leading philanthropists as Marshall Field and John Hay Whitney. With the assistance of Johnson and others, Mitchell was able to preserve the council, but collapse was always near. As Mitchell wrote Johnson in the fall of 1950, “The winged

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mails brought in this morning a letter from Mr. [Samuel C.] Park of the John Hay Whitney Foundation saying things compatible with your prediction of September and enclosing a life-saving check for $2,000. We are deeply grateful to Mr. Whitney and to you.”61 But by mid-century, the Fisk entrepreneur of race relations was losing interest in even his ceremonial relationship with the Southern Regional Council. True, the SRC had been a corrective force in the area of education and in the general field of race relations, but Johnson’s own work at Fisk seemed to be accomplishing far more. Despite the accelerating movement across the nation on the question of civil rights, the council had yet to take a public stand against segregation. It had no regional support economically, and it never held out the hope for mass support that, for a brief moment, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare had. Johnson continued to associate with the council formally, but by 1953, he would no longer be on the executive committee, and sometime before that he had stopped attending meetings.62 For a brief period in the fall of 1942 and the spring of 1943, Johnson held high hopes that the time had come to apply the lessons of the sociology of tensions and move from accommodation to assimilation. But by the time of the Richmond meeting, it was apparent that the necessary conditions for change had not developed fully. The paradox of benevolent segregation that influenced the events from Durham to Atlanta was always present in the South during Johnson’s life. The public embrace of Booker T. Washington’s strategy, while not expressly embracing the philosophy of accommodation attributed to the Wizard of Tuskegee, served Johnson well in such ventures as establishing a research base for progressive race relations at Fisk University without actually challenging segregation, openly supporting the Southern Conference for Human Welfare at a time when President Roosevelt and Frank P. Graham supported the SCHW, and working with the Durham Conference and subsequently the Southern Regional Council. On the other hand, as discussed in the next chapter, there were painful instances when neither the strategy nor the philosophy of Booker T. Washington were productive and in the end, the arrows of Jim Crow caused Charles Spurgeon Johnson great humiliation.

Chapter 12

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D

espite his outstanding contributions as a service intellectual nationally and internationally, Johnson was not always acknowledged in his home region south of the Mason-Dixon line. Three painful episodes illustrate the psychological impact of Jim Crow. These instances involved the Southern Sociological Society, the curious publication of Into the Main Stream: A Survey of Best Practices in Race Relations in the South (1947), and the Southern Educational Reporting Service’s (SERS) practice of segregating the staff. Johnson’s achievements were impressive and must have been self-satisfying. Nevertheless, such professional accomplishments in the instances involving the Southern Sociological Society and SERS were tainted by the ugly face of Jim Crow. During Johnson’s twenty-eight years in Nashville, he received many honors and awards recognizing his scholarship and achievement. As early as 1931, he was awarded the William E. Harmon Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes in Science,1 and in 1938, he received the Anisfield Award for The Negro College Graduate.2 But perhaps the most encouraging honor that Johnson received was public acknowledgment by his fellow southern sociologists when, in the spring of 1945, he was elected president of the Southern Sociological Society in the region of Jim Crow. When Johnson, along with T. Lynn Smith of Louisiana State University, was nominated for the office, Howard W. Odum went to bat for Johnson, even writing to Smith suggesting that the latter withdraw on the grounds that “it would indicate not only our own genuine appreciation of his work but it would go a long way toward convincing the rest of the world that we are on our way toward doing a better job.”3 Smith, however, refused to withdraw, indicating that Johnson would win on his own merits and that to 155

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withdraw would be an insult to Johnson and to the integrity of the society. Odum was greatly chagrined and quickly retreated. A few days after Johnson’s election, Charles G. Gomillion of Tuskegee Institute wrote Johnson, “I was happy . . . to receive a letter . . . announcing your election to the office of President to the Society. Congratulations. On second thought, I realize that it is the membership of the Society who should be congratulated in having made this selection. It is certainly long past due.” The region had come a long way since the time at the end of World War I when being a white southern liberal was defined as opposing lynching. But there was still a great distance to go. On April 15, 1946, an announcement of the coming meeting at which Johnson would preside was sent to all members of the Southern Sociological Society. Included in the announcement was the notice that “the meeting will be held at the Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, May 17th and 18th. The hotel is holding fifty twin bedrooms and five single rooms for the membership. Other accommodations will be available at Atlanta University.”4 A few days later, Juliette V. Phifer of State Teachers’ College in Fayetteville, North Carolina, applied for a reservation at the Biltmore Hotel. She received the following reply from the black president of the interracial organization: Your recent letter concerning your reservation at the Biltmore Hotel has been brought to my attention. Dr. Ira DeA. Reid, Atlanta University, has offered to arrange accommodations at Atlanta University for Negro members of the Southern Sociological Society who are planning to attend the meeting on May 17–18. . . . Do you wish us to cancel your reservation at the Biltmore, or would you prefer to do so?5 Johnson, then in his last year as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences, was caught in one of the many ironies of Jim Crow. As a scholar who was recognized by both his black and white peers as one of the most profound sociologists in the South and as the duly elected president of the Southern Sociological Society, Johnson was being given the highest honor that his regional peers were capable of bestowing. At the same time, he was denied the right of public accommodations afforded the white members of the society, including T. Lynn Smith, whom he had defeated. Johnson chose to ignore publicly the humiliation and to serve as president in hopes of future gains. He must not have been entirely comfortable, however, with the tacit support of segregation contained in his letter to Juliette V. Phifer. No doubt Phifer was even less pleased that segregation was not made an issue when it seemed like a timely situation in which to press it.

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In 1947, as he prepared to assume the duties as president of Fisk University, Johnson published Into the Main Stream.6 In it he wrote the introduction for what was essentially a staff publication by the Department of Race Relations.7 Here, as in his article in Opportunity on Booker T. Washington almost a generation earlier, Johnson made a curious detour from his sociology of tensions. In an accommodationist tone, he wrote, “[A] new basis of accommodation must be reached; . . . both groups should cease to demand what is for the present impossible, but undertake together programs of action in those areas where there is agreement—programs which offer Negroes better facilities, more equal opportunities, and a fuller participation in the obligations and privileges of citizenship.” He did go on to remind whites that in such a world they must admit that they were “compromising with democratic and Christian principles.” As well, he noted that blacks must stop shutting their eyes to the “actual social and cultural lags in the Negro population.” In many ways, the book mirrored the Durham Manifesto. The reason for Johnson’s rather abrupt but brief repudiation of the sociology of tensions is not entirely clear and, at any rate, rather complex. Several explanations are plausible. In 1943, the Fisk Department of Race Relations published To Stem This Tide.8 Basically, it was a staff project that included a cataloguing and analysis of the horrors of racism in the raw, from the beating of Roland Hayes in Rome, Georgia, and the Detroit riots to a discussion of the “Eleanor Clubs.” It was a straightforward account of the reality of racism in America and in many ways the most militant book Johnson ever put together. According to Fred L. Brownlee, general secretary of the American Missionary Association, who wrote the preface to To Stem This Tide, another book was planned that “will specialize in concrete examples of effective practices in allaying and slowing racial conflicts.” For a number of reasons, the companion volume, published as Into the Main Stream: A Survey of Best Practices in Race Relations in the South, did not appear until 1947. As the subtitle suggests, the second book was a cataloguing of the forces of white southern liberalism, such as the work of the University of North Carolina, along with the work blacks were doing at institutions like Meharry Medical College in Nashville. In short, it was aimed at appealing to the better side of the benevolent segregationists who seem to react best to the rhetoric of Booker T. Washington. After the failure to get this group to take a stand in opposition to segregation during the formative years of the Southern Regional Council, it may have seemed necessary to once again “tell them what they wanted to hear.” Of course, there are other explanations. Johnson was now President of Fisk University, and he may have felt new pressures and responsibilities. Or it may have been that he

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did not take into account the delay in the publication of the companion volume of To Stem This Tide. As well, Johnson may have felt bound to honor his pledge to Brownlee and the American Missionary Association. Its funding was crucial to the important work of the Fisk Department of Race Relations, and 1946 had been a turbulent year in which, as we will review elsewhere, the local powers had tried to shut down the Race Relations Institutes. Whatever the motivation, this aberration by Johnson from the sociology of tensions and open support of the strategy of accommodation was not among his most noble moments in a long career of achievements. Fortunately, it was only an aberration—not a new policy. By 1954, the Warren Supreme Court had spoken. A new definition of race relations in the United States was telegraphed. Johnson’s sagacious advice was needed. On the eve of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a group of educators, foundation officers, and journalists embarked upon the task of reporting “factually and objectively on developments in Southern education stemming from the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the public schools.”9 For the next eighteen years, the organization continued to function in a similar capacity. By the end of the first year, under a biracial board and its executive director, Colbert A. McKnight, the SERS had established the format and machinery that it used with little change until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.10 A number of correspondents were employed throughout the South to maintain a local clipping service, to investigate local news stories in some detail, and to submit a monthly report of activities in the area of race relations and education. From these reports, McKnight and his staff in Nashville extracted the most important news and reported it in a monthly publication entitled the Southern School News. This publication, in turn, was sent to a select group of public policy personnel who had replied affirmatively to a letter outlining plans for the Southern School News and asking permission to place them on the mailing list. Subscribers ranged from the Ku Klux Klan to the members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. An important part of the constituency included southern governors, public school officials, and members of state legislatures. In fact, Colbert A. McKnight, the first executive director, recalls that at the end of the first year, letters of renewal arrived on the same day from a New Orleans proponent of segregation, Leander Perez, and an NAACP proponent of integration, Thurgood Marshall. When interviewed nearly twenty years later, McKnight, who guided the SERS through the first hectic year and later used its services when he became the editor of the Charlotte Observer, was laudatory in his evaluation of the SERS. He perceived its chief purpose, especially in the early years, to be a device to influence white opinion. In his judgment, blacks

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already knew the problems of segregation and had taken a position on the Supreme Court’s decision. By maintaining an objective reporting service free of inflammatory adjectives and reporting from a base of nonadvocacy, he felt it was possible to reduce violence and to give the public the information it needed to react to the events of 1954 and after. Although there were dissenters from this interpretation, the SERS, from its inception until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, seems to have done a good job of reporting without editorializing. Over the years, the SERS has been cited again and again for its important role in aiding the South’s compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision on school desegregation. In the obituary of the SERS and its successor the Race Relations Information Center (RRIC), for example, the editors of Newsweek reported that “‘in every school segregation story,’ says one veteran civil-rights report, ‘SERS was the place we started.’”11 Robert F. Campbell, a former director of SERS, noted an even greater value of the organization when he exclaimed, “‘What a resource for historians. The value of SERS is going to be even greater in the future.’”12 For Charles S. Johnson, Bonita H. Valien, and contemporary black educators, journalists, and intellectuals present at the inception of the SERS, the laudatory evaluation needs qualification.13 It is undisputed that the SERS successfully served an important function in the civil rights movement; nevertheless, it is necessary to acknowledge that the SERS’s operation was far from a model of integration. Public discussion of the controversy that surrounded the early years of the SERS was apparently limited to the black press, a few white foundation officials, and a limited number of black intellectuals who were close to the scene. Although the controversy was very complex and much of it continued until the liquidation of the SERS, the conflict centered around three main points: (1) the historical relationship of Johnson and Fisk to the founding of the SERS, (2) the conflict between the rights and obligations of Bonita H. Valien (the only black employee) as an employee of the SERS and her responsibilities as a citizen, and (3) the participation of blacks in a biracial agency. By midcentury, the sociologist Charles S. Johnson was one of the most powerful blacks in the South.14 Bonita H. Valien, along with her husband Preston, joined Johnson’s faculty and research staff in the late 1930s. She brought impressive credentials to this task. Valien had received her M.A. from Atlanta University under the direction of W. E. B. Du Bois. In addition, she was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin. One of the many projects she worked on during her long tenure at Fisk was the publication by the Department of Race Relations entitled The Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations.15 It had originated in response to President Roosevelt’s request to Edwin R. Embree, president of the Rosenwald Fund, for a confidential memorandum on the nature of

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race relations. Embree, in turn, had asked Johnson and the Fisk staff to prepare the report. It was so well received by the Roosevelt administration that the decision was made to produce the report monthly. The Monthly Summary was directed towards individuals in key positions to influence public policy decisions at the local, state, and national level. Its subscribers also included many academic institutions, army and navy officers, chaplains, American foreign service organizations, and foreign organizations. During its five years of publication, The Monthly Summary was read in international circles in such diverse locations as neighboring Mexico and faraway Chungking, in the province of Szechwan, China (after the blockade of the Burma Road was broken).16 During its peak period of circulation, The Monthly Summary reached over fifteen thousand subscribers.17 Colbert A. McKnight and John J. Scanlon minimize Johnson’s role in the inception of the SERS.18 At the time the controversy surrounding Bonita H. Valien originated, Scanlon was an assistant to Philip H. Coombs, the secretary-treasurer of the Fund for the Advancement of Education which made the initial grant in 1954. In fact, Scanlon recalls that “Charles Johnson did not play a significant role in the inception of the SERS, but he was one of the original board members and remained so until his death.” An examination of the record, along with the private correspondence of Johnson and his colleagues, suggests that this description is at variance with the record, and, in fact, Johnson and Fisk played a significant role in the founding of the SERS. Philip H. Coombs, although not recalling many of the specific details, tends to support the general view reconstructed from the private correspondence of Johnson and his associates. In order to understand Johnson’s early involvement with the Southern Educational Reporting Service, it is necessary to look at the research project directed by Harry S. Ashmore and the Williamsburg conference, both of which predated the SERS. Coombs, McKnight, and Scanlon all credit the origin of the SERS to the Ashmore Project. In the late spring and early summer of 1953, the Fund for the Advancement of Education employed Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette to direct over forty scholars in “a new comprehensive look at the structure of bi-racial education in the United States.”19 In supporting the Ashmore Project, the Fund hoped to aid “the practical ‘decision-makers’” whose greatest need was “for objective facts which will guide them toward wise decisions in the face of difficult problems.” On May 16, 1954, the day before the Brown v. Board of Education decision, The Negro and the Schools was published with Ashmore, director of the project, as the author. During the following summer, the second book Schools in Transition: Community Experiences in Desegregation, also based on the project, was published under the edi-

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torship of Robin M. Williams, Jr., and Margaret W. Ryan. The research model for the Ashmore Project followed very closely the Johnson approach used in such works as Growing Up in the Black Belt and Patterns of Negro Segregation. In fact, in The Negro and the Schools, two members of the Fisk Department of Race Relations, Bonita H. Valien and John M. Hope II, were credited with doing the field studies for Cairo, Illinois, and New Jersey. In addition, two of the twelve chapters of Schools in Transition: Community Experiences in Desegregation were based on the data from the Ashmore Project that Hope and Valien had gathered. While not recalling that Johnson was deeply involved in the inception of the SERS, Scanlon states that “the Ashmore study did grow out of a suggestion made by Charles Johnson, and Dr. Johnson did play an active role in the planning and execution of the study.”20 Coombs agrees, but he also notes that Ralph J. Bunche and Ralph McGill, who along with Ashmore were members of the board of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, made significant contributions. The period from 1953 to 1954 was a time of tension and anxiety for liberals and moderates who were concerned about desegregation and the impending Court decision. It was assumed that the Court would call for at least some adjustment in segregation. The only question was the degree of adjustment. This was a time of great movement behind the scenes for those forces that hoped to aid the peaceful transition required by such a decision. In this context, George S. Mitchell, executive director of the Southern Regional Council (SRC), held a meeting May 6–9, 1954, in Williamsburg, Virginia. Although the deliberations were not an official function of the SRC, it included most of the council’s leadership and served essentially as a quasi-official meeting to discuss the imminent Supreme Court decision on school desegregation.21 According to Mitchell, one of “the aims of the conference was to make available to bodies, which might be asked to finance programs in the South, the results of a careful review of projects by a group of Southern persons particularly informed in this area.” In preparation for the Williamsburg conference, Mitchell wrote a personal letter to Johnson, reminding him that “we need your comments, clean-sweep or detailed. We all agree you are the one to be chairman of the sessions.”22 The Williamsburg conference listed twenty-five members in attendance who, in addition to Johnson and Mitchell, included such southern liberals as Will W. Alexander; Gordon Blackwell of the University of North Carolina; J. Curtis Dixon, who had been active in education and the poll tax fight in Georgia; Grace T. Hamilton of the Atlanta Urban League; Brooks Hays, Representative from Arkansas; and many others. After the opening meeting, a steering committee of eight members, including Johnson, Mitchell, and Alexander, was named. From the Williamsburg conference

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emerged a significant report which included, among other items, the blueprint for the SERS.23 Under the heading of “A Reporting System on Racial Integration in the Schools of the South” was an outline of a program that paralleled almost exactly what the Fisk Department of Social Sciences, the Department of Race Relations, and The Monthly Summary had been doing for years. The report from the Williamsburg conference gave the rationale for such an approach as encouraging local school officials facing desegregation “to move forward in the matter by knowing what other communities have done and with what results,” informing officials of approaches and techniques in “influencing public opinion,” and the quieting of rumors and the sharing of “knowledge concerning problems and obstacles.” From this rationale, the report outlined several purposes of a reporting system: (1) the collection of accurate information on significant events relating to local school integration; (2) channeling such information, in usable form, to school and other public officials; (3) channeling this information “to the general public throughout the region through the various mass media, and through action organizations”; and (4) making this information “available for behavioral science and [the] historical researcher.” The report continued with a discussion of the need to “involve journalists” and recommended that “the reporting system might well be guided in policy terms by a board comprising prestige editors of the region, educators, and social scientists.” Nashville was suggested as a convenient center “where cooperation would be available from Fisk, Peabody, and Vanderbilt.” The report recommended that the director of the reporting system be “a person with outstanding ability with experience in the communication field and with some knowledge and appreciation of social science.” In addition to fulfilling the needs of journalists, the document recommended that the reporting system “prepare periodic press releases based on reports from the field.” Furthermore, it was suggested that “research on the data should be planned either as part of this project or a separate project.” In this respect, it was recommended that “to assure that the information collected will be usable for these research purposes, social scientists should have a voice in planning the project.” Finally, the section of the document dealing with the reporting service noted that “the Fund for the Advancement of Education has undertaken a project of this kind as a logical follow-up of the Ashmore Project.” This last point was apparently in reference to a conference in the spring of 1954 between Johnson and Philip H. Coombs, secretary-treasurer of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, held in the Department of Social Sciences on the Fisk campus. In addition to Johnson and Coombs, the meeting was attended by a number of Fisk staff members,

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including Vivian W. Henderson, Bonita H. Valien, and Preston Valien.24 It was at this earlier meeting, apparently after Mitchell’s letter of April 15 inviting Johnson to the Williamsburg meeting and asking for his recommendations, and before the May 6–9 Williamsburg conference, that the plans for the SERS were revealed to Johnson’s staff. Henderson and the two Valiens remember that it was at this meeting at Fisk with Coombs that Johnson first presented the blueprint for the SERS. Coombs, who has a high regard for Johnson, does not recall this specific meeting.25 He notes that there would have been no reason for a meeting at such an early date. A review of Johnson’s private letters to his wife Marie contradicts Coombs’s memory of remote events.26 Johnson’s personal correspondence to his wife clearly indicates that by April 6, almost two months before the founding of the SERS, Johnson had crystallized his conception of what the future organization would encompass. This letter is crucial to understanding later complications surrounding the SERS. On April 6, 1954, Johnson wrote his wife, “I’m in for the evening from a useful and very promising conference with Drs. Coombs and Scanlon—of the Fund for the Advancement of Education—on a new and, if all other things are equal, an additional project. Simply, the proposal is that a collaboration program of Fisk, Peabody, and Vanderbilt—based heavily at Fisk—would set up reporting stations throughout the South, to report periodically and publish monthly (after the matter of The Monthly Summary that we published) developments after the Supreme Court decision. The support of such a program, financially, would be generous.” In May 1954, within two days after the Williamsburg conference, the meeting that led to the formal founding of the SERS was scheduled to be held in Nashville, Tennessee.27 Among those in attendance were Harry S. Ashmore; Gordon Blackwell; Harvie Branscomb, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University; Virginius Dabney; Coleman A. Harwell of the Nashville Tennessean; Henry H. Hill, president of Peabody College; Charles Moss of the Nashville Banner; and Thomas R. Waring of the Charleston News and Courier. Of course, Coombs, Johnson, and Scanlon were there. At the time of the meeting, the editors were not aware of the scope of the project. In fact, Charles Moss of the Nashville Banner, which was engaged in a bitter struggle with the Nashville Tennessean, was absent when the initial meeting began. Once Coombs telephoned Moss and explained the significance of the meeting, Moss appeared and participated.28 The North Carolina newspaperman Colbert A. McKnight was asked to become the executive director of the project. Before formally accepting the appointment, McKnight traveled across the South conferring with the board members to be sure that both he and the board understood the functions of the SERS.29

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In a somewhat defensive mood, when interviewed many years after the events, Coombs stressed that the Fund for the Advancement of Education intended that full control of the operations of the SERS be given to the board and executive director.30 According to Coombs, individuals such as Ralph McGill and Harry S. Ashmore supported such a position. Coombs remembers the addition of the arch-segregationist Thomas R. Waring to the SERS board to have been at the insistence of Ralph McGill, who believed the liberals on the board needed a devil’s advocate—at least in the eyes of the public. Coombs noted that other than some budget matters, the policy and operation of the SERS was in the control of the southern editors. Apparently, the philosophy and policy of the funding sponsors of the SERS was to create a truly indigenous southern, mostly white organization. Such a hands-off approach was personally portentous for Johnson and his long-time administrative assistant, Bonita H. Valien. It appears to the researcher almost one-half century later that the Fund for the Advancement of Education funded the SERS and then abdicated control. At about the time that McKnight was assuming his duties as executive director, Johnson wrote to Jesse O. Thomas, whom he had known when they were both with the Urban League. Johnson reported on his activities and sounded an ominous note regarding his concerns for the future. Thomas was pressing Johnson to recommend him for a reporting job with the SERS.31 Johnson replied to Thomas’s request with a note of irritation at the presumptuous manner of the inquiry, but, more important, wrote that “the reporting service is still a part of the Foundation until it goes on a budget and begins to operate on its own.” He went on to outline the type of job that he thought Thomas might be best suited to fill. In doing so, he gave his judgment of the origins of the SERS and its relationship to Fisk: This determination is not being made exclusively by Mr. McKnight but, in the present stage, primarily by the planners of the project, notably Dr. Coombs in the Office of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, who was also in the conference in New York to which I referred. Since this reporting is based very largely on the method of our earlier ‘Monthly Summary of the Events and Trends in Race Relations,’ I had hoped that my calculated proposals from the point of view of the project itself would have some merit. (Emphasis added.) It was apparently at the New York meeting of early April to which Johnson referred in his letter to Thomas that the decision to employ

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Bonita H. Valien was made. Shortly thereafter, Johnson wrote to McKnight, “[I]n thinking of the implementation of the program which is probably going to be a delicate and important responsibility of yours, I can speak with full confidence for Mrs. Valien, with whom you have talked and, who, in my opinion, is one of the best prepared young social scientists in the country, with particular acquaintance with the sociology of the southern region.”32 Johnson, at least, was of the opinion that Valien had been employed to fill the requirements for a social scientist, as he had outlined at the Williamsburg meeting. Later, when the controversy about Valien’s role in the SERS arose, Johnson referred to her as “the second person engaged on this project.”33 It is also obvious from Johnson’s correspondence that, as one of the original planners of the project, he assumed there would be a role for black as well as white field reporters. In this respect, he wrote McKnight during the first month of the project, recommending a black reporter. He observed, “It is conceivable that you might need a Negro correspondent, who can spend whatever time is required in particular communities to investigate and follow up situations pertinent to the objective of the Reporting Service.”34 For a time, the SERS appeared to be fulfilling the purpose for which Coombs, Johnson, the Williamsburg conference, and the Nashville founders had created it. The first issue of the Southern School News appeared in September 1954. Except for the normal tensions that are expected in beginning projects, things seemed to be going well with the SERS. But by the beginning of 1955, problems began to appear. During that winter, Bonita H. Valien had participated in a seminar in Boston in which she had advocated support of the 1954 Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision and, therefore, of integration.35 The local and regional news media picked up the story on the news wires and reported her talk. The board, and especially Thomas R. Waring, was immediately upset that an employee of SERS was advocating a point of view on desegregation. What followed was a long and involved conflict. Only the essentials are important here. The board and the SERS director remonstrated Valien. Internal tension increased and finally, on February 21, 1955, in a long and eloquent letter to the director that was tantamount to a resignation, Valien stated her position.36 She reviewed her past and present activities as a social scientist. Although not referring to the region by name, she discussed her duties in such racially tense areas as Cairo, Illinois, during the Ashmore Project. In this respect, she noted, “I . . . have interviewed persons who have said things to me, which, if I were operating as a sensitive citizen identifying with the remarks instead of as a social scientist interested in the person’s point of view, I could not have brought to a satisfactory conclusion a

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research activity in many communities.” But she further pointed out that “as a citizen, I hold the same rigorous standards for my behavior in my daily contacts as I do when I am working as a social scientist.” It was in the latter areas that Valien was under attack. Her defense was simple and telling: “In supporting the Supreme Court decision, I sincerely believe I am acting as a loyal, law-abiding American citizen.” Finally, Valien observed, “I sincerely hope that the Board will not see fit to regulate the role of its employee as a citizen; I would also hope that the Board would never have a person in its employ whose public statements would not do credit to the Service.” On June 12, 1955, Mrs. Valien was given her release, effective June 30, 1955.37 The reasons given for not contracting her services for another year were vague. The letter of nonrenewal referred to the need not to “be limited to the professional consultation service of any one person, but . . . [to] be free to call upon other persons available at Peabody, Vanderbilt, Fisk, Scarritt and other universities in the Nashville area.” McKnight closed his letter by commenting: “Your work for us during the past year has been of a very high caliber indeed.” Charles S. Johnson had missed the board meetings of March 6 and June 12, when the future employment of Bonita H. Valien was discussed. On the latter occasion, he was at Cornell University to see his son Robert receive his Ph.D.38 Johnson had been under the impression that P. B. Young, the other black member of the SERS board, would be present at the June board meeting, but Young did not attend. As a result, no one was present to plead Valien’s case in the formal board meeting. A generation later, Coombs, who recalled that he would have been present at the meetings in question, did not remember that Valien’s public position on the Supreme Court’s decisions was ever discussed.39 Although Coombs cautioned the interviewer that he was vague on the details of an event far in the past, Coombs is under the impression that Valien’s termination was presented by the director of the formal board meetings as a personnel question. He recalled that there was at least the implication that Valien was too assertive for the executive director and tried to pressure him to make too many changes in the program. If this were actually the case, it is curious that no attempt was made to ensure future black participation in the SERS. After Bonita H. Valien’s notice of separation, Johnson did attempt to use his traditionally effective method of private lobbying. This time, the logical, dispassionate, and personal letters and requests by the powerful southern black leader fell on deaf ears.40 In all of the letters discussing the case, Johnson raised essentially the same points and the same arguments. Valien had not been released, at least officially, because of her position in support of the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision. Consequently, Johnson

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did not argue the merit of her taking a stand. His defense of her was in the context of her professional competency as a social scientist and the need for an objective news reporting service to have black participants. As he wrote Coombs, “[T]here seems to be something fundamentally contradictory in the present structure and operation of the project which is becoming increasingly pronounced.” He noted that in view of the fact that “no Negro reporters were included in the service, . . . a corrective mechanism has been the provision of a Negro sociologist . . . at headquarters.” Not only did Valien fulfill the role of a social scientist, but at the same time, she had “access to a world of Negro-white action, attitude, and opinion, which the average white reporter, however competent, has had no particular occasion or opportunity to develop.” If for no other reason, such an approach was logical as “a safeguard against oversights or limited views . . . [to provide] assurance of truly ‘objective intent.’” To do otherwise in Johnson’s view was “analogous to a well intentioned study of the role of women in a society with no women in the study.” After establishing the logical need for black participation in the functioning of the reporting service, Johnson went on to enumerate the qualifications of Valien as “a capable sociologist and worker with seven years experience in handling the prototype of this journal and service.” In fact, Johnson noted that The Monthly Summary, “which she managed, . . . under different auspices and in an even more tense period, reached a circulation of . . . practically the same individuals and organizations receiving The Southern School News.” Finally, in most of his letters, as he did when he wrote to Coombs, Johnson reported, “I have only recently learned that she has been receiving a salary less than her academic post would provide, and has had none of the clerical or other facilities of the central office.” On the same subject, in a letter to Virginius Dabney, Johnson noted that Valien had “not over the entire life of the program been permitted to work in the office of the organization.” Johnson was not given to idle rhetoric. His approach usually favored intellectual persuasion over personal confrontation. But the conditions at the SERS headquarters reached a stage where he was compelled to act—albeit without publicity. He reflected on the personal agonizing that he underwent when he wrote Coombs, “I have thought about this a great deal, and have given heavy weight to the value of having customarily representative white leadership as an assurance of regional acceptability. But I cannot quite see how it helps the fundamental principle at issue, to have no Negro functional service at all.”41 Despite his dutiful attempt to preserve black participation in the SERS, Johnson was not very encouraged toward the possibility of success. As he wrote Coombs later that summer, when it became evident that the SERS was not going to employ blacks in the near future, “[T]he letter to you was more a matter of record, than expectation.”42

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After the departure of Bonita H. Valien, the SERS continued to function well into the 1960s without incorporating blacks into the day-to-day functions. Blacks in limited numbers continued to serve on the board, as had Johnson, but this too was an issue of contention, even while Johnson was still alive. Shortly after the Nashville meeting in May 1954, P. B. Young, editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, was added to the board. He was generally regarded by whites as a moderate and by blacks as a conservative on race relations.43 Yet in the period of less than two years that he served, Young was forced to take issue with the prosegregationist views of many of his fellow board members. Unlike the employees, board members were not bound by the rules of nonadvocacy. Despite his position on the SERS board, Thomas R. Waring, for example, wrote a fellow editor that “the News and Courier is carrying on a long term campaign, with all the vigor we possess, to prevent the end of segregation by whatever means may be deemed useful.”44 Twice in disputes Young had resigned, only to be persuaded to stay on in order to ensure the larger goals of the SERS.45 Early in 1956, Young made his final departure. At the time of Johnson’s death, the SERS was still seeking a replacement for Young.46 As the problems of the SERS and the views of its leadership on black participation became better known in the black community, Johnson himself began to be criticized in black publications like Jet and the Baltimore Afro-American. But in his career as a traditional black leader in the land of Jim Crow, Johnson had built many Trojan horses. He reasoned that it was important to have able individuals operating from within the base of power, even if sometimes such activity was distasteful. In this respect, he reacted to the criticism in a personal letter to Claude A. Barnett of the Associated Negro Press. He observed that it was his “wish that a distinction could be made in this historic struggle for integration between strategy and tactics.”47 The experience left Johnson greatly chagrined. His work in the Department of Race Relations and with The Monthly Summary at Fisk had served as the models for SERS. In less than two years, the white southern newspapermen expropriated the Fisk program virtually intact, with two conspicuous differences. The new project was de facto segregated, and it had eliminated blacks from the day-to-day operations. Johnson was not even thrown a token crumb. He had been unable to find a place as a field reporter in SERS for his old Urban League associate Jesse O. Thomas. Even more unconscionable, the black man who had conceived of SERS had not been able to preserve the interracial principle upon which the SERS project was predicated. In the end, one of his favorite students and a worthy successor to the Johnson tradition had been relieved of her position for publicly supporting the Supreme Court of the United States.

Chapter 13

The Department of Race Relations: Confronting de facto Segregation

A

t the same time that he was working with southern liberals in an attempt to find a new definition of race relations, Johnson was developing new programs at Fisk. As the 1930s ended, his focus of research shifted from economic and strictly southern problems to questions of racial prejudice, civil rights, and related national problems. The change in direction was apparently the result of several factors. First, Johnson had accomplished much of the city, state, and regional research that he had first proposed to Thomas E. Jones in 1927 and 1928. Second, and perhaps more importantly, much of his research depended upon foundation funding. As World War II neared, the foundations became more interested in race relations and urban conditions in the North. In order to keep the funds coming, Johnson directed his studies toward issues that the foundations were interested in financing. Finally, by the early 1940s, it appeared that a national campaign to end segregation was feasible. In 1942, the United States was fully engaged in World War II. America, which prided itself as a democratic haven, sought to defeat Nazi Germany, the champion of the Aryan doctrine. But the war effort, supported by the ideology of democracy, was often embarrassed by the U.S. domestic policy of Jim Crow.1 Naturally, some effort was made by the federal government to blur the contradiction between creed and deed. Ted Poston, a veteran black newsman, was appointed “as racial adviser in the Office of War Information.” Other black journalists, led by Ollie Steward of the Baltimore Afro-American and Lem Graves of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, were accredited as war correspondents. Despite such attempts to alleviate the dissatisfaction and anger of black people, the key issue of 169

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race surfaced in the United States in the 1940s unlike anything since the 1890s. Perhaps the Pittsburgh Courier best captured the attitudes of black Americans in waging its “Double V” campaign, which called for “victory at home as well as abroad.” If the United States were going to continue to hold itself up to the world as the champion of democracy, it would have to begin to deal at home with the problems of segregation in the South and discrimination in the North. Much of this task of charting a new course was laid at the feet of Charles S. Johnson. During the war, Johnson offered his skill, experience, and diplomacy as a statesman and as a scholar to work out a new national definition of race relations in the United States, and under his leadership the highly developed Social Sciences Department at Fisk University directed its attention toward achieving “victory at home.” The department, which for more than a decade had been accumulating information on regional race relations, received new foundation funds to concentrate its attention directly on national race relations. With the additional finances, Johnson established the Department of Race Relations in 1942. Johnson seems to have been conscious of the new direction his race relations activities were taking him. In the summer of 1942, prior to working out the preliminary outlines of a new program with his colleagues from the Rosenwald Fund, he wrote his wife, “Most important, as you know is the AMA-Rosenwald-Fisk combine—which is really the next phase of a career.”2 The initial step in this new venture, which would result in the creation of the Fisk University Department of Race Relations, began during the first summer of U.S. direct involvement in World War II when the triumvirate of Will W. Alexander, Edwin R. Embree, and Charles S. Johnson held a conference to discuss the Rosenwald program in race relations.3 From this conference emerged an outline of a three- to five-year program. It was agreed to continue to support both Johnson’s and Howard W. Odum’s studies in order to keep in touch with the “Negro situation” on the one hand and with white sentiment on the other. This work was to be buttressed by a general educational program. The triumvirate also recognized that the South was preventing the further development of “liberality in race relations throughout the nation.” They further decided that “the Fund should make efforts to present the racial situation in this country in the framework of the changing position of the colored peoples throughout the world.” Although there was discussion about stressing the rights of the “common man” over simply concentrating on “Negro rights,” it no longer seemed possible to ignore the issue of race in southern life. In so many words, at least in Johnson’s mind, segregation was to be the new target. Although Alexander and Embree assured Johnson of their vital support for the broad program, there is little doubt that the main burden was left to the

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Fisk sociologist. In this respect he wrote his wife, “It is practically in my lap to work out [a program] between now and November—with a budget.”4 The triumvirate was not ready to go public with the attack upon segregation, but in their summer conference of 1942 the preliminary decision was made to channel a substantial amount of Rosenwald funds into a program aimed directly at race relations. The careful observer should have noted this was a distinctly different orientation than the previous Rosenwald Fund programs of the 1930s, which had been chiefly concerned with improving schools and other economic conditions in the South while bowing to the principles of Jim Crow. It is not clear if the triumvirate was united in a plan to attack segregation directly, but it is known that they gingerly approached the task of selling the new race relations program to the Rosenwald Fund board. In a memorandum, the contents of which suggest that Johnson wrote it, the need for the new approach was presented in very conservative terms.5 First, the memorandum noted that black movements were changing and had taken on the characteristic of “becoming proletarian, as contrasted to the upper class . . . intellectual influence that was typical of previous movements.” This mood had developed out of the added resentment by blacks of segregation and discrimination during the war. In addition, the memorandum said, “The present proletarian direction grows out of the increasing power of Negroes in labor.” The later remark no doubt had reference to the recent March on Washington Movement (MOWM) led by A. Philip Randolph. The memorandum was typical of Johnson’s technique of employing the rhetoric of Booker T. Washington without endorsing the philosophy. For during the movement of the black proletariat led by Randolph, Johnson’s public statements and business correspondence were curiously silent about one of the most exciting movements in black history. The careless observer might assume that Johnson did not approve of the MOWM. However, in an undated private letter to his wife written in June of 1942 he wrote, “With some time between trains on hand in New York I went to the Randolph March-on-Washington . . . meeting at Madison Sq. garden.”6 He at least gave it his qualified endorsement when later in the letter he wrote, “There were about 20,000 Negroes there and about 20 speeches, . . . up to the time I left, moderate in anti-sentiments, but strong on what they expect. . . . It was quite a demonstration.” It is apparent that the race relation diplomat was up to his old strategy in appearing to force the Rosenwald Fund board to choose between Randolph’s approach and Johnson’s. At the same time, Johnson was careful in the memorandum not to attack Randolph and other apparently more radical leaders when he told the board, “The present movements are led in part by such established leaders as A. Philip Randolph, Walter White, etc.” The

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trump card was to remind the board, “There is likelihood (and danger) that the movement may be seized upon by some much more picturesque figure who may be less responsible and less interested in actual improvement in conditions. One of the most likely of the potential leaders is A. Clayton Powell, Jr.” The fact that Johnson did not attempt to qualify his criticism of Powell probably stems from at least two reasons. First, he always resented urban northern blacks who had little understanding of the rural South—either because of lack of experience or due to the amnesia of opportunism.7 Secondly, not every strategy could be all-inclusive. In Johnson’s case, Powell was excluded for strategic reasons. At any rate, Johnson did eventually sell the program to the Rosenwald Fund board. By the fall of 1942, Embree, in his capacity as president of the Rosenwald Fund, had completed the groundwork for what became the Race Relations Department at Fisk. In October, Embree wrote Odum suggesting the scope of the proposed program. In the course of his letter, Embree noted that Mark Ethridge had suggested that the board be asked for “a commitment of $100,000 without specification as to detailed program or length of time to be covered by this first allocation.”8 Embree also called for “the appointment of Charles Johnson as co-director for race relations,” along with Will W. Alexander. During the same year that the Rosenwald Fund was turning its attention toward race relations, the American Missionary Association of the Congregational and Christian Churches (AMA) established a division of race relations.9 For this new venture the AMA also chose Fisk University and Charles S. Johnson to be the base for its operation. As Fred L. Brownlee, the general secretary of the American Missionary Association, later noted, the AMA was determined that its program to bring the social gospel to race relations was not going to be “a New York swivel-chair outfit.”10 Rather, the AMA was moving toward a “pioneering, experimental, practical-and-on-the-job, spearheading movement, zig-zagging among racial issues which were acute, discovering common ground on which solutions might be found and applied cooperatively.” In the words of Brownlee, “For this Fisk had been preparing an excellent base of operations.” By November 1942, the stage was set for merging the forces of the Rosenwald Fund, the American Missionary Association, and Fisk. In addition to these three sources, the Rosenwald Fund continued to keep Alexander in Washington as a lobbyist.11 The consequence was that Johnson, as director of the Race Relations Department, had access to foundation funding and, at least to some degree, the ear of the Roosevelt administration. Both were necessary elements for a meaningful program. The final agreement crystallized in mid-November 1942 in a Nashville meeting.12 The surviving reports of the meeting and the subsequent correspondence expressed

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the spirit of goodwill and cooperation that was so evident during these early years. For example, although the Rosenwald Fund desired the full-time services of Johnson, Embree, president of the fund, expressed a willingness to accept “a shared relationship, in a coordinated program which seeks the same end.” The Rosenwald Fund was also willing to underwrite the cost of “ample quarters . . . for the program director and the AMA staff for a central northern and mid-western office.” Furthermore, in view of the long working relationship between Charles S. Johnson and the foundation, Embree indicated that the Fund “would wish to assume major responsibility for the salary of the director, thus releasing such AMA funds as were so earmarked for other essential staff members.” Thus, the assumption was that Johnson would divide his time among Nashville, Chicago, and New York. President Thomas E. Jones of Fisk University “expressed a desire to retain the proposed Institute of the AMA at Fisk University.” It was at this time that Jones formally suggested that Johnson, who was chairman of the Department of Social Sciences, “retain the Chairmanship of the Department [of Race Relations] for the school, as an aid to coordination, and direct the total program, with a delegated full-time professor as associate for the detailed functions which have to do exclusively with the school program.” On November 16, 1942, Edwin R. Embree wrote to Johnson, “That was a grand day in Nashville. You did a masterful job in presenting the tremendous and widespread problems in so brief and clear a statement. I take new heart both from the conference and from the plans for cooperation of this Fund, the AMA and Fisk.” Subsequently, President Jones of Fisk wrote Embree: In accord with our conversation on November 14, 1942, and subsequent discussions with Mr. Fred L. Brownlee, Mr. William F. Frazier, and Dr. Charles S. Johnson, I am submitting herewith a plan of cooperation by which the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the American Missionary Association, and Fisk University may use the services of Dr. Charles S. Johnson, and the Social Science Institute of Fisk University to the benefit of the parties concerned. . . . Through this joint arrangement, it is hoped that the work of the Social Science Institute and the programs of the American Missionary Association and the Julius Rosenwald Fund will be mutually benefited.13 On December 17, 1942, Johnson wrote Claude A. Barnett with the Associated Negro Press of the new arrangement: “The work of my Department goes on. It is expanded into an institute which will handle the

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regular program which we have been carrying on supplemented by some of the operational work for the Rosenwald Fund and for the Race Relations Division of the American Missionary Association.” Barnett summed up the real significance of the new arrangement when he replied, “You harness three forces together, all of whom need you and which ought to be able to do a job together.”14 The remaining war years were busy and creative. During Christmas vacation of 1942, Charles S. Johnson held a meeting of his Department of Social Sciences to lay plans for the coming year. Johnson reviewed his recent conference with President Thomas E. Jones. Jones had charged Johnson and the Social Sciences Institute with the responsibility for developing new programs that would link it up with the Rosenwald Fund and the AMA.15 As Johnson’s successor as head of the Department of Race Relations wrote in 1953, the thinking was that “it was much too late to fight the romantic battle. . . . These prescriptions demanded . . . a fresh attack within a strategy that was deliberately conceived.”16 At the Christmas vacation meeting in 1942, Robert E. Park indicated that he would work on a memorandum concerning the proposed new program. In one of his last acts for his former student, the old mentor, Park, went far toward defining what Johnson and his staff would do during the next few years when he said, “The race problem is what we have all been working on and is something we know more about than most other people.”17 Two days later Fred L. Brownlee of the AMA formally announced that Charles S. Johnson had accepted the appointment as the AMA’s Director of Race Relations, effective January 1, 1943.18 It soon became evident that the basic plan of the department was summed up in the words “research, education and action.”19 For many years, social scientists had been studying race relations and the lives of black people. But there had not been an attempt “to shape this body of knowledge and information into the definite structure of an agency program.” With the founding of the Department of Race Relations, it became the task of Johnson and his staff at Fisk “to discover a way of rendering services to the communities in need of them, and making a dent in the armor of segregation and discrimination, long established in countless social practices as ways of meeting the racial problem.” Johnson carefully planned his program. He did not want to be in the position of competing with established action organizations like the NAACP; nor did he desire to replace local movements and organizations. Such a department demanded “inventiveness and fluidity of program, making a fresh attack within a strategy that was deliberately conceived.” The formal program of the Race Relations Department began in January 1943.20 But it started out at a disadvantage. Not only did it begin in the

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middle of an academic year, but it was further handicapped by the heavy demands of the war for manpower. By June, however, most of the staff was assembled for work. In addition to drawing upon the highly skilled staff of the Department of Social Sciences, which included veteran members like Preston and Bonita H. Valien, Johnson added new staff members. Such prestigious names as Ira DeA. Reid of Atlanta University, who was to act as associate director, and Horace Mann Bond, president of Fort Valley College, were involved early. Herman H. Long, who later became director, Charles R. Lawrence, Clifton R. Jones, Pearl Walker, Frank O. Dorey, Harold M. Kingsley, Minerva H. Johnson, and Henry C. McDowell were also a part of Johnson’s newly expanded staff. During the first year of the program, Johnson and his staff concentrated their research in “areas of racial tension.” Usually, the department was brought in by interested agencies in the communities to study “acute racial situations centering around population mobility, industrial readjustments, housing shortages, problems associated with the military training program, general war hysteria, and direct incitations to racial unrest.” The methods of inquiry were very similar to those pioneered by Park and Johnson in the 1920s. Special attention was given to the industrial problems in Mobile, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; Detroit, Michigan; Macon, Georgia; and Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas. In the area of housing, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Philadelphia, South Bend, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Cleveland were studied. In most cases an investigation was made before community-wide conflict erupted, but in Mobile, Beaumont, and Detroit, the department’s work was to study a postriot situation in hopes of averting future outbreaks. Along with the study of existing conditions and problems, the department was engaged in “preparing the community for the inevitable problems of post-war readjustment, industrial reconversion, and the return of soldiers to civilian life.” In 1943, Johnson combined the data of previous research by the Department of Social Sciences and the results of several months of intensive investigation of racially tense areas by the Race Relations Department to publish To Stem This Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States.21 Although To Stem This Tide was basically a staff project with much of the fieldwork led by Long, it carried Johnson’s imprimatur.22 The introduction was obviously his work. It set a militant, but hopeful, tone. Although he avoided sociological jargon, Johnson placed the book in the context of the sociology of tensions. World War II had raised domestic issues that went beyond public opinion and hit upon questions of basic ideologies. In fact, the war had produced “a disruptive effect upon the familiar institutions in which racial adjustments of a sort have been worked out.” As a result of the new tensions, old accommodations were being challenged.

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This new questioning of the traditional status of blacks was being acted out in such areas as industry, employment, housing, education, and public accommodations. In support of this judgment, Johnson offered many examples from the field research of his staff in such urban areas as Mobile and Detroit and in agricultural areas like Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, and Greene County, Georgia. Not only did the war act in a manner similar to the forces of natural law, thereby upsetting the equilibrium of the old accommodations, but it further complicated race relations because it was being waged in the name of democracy and Judeo-Christian brotherhood. This philosophical and ideological justification for the war presented the larger American public and the government with a dilemma. They had to decide whether to incorporate blacks “into their system of moral obligations and Christian fellowship, or revise the system itself downward to a more comfortable tolerance of permanent injustice.” The early chapters of To Stem This Tide discussed the various general areas of tensions in the United States. From there, Johnson went on to devote chapters to “Treatment of Negro Soldiers” and “Negro Morale and the War.” His final chapters identified additional areas of racial tensions and discussed “Post-War Problems in Prospect.” In this section, he issued a strong call for positive action by the federal government, much in the manner later suggested by Gunnar Myrdal. Although less than 150 pages of text, To Stem This Tide was an important document.23 It provided those drafting public policy with accurate and unvarnished information on the nature of race relations. At the same time, it added to the literature of sociology by placing the violence of the day within the context of the sociology of tensions. By the end of the first year of operation, Johnson had developed the general program that the Department of Race Relations followed during the remainder of his career. For the next several years, the staff at Fisk would be involved in trying to educate those in a position to make, or at least directly influence, public policy in urban America. In addition, Johnson established the Race Relations Institutes which over the years took on an identity of their own. Because of their broad scope and significant impact upon race relations during the postwar years, the Race Relations Institutes will be treated in detail in the next chapter. Drawing upon his experience as editor of Opportunity, Johnson soon sought to lobby for a more wholesome public policy in race relations with a monthly publication. The Monthly Summary, which for five years served as a Bible for leaders in race relations and related fields, originated quite by accident.24 Initially, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had asked Embree and the Rosenwald Fund to supply a confidential memorandum for him and his staff on the nature of race relations in the United States during the period of wartime tensions. The original twelve typewritten

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copies, prepared by Johnson and his staff at Fisk, were enthusiastically received, and requests for additional copies followed. As the need and desire for such a document became more evident, the Rosenwald Fund “responded to the widespread desire for this type of current information by providing the budget for . . . the second . . . Summary.” Over the next five years, the Rosenwald Fund substantially underwrote the cost of the Fiskcentered publication. In addition, the American Council on Race Relations and the American Missionary Association provided funds for the purchase of nearly one thousand copies for monthly distribution.25 By August of 1943, the formal publication of The Monthly Summary, discussed in previous chapters, had begun.26 It was managed by Bonita H. Valien. Johnson set the tone for the publication early in a personal note to his staff members. He reminded them that “the Summary should not only be objective but anonymous.”27 The uniqueness of The Monthly Summary was that “there is no other regular periodical staffed by persons with a background in the social sciences which undertakes to bring together, classify, and present in orderly and objective form all the developments in this area.” And he warned that “such people, who are the subscribers to The Summary, are not in need of inspirational material or personal viewpoints.” Besides drawing upon the sources in the Fisk data bank, which was continually being filled by the work of the Social Sciences Department and the newly created Department of Race Relations, Johnson initiated a special national news service which allowed The Monthly Summary to draw upon “items on racial minorities and race relations from some 400 daily newspapers distributed over the United States.” This source yielded about eight hundred items a month. The Fisk staff examined “weekly 11 Negro newspapers and the releases of the Associated Negro Press.” Along with the black newspapers, “26 labor and organizational papers,” ranging from Crisis and Opportunity to the Southern Regional Council’s Southern Frontier and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare’s Southern Patriot, were surveyed. The information from the clipping services was further verified by field reporters, local agencies such as the Urban League, previous contacts of the Fisk Social Sciences Department, and the parties concerned. From the Fisk clipping service an average of about 3,500 separate items was catalogued every month. The news service was further supplemented by Johnson’s pioneering use of a field reporting service. The field reporters, numbering as many as forty-three during the most active period of The Monthly Summary, were “located in strategic centers throughout the United States.” They were retained on regular stipends, provided by the Rosenwald Fund, averaging about $135 a month.28 Their task was to send in “monthly reports of incidents and trends in their communities which they

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consider relevant to race relations.” At the same time, they acted as source people to verify information received from the clipping services. Although the field reporting staff was centered mainly in the South and border states, such areas as Boston, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles were included. With a well-planned publication, which incorporated a highly trained and competent staff, innovative research methods, and adequate funding, it is not surprising that The Monthly Summary was objective and informative, and that it provided public policymakers with the most current and comprehensive information available on race relations in the 1940s. The format was pleasant, readable, and not didactic. Every month, Johnson introduced the issue with a short signed editorial under the heading “Review of the Month.” Throughout The Monthly Summary’s existence, there appeared a number of regular features. For example, the section “The Industrial Front and the Social Front” was an open forum for current and controversial items of the day. It started as a convenient rubric under which to report matters that the staff had uncovered in the tension studies. Charles R. Lawrence and Bonita H. Valien, who at different times carried on the day-to-day burden of operations, were responsible for its content. “Programs of Action on the Democratic Front” provided the reader with information about the activities of various race relations organizations, such as the Southern Regional Council. Perhaps the most popular and lively section was “The Press of the Nation,” under the direction of Ira DeA. Reid. Essentially, it was a sample of the opinions of the nation’s press. Of the various columns appearing from time to time, perhaps the most valuable were those dealing with other nonwhite minorities. Saburo Kido and Clarence Gillett wrote a column on Japanese-Americans. In a nation that had established concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, The Monthly Summary was one of the few places where interested parties could conveniently find objective information. The column drew upon such sources as the Japanese-American Citizens League, the War Relocation Authority, and the West Coast representative of the social action committee of the Congregational Church board. The same pattern was followed for other minorities. Werner J. Cahnman wrote a column on the “Jewish Scene,” and Ruth Muskrat Bronson did the same for the “American Indian.” Once again, Johnson’s concern for the commonality of oppression transcended concerns of African Americans. From the time of World War II, when the nation was torn by the tensions of racial confrontation in the cities, until after President Harry S Truman recommended the report To Secure These Rights to Congress, Charles S. Johnson and his staff continued to lobby among the power elite in the United States with The Monthly Summary. But by 1948, the circumstances that had produced The Monthly Summary had changed. The Rosenwald

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Fund was being liquidated. Johnson was now president of Fisk University, and he did not have the time needed to edit a magazine. As the war-related tensions in race relations seemed to lessen, the demand for such a publication was not as great. If it were to continue, new finances would be needed, but they were not forthcoming. In 1948, The Monthly Summary quietly expired. Meanwhile, the Race Relations Department at Fisk, which was being led more and more by Herman H. Long, turned its attention to other ventures in which it moved from research and education to action.29 In this role, the Department of Race Relations accelerated the self-survey technique in which entire urban communities, from the white-controlled city hall down to minority-led dissenting groups, were involved. After the initial flurry of racial confrontations during World War II, epitomized by the massive riot in Detroit, racial tensions eased somewhat, at least on the surface. But throughout the northern urban centers, the fear remained that every city was a potential Detroit. Whatever their personal beliefs, sound businessmen and practical civic leaders knew that riot-torn cities were not conducive to commerce and economic growth. Consequently, the more forward-looking community leaders began to search for ways to avoid racial conflict. It is not surprising therefore that many of them turned to Charles S. Johnson and the Race Relations Department at Fisk University. Johnson reacted to the call from the northern cities with a wellthought-out program that was theoretically sound and pragmatically workable. In many ways, his work in the northern cities during the 1940s crystallized the best of the Community Self-Survey technique that he had learned under Park and employed both in the Urban League and during his years studying the rural South.30 The overriding strategy of the Community Self-Survey approach attempted to circumvent local hostilities, and in so doing, “to involve these community leadership resources in a program of constructive community change in race relations.” Tangible results, rather than moral motivations, were what Johnson and his staff at Fisk sought. The Community Self-Survey set as the goal for the community the task of finding out “the facts, either to avoid the occurrence of racial conflict at some future time or to prevent the recurrence of some past experience.” Before Fisk would involve itself in a community, it had to be invited in by a sponsoring committee “consisting of the persons who have highest authority, prestige, and influence in the community along with those elements of the progressive minority leaders who have always been in the picture.” A further prerequisite demanded by Johnson and his staff at Fisk was “an agreement to make public all of the findings of the survey after their official adoption.” Many community leaders—realtors, for instance—were

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being asked “to act in some measure against their own interests.” This explains why the commitment to work for a common goal and to make public the findings was so very important. The more conservative powers, who desired to uphold the status quo in race relations while pushing for growth on the economic front, had to decide if the possible stability of better race relations, necessary for economic growth, would outweigh the loss of vested interests in discrimination. Once a city decided to conduct a Community Self-Survey and fulfilled the prerequisites, Fisk staff members met with the appropriate committees, instructed them in survey methods, drew up the proper forms and questionnaires to be used, and then became inconspicuous. Various subcommittees were established by the community in the areas of housing, schools, employment, social welfare, churches, and health services. In turn, the subcommittees were staffed by volunteer workers, usually ranging in numbers from 400 to 600, but in the case of the Minneapolis study, over 1,000. The ideal of the Fisk Community Self-Survey was that once it was begun, it would become a community affair, lasting from six months to two years. The goal was that communications between previously isolated groups would open up. The self-survey method became a means to an end—not the end itself. The technique was predicated upon Johnson’s belief as a sociologist that behavioral patterns were more important than individual prejudices. If the more powerful figures in the community changed their public behavior in race relations and lost no prestige or status, Johnson believed that soon the majority would follow. In short, Johnson and his staff assumed that “prejudices follow practices and policies rather than determine them.” After the study was completed, the Fisk staff compiled the statistical analysis of the findings and wrote the report in Nashville. The report was “presented back to the groups of the sponsoring committee; and these committees, in turn, approve the findings, and draw up recommendations in keeping with the demands for constructive action which the findings warrant.” In the ideal situation, the end product was “a body of indisputable facts vested with the prestige and authority of the top leadership groups of the community.” The Community Self-Survey method was applied to northern cities as diverse as San Francisco, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh. Smaller communities like Burlington, Iowa; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Lorain, Ohio, also found it useful. Two self-survey projects of special merit were the ones conducted in San Francisco and Minneapolis.31 San Francisco was the first city to seek Johnson’s and Fisk’s assistance.32 As a consequence of the study, the Mayor’s Council on Civic Unity was formed, and in 1943–44 the “first Negro teachers” were employed. The year 1947 saw “the appointment of

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the city’s first Negro school principal,” and black policemen were employed. The Minneapolis Self-Survey, perhaps the most successful, received the enthusiastic support of its young reform mayor, Hubert H. Humphrey.33 In addition to African Americans, the study included two other racial minorities, Native Americans and Japanese-Americans. As a result of the project, improvement was noted with the employment of “the first Negro nurses in two hospitals of the city,” the city adopted a “formal policy . . . making all existing emergency housing available without distinctions of color,” education witnessed “the employment of the first Negro public school teachers in the history of the city,” and the city commission passed a “Fair Employment Practices Ordinance.” Further, a city ordinance made “propaganda for race hatred illegal.” By mid-century, the Fisk Community Race Relations Survey was being replaced at the local level by mayors’ committees on race relations, usually following the Fisk model. Often, Johnson served as an itinerant consultant for northern mayors in initiating such programs. The cities and various race relations committees are too disparate to enumerate, but the Chicago committee organized under Mayor Edward J. Kelly was typical of the more successful ones. With Johnson conceiving the idea and Robert C. Weaver working on the spot with Edwin R. Embree and the Rosenwald Fund, Mayor Kelly’s committee was initiated in 1944 with a city-wide conference on race relations.34 Johnson continued to be involved over the years, at least from a distance, in mayors’ committees for improved race relations.35 Wartime tensions brought renewed interest in the area in northern cities. The chief concern of government and foundation funding seemed to have been easing tensions in large northern industrial cities to avoid future riots. Johnson seized the moment to work for change. Nevertheless, he did not neglect the South. In fact, he understood the fluid nature of race relations that World War II produced. It was in this context that he began the highly controversial and productive Race Relations Institutes on the Fisk campus in Nashville, Tennessee, the gateway to the deep South.

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Chapter 14

The Race Relations Institutes: Confronting de jure Segregation

O

nce the Department of Race Relations was established, Charles S. Johnson’s approach dictated that the Race Relations Institutes would follow. More than a decade before the first Race Relations Institute was held at Fisk University, Johnson had experimented with a similar program in the North.1 In 1933, the Committee on Race Relations of the Philadelphia Society of Friends initiated the Swarthmore College Institute of Race Relations. Johnson was named Director of Studies, and Clarence Pickett, executive secretary of the Society of Friends, became Director of Administration. Institutes were held annually at Swarthmore from 1933 through 1936; in 1937, they were held at Cheyney State Teachers’ College in Cheyney, Pennsylvania; and, in 1938, at New York University as a part of the summer school. While the institutes at Fisk which began in 1944 resembled those of the 1930s, there were important differences. For example, this time Johnson was holding the institutes inside the bastion of segregation. In the earlier years, it had been the Quakers who had funded the interracial meetings, but this time it was the Congregational and Christian Churches under the direction of the secretary of the Board of Home Missions. Johnson, who was the son of a Baptist minister, was never overly impressed by empty religious appeals to Christian brotherhood, but when the Congregational and Christian Churches decided upon a strategy that would enable the church to go beyond mere appeals to conscience, Johnson was ready to incorporate the plan into a program at Fisk. Over the next thirteen years, through the American Missionary Association, the Church was responsible for a substantial part of the funding of the Race Relations 183

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Institutes. Many years later, Herman H. Long, who over the years had served the AMA in many capacities, recalled that the Congregational and Christian Churches considered their involvement in the work of Charles S. Johnson as “the most significant thing they had done” beyond their conventional church programs.2 Although the Department of Race Relations and the Race Relations Institutes were closely related and in fact much of the funding and many of the projects were commingled, the institutes soon took on an identity of their own. At first, Johnson conceived of them as an adjunct to the department. In the early planning stages for the first conference in 1944, he envisaged it as an extended professional meeting.3 He had hoped to have about thirty individuals read papers and lead discussions. The response to the initial invitations was so immediate and enthusiastic that he decided to expand the program into a more ambitious institute until, finally, he developed what became the annual Race Relations Institutes. The first institute was heavily laden with the academicians that Johnson drew from a cross section of both northern and southern liberalism. In fact, the resident faculty and participants were a formidable group.4 An arbitrary listing includes such figures as Will W. Alexander; Fred L. Brownlee; Edwin R. Embree; Lester B. Granger, executive secretary of the National Urban League; Charles H. Houston in his capacity as a member of the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practices; Guy B. Johnson, executive director of the Southern Regional Council; Z. Alexander Looby in his capacity as a member of the NAACP’s national legal staff; Ira DeA. Reid; and Robert C. Weaver in his capacity as executive director of the Mayor’s Committee on Race Relations in Chicago. Among the more prominent academicians were Otto Klineberg of Columbia University; Charles H. Thompson of the Journal of Negro Education and dean of the Howard University graduate school; M. F. Ashley-Montagu, Harvard University anthropologist; Allison Davis of the University of Chicago, one of the first black Ph.D.’s employed by a predominantly white university; Ina C. Brown of Scarritt College; Edgar T. Thompson of Duke University; and Helen McLean of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. The announcements for the first institute indicated that the program would “provide an intensive and practical course of study of the problems and methods of dealing with racial situations.”5 The initial meeting in 1944 set the pattern that later became familiar during the next twelve summers at Fisk. The early sessions were devoted to “the presentation of anthropological, sociological and psychological background materials in the field of race relations.”6 The last two weeks of the three-week institute were concentrated around panel seminar discussions which focused upon the nature of race relations in the church, the community, employment, labor, the

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press, education, and the South. The discussions were concerned with three major areas: (1) community committees, federal agencies, and race relations; (2) employment, labor, housing, and veterans; and (3) the press, the South, and race relations. For the most part, the seminar topics were self-descriptive. Perhaps the most radical proposal was discussed in the session on “employment, labor, housing and the returning veteran.” This seminar stressed the point that “employment for Negroes and other minorities could not be realized during the period of reconversion” unless there was full employment for all. Hence, the futures of organized labor, black people, and other minorities were interrelated. When compared with later years, the first institute was a rather modest affair. When it ended, Johnson wrote his white colleague Frank O. Dorey of the American Missionary Association, “I believe I can safely say now that our First Institute of Race Relations was a successful experiment.”7 In the fall of 1944, Charles S. Johnson published an article reviewing the first Institute of Race Relations in the Journal of Negro Education.8 He took great pains to point out that “the Institute represented the first meeting of its kind ever to be held in the South.” It was intended as an intensive and practical study of “the problem and methods of dealing with racial situations.” Johnson acknowledged that much of the motivation for the institute stemmed from the surfacing racial tensions brought on by war, migration, and new urban growth. Therefore, the institute was an attempt to provide communities with information and guidance. The total attendance of the first institute had been 137 registrants. Fifty-five had been black, eighty-one white, and one Japanese. Forty-seven had come from the North, and ninety were people living and working in the South. A number of national and regional organizations, such as the National Urban League, the NAACP, the CIO, the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practices, and the Southern Regional Council, were represented. Johnson had successfully launched the institutes, but their survival was not assured. That battle still loomed in the future. In Nashville during the summer of 1944, the Race Relations Institute was either politely acknowledged as falling within the context of racial etiquette or ignored. Johnson did not have the reputation of a radical, and there was no need for most Nashvillians to become concerned by another of his programs. In fact, on the day that the first institute opened, the Nashville Banner reported rather perfunctorily that “introductory talks by Dr. Thomas Elsa Jones, president of Fisk University, Fred L. Brownlee, executive secretary of the American Missionary Association, and Dr. Charles S. Johnson, director of the institute and head of the department of sociology at Fisk University, were given at the inaugural session at Fisk Memorial Hall.”9 In the middle of the article, it was reported that “Dr. Edwin R.

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Embree, . . . outstanding author on races and civilizations,” was the morning speaker and had discussed “Races and Civilizations.” Meanwhile, the Chicago Defender headlined Embree’s speech “Future Peace Depends on Race Equality, Embree Tells Fisk Institute.”10 The Defender went on to report that the essence of Embree’s lecture was a discussion of the probabilities of the changing nature of the postwar world. Taking a strong stance against imperialism, Embree warned against the danger of European nations continuing “to hold the East in subjection and continu[ing] . . . to treat Oriental peoples as inferiors.” He told the Fisk audience that if world policies toward Asia did not change, “the peoples of Asia will swiftly rise in a world rebellion and throw off the yoke of the western white men.” If this happened, Embree warned that “the center of world power politics will shift from Europe and the Atlantic to Asia and the Pacific.” By the time of the second institute in the summer of 1945, it was evident to the more conservative people in Nashville that Johnson and his staff had something more in mind than the conventional southern interracial meeting, which dated back at least as far as the old Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Johnson himself set the tone for the 1945 institute when, in his keynote address, he discussed race relations in the world context and remarked that “Brazil, with an official policy of racial intermarriage, is a case of complete racial acceptance.”11 But the comments of the dispassionate, intellectual, and charming scholar were not enough to unsettle Nashville. Edwin R. Embree, who followed Johnson on the program, was another matter.12 Embree was a very outspoken and charismatic speaker with an interest in world demography. Once again, he repeated the themes of his 1944 speech. This time the Nashville news media were alert and reacted immediately to what they interpreted as a challenge to the region’s racial etiquette. The Nashville Banner rushed into print with a long editorial entitled “Metamorphosis?”13 The Banner reminded its readers that “both Western Civilization and white culture have been doing all right now for quite a number of centuries.” It regretted that “the Rosenwald Fund— whose worthwhile philanthropies still have great potentialities for good— should be involved in, or embarrassed by, even the most inferential attachment to racial antagonism.” It was even more disturbed that the Rosenwald Fund’s “influence should be misdirected into channels of ‘New Order’ thinking with its breeding of abnormal hostilities and hysteries.” In a further remonstrance, the Nashville afternoon newspaper cited Embree’s speech as another “illustration of what the South has contended . . . that the ‘problems’ under discussion can only be SOLVED by the means they have labored to perfect. Not by outside interference and agitation.” Finally, the Banner counseled, “If there is any subject requiring dispassionate approach, absolute sobriety, and taboo on emotional excitement, this subject is it.”

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The less conservative Nashville Tennessean waited three days before answering Embree with an editorial entitled “More Than Unfortunate.”14 The Tennessean described Embree’s speech as “provocative to a point that it beclouded his meaning and was in bad taste.” The Tennessean also noted that “it may have pleased Dr. Embree’s immediate audience to hear that the white races will surely be ‘slapped down’ if, in the future, they become ‘uppity’ and ‘pestiferous’ and do not deport themselves along lines laid down by the Institute of Race Relations. But elsewhere the reaction was not pleasant.” Like its local competitor, the Banner, the Tennessean lamented that Embree’s speech was not “calculated to help the cause for which the [Rosenwald] fund was established.” Throughout the summer institute of 1945, the local press, and especially the Banner, continued to criticize the Race Relations Institute at Fisk.15 But Johnson, in his own quiet and dispassionate but firm manner, continued to follow the pattern that he had set in establishing the institutes. Despite the dispatching of the Nashville police force to the campus before some of the night lectures and the day-to-day harassment, he neither commented nor retreated.16 Meanwhile, the institute’s challenge to the racial etiquette of the region was receiving national news coverage, and the Race Relations Institute and Johnson were gaining a national reputation far beyond the small number of academics who previously had known of him and his work at Fisk. The New York Tribune, for example, carried a story with the caption, “White Students Join Negroes in Classes at Fisk.”17 The Tribune reported that “currently enrolled at Fisk University, a Negro institution, are fifty white students, mainly young women, and they are there in spite of a Tennessee law which forbids the education of the two races in the same class room.” The story concluded by reporting that “the students at Fisk are assigned to private rooms in the same dormitory, have their meals together, and sit side by side at classes.” Johnson had planned a dynamic institute for 1945, and interracial living was only one aspect. In the context of this model for integration, many of the topics that heretofore had not been considered proper subjects for public discussion in interracial assemblies were openly discussed and debated by scholars, leaders, and people from the community. In addition to Johnson’s mention of interracial marriage and Embree’s criticism of Western civilization, the topic of school segregation was examined by Charles H. Thompson of Howard University. He observed that “separate schools with equal facilities” were an “illusion.”18 The controversial and interracial Southern Conference for Human Welfare was represented by two speakers, Clark Foreman and James Dombrowski.19 At the end of the Race Relations Institute of 1945, Charles S. Johnson finally took official notice of the controversy.20 He urged the public to

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view the institute as a whole. In this respect, he observed that “many who have not attended the institute . . . have got the wrong impression, and have been exposed to stereotyped thinking.” Johnson felt, for example, that Embree’s lecture “was viewed out of context.” In fact, both Embree’s lecture and Johnson’s own discussion of Brazil were “mistaken to be an advocation for interracial marriage here.” Johnson thus noted that he was not advocating the policies of Brazil for Nashville. Johnson’s summary of the institute caused the local black newspaper, the Nashville Globe-Independent, to remark that “Dr. Charles S. Johnson appears to have taken pains to say things calculated to lower the blood pressure of the discordant elements here that carried on daily tirades against the institute and the truth-telling that characterized the speeches.”21 Nonetheless, the scholar’s oblique apology for the institute’s transgression upon the racial etiquette of the region was not sufficient for most of his critics. Johnson and Fisk had survived the second Race Relations Institute, but not without further problems.22 Sometime prior to the next institute, President Jones was visited by James G. Stahlman, owner and publisher of the Nashville Banner, and other local community figures, including members of the Fisk Board of Trustees. Interracial dormitory living, dining together, and entertainment that included square dancing and other types of folk dancing had already upset these visitors. As Bonita H. Valien recalls, Embree’s lecture “was the last straw.” Jones was informed that the institutes should be discontinued. The President of Fisk was caught in a dilemma that eventually caused him to lose face and may have led to his departure in 1946. During his early years in Nashville, many in the white community had considered him a liberal, if not a radical; but by 1946, events had caught up with his liberalism. He informed Johnson of Stahlman’s visit and apparently was ready to concede to the demands. Few of the details have been preserved in the written record, but we do know that on June 5, 1946, Johnson wrote his wife, Marie, that Jones was prepared to bar reporters from “all seminars of the Institute.”23 Johnson was not happy with the suggestion and told his wife, “Everyone coming to the affair is aware of the neurotics of Stahlman and the jitterness of some of the Nashville and School people.” In a moment of depression, he went on to say, “I do not know what else I can do except call the whole thing off.” But Johnson’s loss of confidence was short-lived, and according to Bonita Valien, for one of the few times during the many years that she had known him, “Dr. Johnson lost his cool.” He made it clear to Jones and to all concerned that the institutes were very much a part of the social science program and that “Embree had spoken a truth.” If Jones and the board denied him the right to invite whomever he thought should attend the institutes, then he could no longer remain at Fisk. Furthermore, if he

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were to leave, he would welcome all those on the staff who might care to join him at another institution. More than half a century later, the details of what transpired are lost. Thomas Elsa Jones, who considered Stahlman a friend, seemed not to recall the incident.24 Preston and Bonita H. Valien recall the incident vividly but were not privy to the exchange between Johnson and Jones. At any rate, what is important for the historian is that the strong and unequivocal position of the usually mild-mannered Johnson carried the day. A new accommodation was reached in Nashville, this time closer to the desired goal of assimilation. The institutes had survived, and Johnson’s role as director was firmly established. The same year, 1946, Johnson invited Embree to give the opening speech. Once again, Embree discussed world demography and “the rise of the colored majority.” This time the Nashville daily press routinely reported Embree’s lecture along with those of the other speakers.25 The right of Johnson and Fisk to demonstrate every summer what a model of integration should be was never publicly questioned again. From time to time, press coverage in Nashville did border on frontpage editorializing on the issues of labor and politics as they were discussed at the Race Relations Institutes.26 But the belligerence of 1945 was missing. By 1949, the climate of opinion had shifted sufficiently enough for it to be considered politically safe for Nashville’s vice mayor, Ben West, to address the institute and to observe that “the welfare of the poorer citizen is part of the responsibility of a progressive city.”27 Six years later, in 1955, Governor Frank G. Clement acknowledged the importance of the institute when he sent his aide to accompany Herman H. Long to Berry Field, Nashville’s airport, to welcome Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell. Mitchell had come to address the institute.28 At the conclusion of the 1946 meeting, when the institutes were three years old and the battle for their survival had been won, Johnson felt it was time to evaluate the role of the institutes for their influence on the participants.29 First, he noted that beyond the mere academic program, the institutes helped to bring together community leaders in race relations. The resulting “cross-fertilization and mutual stimulation would be valuable even if there were no members to listen to and take part in the exchange of ideas.” Second, “the institute experience is a training ground for members of the institute who are or will become leaders in this field back home.” Third, the common experience of “interracial living . . . can be carried back into local communities, . . . [with] some of the personal reconditioning which is an outgrowth of a common experience.” Fourth, since race relations “do not exist in a vacuum,” participation in the Race Relations Institutes was helpful to people in “any profession that requires an understanding of human relations and especially relations with members of minority groups.” Finally,

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Johnson expressed the belief that the institutes had “educational value for the Southern region” in which they were held. They had been able “to raise to the level of discussion certain issues which in this area are hardly ever brought to the surface and objectively examined. . . . The very existence of the institute is a demonstration of the possibility of a kind of cooperation and integration which has been thought by many to be impossible.” Once the public controversy had subsided, the Race Relations Institutes took on a more permanent character. For the next two years, Johnson continued to be directly responsible for them, and until 1950, he worked actively in formulating the programs and in selecting the personnel. During this period of institutionalization, the general format was set.30 Among the recurring themes was the relationship of race relations to the church, the Third World, other minorities—especially nonwhite—and labor. The discussion of the role of the church and race relations was usually under the direction of Galen Weaver, director of the Committee on Church and Race for the Congregational and Christian Churches. Weaver frequently drew upon such able American Missionary Association spokesmen as general secretary Fred L. Brownlee and Fisk campus chaplain William J. Faulkner. It was general practice for religious leaders and scholars to point out the irony of segregation in the churches, as for example, in a 1946 speech when Buell G. Gallagher of the Pacific School of Religion pointed out the contrast between the Christian doctrine and “Christian” practices in race relations.31 The Johnson model of race relations included the international setting. It was only natural, therefore, that he should devote a session of the Race Relations Institutes to Pan-Africanism and to what is today called the Third World. The changing status of the Third World had been, after all, the academic content of the controversy surrounding Embree’s lectures on demography. Eric Williams of the Caribbean Commission was a frequent visitor to the early institutes. Typical of his lectures was the one delivered in 1946, when he indicated “a similarity between the Caribbean ‘colonies’— held by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Holland—and the South.”32 Emilie Willems, a sociologist and anthropologist from the University of Brazil at Sao Paulo, told a Fisk audience in 1948 that “race prejudice in the United States is an obstacle to hemisphere solidarity.”33 The relationship of race, poverty, and economics as exemplified in India was the topic discussed by Fisk visiting faculty member Cedric Dover, who defined himself as a Eurasian, and by V. K. R. V. Rao of India, a member of the United Nations subcommittee on economic development.34 During the period that Johnson was trying to build an African studies program at Fisk, he drew upon visiting faculty members Reginald Barrett of Cambridge Uni-

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versity and Kenneth L. Little of the London School of Economics to discuss the relationship between colonialism in Africa and race relations in the United States.35 An integral part of the Johnson model was the distinction between race as a biological definition and race as a social definition. It was Johnson’s judgment as a sociologist that historically a bogus definition of race had been used as a device for social control. As long as this approach was successfully employed, minority groups were kept in an economic and social status subordinate to the dominant group. From this sociological base, Johnson related the commonality of oppression of other American minority groups and devoted a portion of the Race Relations Institutes to the similarities and differences in discrimination against other minorities. On this point, he observed in 1946, “We are only at the threshold of the recognition that the problems of all minorities are interdependent, and that the same factors which foster prejudice and discrimination against one group foster them against all minorities.”36 At the same time, he reminded his audience that there were differences in the interest of the various minorities just as there were “cleavages within the minority groups themselves.” The task was to seek common ground where all can “work effectively together where their interests coincide.” Every year, the institute assumed the responsibility of providing an educational forum on the commonality of oppression of other minority groups. On the question of the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, in 1944 Embree had expressed the hope that “California will re-admit after the war American citizens of Japanese descent.”37 The same year Stella Burgess of the Philadelphia Intercultural Education Committee told the Fisk audience that the mass evacuation of JapaneseAmericans had resulted from “undue racial discrimination.”38 Again, in 1946, Galen Weaver devoted much of his address in the session on the church and race relations to a discussion of “the relocation of the West Coast Japanese during the war crisis.”39 The institutes continually discussed the relationship of Jewish Americans and blacks in America. In the first Race Relations Institute in 1944, for example, Lester B. Granger warned against anti-Semitism. Granger told blacks that anti-Semitism worked against their own interests. At the same time, he observed that “white people who pretend to like Negroes but express prejudice against Jews cannot be sincere. . . . For when expedient, they may turn this prejudice against the Negro.”40 A review of later institutes indicates that the concern for the status of Jews in America did not diminish. Usually, the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress was represented at the institutes. In 1947, Max Wolf of

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that organization addressed one of the Fisk sessions.41 On occasion, American Jewish religious leaders, such as Rabbi William R. Silverman, discussed discrimination against the Jewish minority.42 Two minority groups that were of special interest to Johnson were Native Americans and Spanish-speaking Americans. In later years, he obtained scholarships to ensure the attendance of representatives from each group at the institutes.43 Usually, these scholarships were funded by the John Hay Whitney Foundation.44 For example, in 1956, the Foundation provided $2,500 to finance nine Native American delegates from representative sections of the American Indian community, including members from the Aqua Caliente, Coeur d’Alene, Maricopa, Pima, Sioux, Tlingit, and Winnebago tribes. Typical of the sessions devoted to the status of Indians in America was the 1948 session led by Theodore Hass, attorney for the Office of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, which discussed civil rights, poverty, and the need for protection of Indian lands.45 In later years, direct representatives from Native American tribes and organizations began addressing the institutes. For example, in 1952, Thomas A. Segundo, chairman of the Papago Indian Council, discussed the irony of Point Four aid abroad while the needs of Indians in the United States were ignored.46 The last Race Relations Institute attended by Johnson, in 1956, devoted a great deal of time to the status of Indians. Among the speakers that year were Nelson Jose of the Pima Indian tribe of southern Arizona, Vyola Olinger of the Agua Caliente tribe in California, and Joseph R. Garry, president of the National Congress of American Indians.47 The institutes devoted less time to the status of Spanish-speaking people in the United States, but they were not ignored. At mid-century, for instance, George I. Sanchez of the University of Texas delivered an address on the history of Spanish-speaking people in the southwestern United States.48 In 1954, Lyle Saunders of the University of Colorado spoke on “The Present Status of Spanish-American Relations in the Southwest.”49 From year to year, one of the longest, most enthusiastic, and best organized sessions was on labor and race relations. Much of the responsibility for the planning of this session fell upon the shoulders of John M. Hope II. Labor officials, if not the rank and file, had long seen the potential of organizing poor black and white workers in the South without regard to race. For a time in the late 1930s and the 1940s, this goal had been one of the basic tenets of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. By the mid-1940s, Johnson and Fisk had given organized labor a respectable forum in an academic setting. At the same time, the institutes gave labor leaders an opportunity to learn more about race relations, in hopes that during the year they would apply the lessons. Not only were the sessions well attended, but the press gave them

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full, although sometimes negative, coverage. Charles H. Houston, in his capacity as a member of the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practices, sounded the keynote in 1944 when he told the institute: “The most significant political development in the South is the increased participation of the Negro in organized labor. When Negroes vote in labor elections, as they are now doing, the pattern becomes established for voting in political elections as the next natural step.”50 As organized labor grew in the South, the labor sessions of the Race Relations Institutes became even more important. One of the methods traditionally used to restrict organized labor in the South had been to raise the issue of race. Consequently, conservative forces, such as the Nashville Banner, welcomed an opportunity to report the egalitarian rhetoric coming from the Fisk campus. In 1946, the Banner reported the labor session led by Henry Lee Moon of the CIO Political Action Committee with the sarcastic headline, “Labor and Negro Vote ‘Will Redeem South.’”51 In 1947, with the presidential and congressional elections a year away, the front-page caption was “Negro CIO Official Demands Defeat of McKellar, Stewart.”52 Again, Moon had addressed the institute and had, in fact, called for the defeat of Senators Tom Stewart and Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee. A few days earlier, the Banner had reported the speech of Paul R. Christopher, a state director of the CIO from Knoxville, with the heading, “CIO ‘Southern Drive’ Cited at Race Relations Institute.”53 Despite the apparent conservative motivation and alarmist tone of the Banner in its reactionary reporting of the news from the institutes, the Race Relations Institute forum provided by Johnson was accomplishing its purpose. Issues of race and economics were being publicly discussed. Even if written to inflame, the message that the Banner conveyed was essentially accurate. The leaders of organized labor did desire to expand the CIO in the South. Furthermore, integration was the national policy of the CIO. The lectures, discussions, and clinics dealing with race relations and labor were helpful both to blacks and to labor leaders.54 For instance, it was because of the programs of the Race Relations Institutes that the United Packing House Workers International was induced to employ John M. Hope II of the Fisk Department of Race Relations faculty to conduct a race relations self-survey of its union in Kansas City. Although the survey was not a panacea, it did result in the lessening of tensions and in the general improvement of union practices in race relations. Although topics like the church, the Third World, other minorities, and labor consumed considerable time, the Race Relations Institutes were not restricted to these subjects.55 Contemporary issues like the riot in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1946, President Truman’s abortive civil rights bill in 1948, the Supreme Court’s decision on school desegregation in 1954, and

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the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–56 were all topics of lectures and discussions. Other issues of race relations pertaining to the military, police, labor and labor management, politics, public education, and the work of government agencies were all part of the institutes’ programs. Speakers in these less-reported areas included James C. Evans, assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War and later with the Department of Defense; Joseph Lohman, University of Chicago sociologist; Sara Southall, director of personnel for International Harvester Company; Henry Lee Moon of the NAACP and the CIO Political Action Committee; Percival L. Prattis of the Pittsburgh Courier; Saville R. Davis of the Christian Science Monitor; Tarleton Collier of the Louisville Courier-Journal; William S. Howland, chief of the Atlanta news bureau of Time and Life magazines; and representatives from the Federal Housing Administration, such as Loren Miller and Frank S. Horne. The participants in the Race Relations Institutes were a representative cross section of the leadership in middle-class America.56 They represented churches, schools, community organizations, governmental agencies, labor, management, organized minorities, and many other segments of the population. Enrollment usually numbered well over one hundred and was drawn from many ethnic racial groups and geographical regions. The institutes were an anomaly in interracial meetings. Although there were awkward moments, the day-to-day tone and temper was a model of integration. Perhaps this mood was inevitable for a program based on a philosophy of cultural pluralism, which demanded respect for diversity of culture. The members came with a common interest in improving race relations. Many of them were already well informed. In the end, the interracial living and working on the Fisk campus during the hot days of June and July demonstrated that integration was both possible and desirable. The lecturers and discussion leaders who participated in the Race Relations Institutes were drawn from three basic categories: (1) academicians and intellectuals; (2) community, minority-group, and regional and national organizational leaders; and (3) national and international personalities in human relations. Of the many hats that Johnson wore over the years, his role as a social scientist and a scholar made him the most comfortable. His most profound work in race relations had been in the area of research and education. From the days of his work on The Negro in Chicago through his work on the Myrdal study, he had always insisted that studies and programs be set in the broadest context possible, and that the setting be properly defined by qualified experts. He continued this orientation as director of the Race Relations Institutes. The early sessions of the annual institutes were devoted to defining race relations and related problems. For this task, he drew upon some of the nation’s outstanding luminaries in anthropology, sociol-

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ogy, psychology, history, and related disciplines.57 For years, the first day of the institute was set aside for lectures by Ina C. Brown of Scarritt College and Ethel Alpenfeis of the University of Chicago, both of whom were anthropologists. Their discussions were often supplemented by Gene Welfish, an anthropologist from Columbia University. Brown, Alpenfeis, and Welfish established the distinction that scholars made between race as a biological phenomenon and race as a social issue. After this task was completed, psychologists were called upon to discuss the nature of prejudice. Included among the impressive list were Helen McLean, well-known Chicago psychologist; Smiley Blanton, a native of Nashville and clinical psychologist for the Marble Collegiate Church in New York; and Gordon W. Allport, chairman of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Allport was especially popular with the institutes’ audiences and returned almost every year. His lectures built upon the idea of race as a social issue and related this social phenomenon to the economic, social, and emotional insecurity deeply rooted in the society. In the later years, Kenneth B. Clark of the City College of New York, who worked closely with the NAACP in preparing its brief for Brown v. Board of Education, and Herman H. Long, who was trained in psychology, were regulars. For the later sessions, the field of sociology was amply represented by the Fisk faculty. In addition to Johnson, Inez Adams, Jitsuichi Masuoka, and Bonita H. Valien addressed the institute from time to time. They were joined by other sociologists, such as Arnold M. Rose of Bennington College, M. F. Ashley-Montagu of the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, and Edgar T. Thompson of Duke University. In later years, as segregation became the most explosive issue in race relations, historians like Henry Steele Commanger of Columbia University and C. Vann Woodward of Johns Hopkins University were called upon. The refutation by Woodward, a native of the region, of the popularly held idea that segregation had always been practiced in the South was of particular strategic value. Another frequent visiting scholar to the institute was Charles H. Thompson, dean of the Howard University graduate school and editor of the Journal of Negro Education. As the issue of school desegregation became more prominent, his detached and informative lectures, buttressed with the data that made the Brown v. Board of Education victory possible, became a feature attraction on the agenda. Once the academic experts had placed the institute in its proper perspective, the later sessions were devoted to figures better known by the press and the general public. Typical of such individuals were George S. Mitchell of the Southern Regional Council and Charles H. Houston and Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP. The theme of Mitchell’s annual lectures generally dealt with the economic aspects of current issues. In 1947, he

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called for general improvements in “education, housing, wages, property ownership, agriculture, health and quality of religious life.”58 Four years later, in 1951, Mitchell related the “stunted growth of the civil rights program” to the economic and political conditions of the region.59 In 1955, his lecture was front-page news in the Nashville Tennessean when he predicted the end of school segregation in six to eight years, after a “long, hard pull.”60 The annual appearance of Charles H. Houston until 1949, and of Thurgood Marshall during many of the institutes from 1950 forward, gave the Race Relations Institutes a firsthand report of what was emerging as the postwar civil rights movement. In the first few years, Houston’s speeches stressed the significance of black participation in the drive for unionization of the South. Not only did he see this as economic progress, but he believed that the precedent of voting in union elections had the potential to carry over into politics.61 By 1948, Houston had begun to focus more directly on civil rights. That year Houston told the Fisk audience that “the Negro is approaching the status of full acceptance in politics.” He saw this as one of the necessary steps “toward the achievement of equal rights.” He went on to relate how the NAACP had “moved all the way from an indirect to a direct attack on segregation within the short space of a decade.” Houston’s last appearance before the institute was in 1949. Again, he discussed civil rights, this time stressing economic issues surrounding discrimination in unions and in industry. By mid-century, it was becoming clear that many of the issues in race relations during the next decade would center on the question of integration in education. During the next several years, Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP used the Fisk forum to discuss civil rights, the courts, the NAACP, and education. Marshall was a dynamic speaker discussing explosive issues. He always spoke to standing-room-only crowds.62 In July 1950, at Fisk, Marshall sounded the keynote for the 1950s. He urged blacks to apply immediately for admission to state universities. Marshall told the audience, “We now have the tools to destroy all governmentally imposed racial segregation.” Two years later, Marshall echoed a similar theme when he declared that the “groundwork has been laid for elimination of racial discrimination through court action.” In 1953, Marshall reviewed the litigation brought by the NAACP over the past ten years. He noted that while legal victories were important, it was the responsibility of community leaders to face the “problem of getting the general community to act in accord with these decisions.” Although Marshall always set the civil rights struggle in a broad framework, it was the area of education that most interested him. That year, he led a seminar devoted to the subject of “equalization of educational opportunities.” In 1954, the year of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education,

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Marshall’s lecture was appropriately entitled “Next Steps to Integration.” Again, he returned to the need for local leadership in the community to give “direction to the mass of good people who would otherwise remain on the sidelines.” In 1956, the year of the last institute held while Johnson was alive, Marshall returned after a year’s absence. This time the tone of his speech reflected a new note of pessimism. Again, he was concerned by the lack of local leadership. He began his speech with a long review of the development of white resistance—from what he called the “die-hard segregationists” and the White Citizens Council. In Marshall’s judgment, such action was “no more and no less than open rebellion.” In reviewing the past year, he observed that “we have lost ground in the area of public opinion.” A further indication of things to come was Marshall’s admission that the theory that “legal action alone would solve the problem” had been shattered. Marshall followed this comment with praise for the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, noting that segregated public transportation was “another badge of slavery that had to be attacked.” In addition to the regular visitors like George S. Mitchell, Charles H. Houston, and Thurgood Marshall, the institute became an open forum for outstanding regional and national spokesmen for human rights.63 In the early years, Will W. Alexander, then an elder statesman for the region, spoke. The year 1949 marked the rare appearance of a politician when Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas endorsed the immediate abolition of the poll tax. In 1955 Frank P. Graham of the University of North Carolina gave his strong endorsement for compliance with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He said that “the law of the land should be carried out both in good faith and with wisdom.” In the final week of what was to be Charles S. Johnson’s last institute, the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed the Race Relations Institute. King, the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, which had drawn the praise of Thurgood Marshall earlier in the institute, told of the arrest of Rosa Parks and the subsequent beginning of the boycott, then in its eighth month. Charles S. Johnson had conceived the Race Relations Institutes as a practical and intensive professional meeting of scholars interested in race relations. The enthusiastic response of participants persuaded him that the institutes had even greater potential, and after fighting against the conservative climate of opinion that threatened its future, the Race Relations Institutes became more activist in orientation.64 After the 1947 institute, when Johnson became president of Fisk, Herman H. Long was named director of the Race Relations Department. For the next three years, Johnson tried to continue to direct the institutes, but by 1950 it had become too

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great a burden, and Long became director of the Race Relations Institutes. But Johnson was never far out of touch with Long, and during the rest of his life, he continued to be supportive of Long. Under Long and Johnson, the institutes became more practical and current in their orientation, and less academic and theoretical. The social scientists still participated in setting the theoretical basis for the public lectures, discussions, and panels, but their role was diminished. The major thrust was in formulating plans of action in the developing civil rights movement. Less attention was paid to the Third World, and more attention to other minorities within the United States. The panels, which by this time had become practical clinics for action, were led by community and national leaders who had field experience. After the middle of the century, Johnson’s major role was giving the keynote address at the opening session. An examination of his annual speeches reflects a similar theme to that voiced by Thurgood Marshall.65 From 1950 until the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Johnson continually called for the nation’s leaders to recognize the need for a new definition of race relations. In 1950, for example, he reviewed the changing world conditions in the post–World War II era and the new role of the United States in world affairs. The approach that once tried to reconcile the ideas of a “hierarchy of races” and human equality was now obsolete in Johnson’s eyes. Essentially, he repeated the same theme in an updated version in the years from 1951 to 1953. In 1953, in an unusually optimistic speech, Johnson told the Fisk audience that “the world no longer regards America as a fixed hierarchy of racial and cultural minorities.” In the same year, he told the final session of the institute that “the cost of segregation is becoming more important than the satisfaction of maintaining a kind of difference, that no longer can be stressed with responsibility; and . . . it is no longer a serious contention that there CAN be segregation WITHOUT discrimination.” In 1954, his mood was one of effervescence as he delivered his keynote address entitled “The Future Is Here.” It was only forty-two days after the Supreme Court had spoken in Brown v. Board of Education. Johnson’s last two major addresses at the institutes reflected the growing pessimism among civil rights leaders of the era. In 1956, in much the same mood, manner, and context in which he wrote a few months later in an article in the New York Times Magazine, Johnson attacked the lack of national and regional leadership in confronting segregation. In an unusual display of public militancy, Johnson told his audience that segregation was “not just a political issue, but a malignancy that endangers the entire national fabric.” Later in his speech he deplored the lack of “bold and forthright statesmanship . . . [and] the confusion of the moral impera-

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tives of this issue with the tired policy of moderation.” Three months later, Johnson would be dead. Although Charles S. Johnson’s contributions as entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance, as a social science researcher, as a service intellectual, and as a university president are more significant, he is most remembered by scholars, educators, and politicians of his era for the annual Race Relations Institutes. In Nashville, Tennessee, the gateway to the deep South, Johnson provided a forum for ideas that for years had not been publicly discussed. The NAACP and other activist organizations were assured of a hearing in a public setting that much of the South respected. Every summer for thirteen years, Johnson focused the eyes of the nation’s press upon the problems of race relations. He demonstrated that integration was possible as the Fisk Race Relations Institute members participated in interracial living on the Fisk campus. Almost half a century after Johnson’s death, it is possible to wish that he had done more. The official record indicates that the more controversial black leaders, like W. E. B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and New York councilman Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., did not address the institutes. Sociologist Richard Robbins suggests Powell and Du Bois were not invited to address the institutes because Johnson believed that such an invitation “could not be risked, given the implacable hostility toward Fisk of the white power structure in Nashville.”66 Again, when one considers Johnson’s concern for (and his sociological writings about) the commonality of oppression of other minority groups, the absence of serious discussion of the status of poor whites was conspicuous. Admittedly, speakers like George S. Mitchell and James Dombrowski did devote some time to the issue, and in some ways, the discussion of labor problems was related. But the author of The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, who was so well versed in the status of poor whites, opted to play down the commonality of the oppression of poor whites to that of blacks. Twenty years after Johnson’s death, Robert C. Weaver, a colleague of the Fisk sociologist and himself a social scientist, service intellectual, and former participant in the institutes, may have provided the best insight into the thirteen years Johnson conducted the Race Relations Institutes.67 Johnson always acted from a well thought-out plan and was conscious of the implications of his actions. In the postwar years, for the first time in the United States race relations were newsworthy and Johnson had “a good nose for news.” He saw a chance to “put Fisk on the map” and at the same time stimulate improved race relations. Always the scholar, he did so on a plane above mere entertainment. By bringing together leaders in the field and providing them with a national forum fully covered by the press, he stimulated new and serious research. Johnson became more interpretative

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in the Race Relations Institutes in the later years. Although he had a specific agenda for race relations, he was not married to any one ideology as a strategy to obtain his desired goals. He imported a broad range of speakers, including some who were farther to the left of what the public felt was Johnson’s position. They could state a position, provoke the needed discussion, and at the same time, in the context of the forum their position would not be directly attributed to Johnson. Nevertheless, he was careful not to invite speakers so far to the left as to repudiate his larger programs at Fisk. This may explain why Edwin R. Embree and Thurgood Marshall were invited, while Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., and A. Philip Randolph stayed home. It is more difficult to trace tangible results of the Race Relations Institutes in such areas as public policy. Probably the time devoted to The Monthly Summary was more productive in this area than were the institutes. Nevertheless, the institutes gave Johnson a public forum while legitimizing his position as a spokesman on the eve of the demise of statutory Jim Crow. Even hard-core segregationists like James G. Stahlman were on record from time to time as endorsing Johnson. The Race Relations Institutes marked the zenith of Johnson’s career as a race relations diplomat in the South. In the more than half a century following Johnson’s confrontation with James G. Stahlman, a new world opened up in the area of race relations. Johnson made significant contributions to the struggle between the end of World War II and the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. But his death in 1956 denied him the opportunity of seeing the full rewards of the Freedom Movement. When he was inaugurated in November of 1947 as the first black president in the history of Fisk University, Johnson’s career as a sociologist was essentially at an end. During the last decade of his life, he was burdened with the responsibilities of college administration. Although he continued to work as a service intellectual and race relations diplomat, he was being overtaken by the events of the emerging civil rights revolution. More and more, he was becoming an elder statesman.

Chapter 15

Internationalism: World War II and the Cold War

B

y the fall of 1946, Charles S. Johnson was selected as president of Fisk University. His work as a service intellectual and research sociologist was curtailed by his duties as an administrator and fund raiser. Nevertheless, Johnson manifested an interest and involvement in international affairs in at least two significant undertakings, one involving Japan and the other involving the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Early on, Johnson recognized that United States public policy, which supported de jure segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North, was irreconcilable with the nation’s cold war objectives in the Third World. Again and again, when discussing racial discrimination in the United States, Johnson returned to the theme “UNESCO begins at home.” On February 16, 1946, William Benton, assistant secretary of state, telegrammed Johnson inviting him to become one of the twenty-seven members of “distinguished American educators to serve as advisors to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan.”1 Johnson accepted and was named to four committees for the group’s mission.2 On March 3, 1946, he arrived in Tokyo for a three-week tour of duty; he departed from Japan on April 5.3 In comparing the Report of the United States Education Mission to Japan with Johnson’s later published essay “The Reeducation of the Japanese” in Education and the Cultural Crisis and with the manuscripts in the archives at Fisk University, it appears that Johnson took a very active part in the final report, especially as a member of the Psychology and Attitudes Committee.4

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Johnson’s approach and assumption used to make his recommendations were spelled out in a memorandum he wrote for the group in 1946.5 Much like he had done in the race relations surveys in American cities, he operated on the assumption that “abiding influences upon a people must emerge from and have their roots in the traditional mode of life of a people toward whom the desired changes are directed.” The people themselves must have some understanding of the “essential elements of the proposed plans.” If this is done, “they will share willingly the greatest burden of social change and eventually they will themselves assume the full responsibility for carrying out the proposals to their completion.” Johnson stressed the need to use existing indigenous institutions to bring change while preserving the “morale of the people” of the conquered nation.6 As Johnson saw it, the task for the twenty-seven educators was to select already “existing social institutions” that would change that part of Japan deemed necessary without further destroying its social fabric. In reforming Japan with the goal of democratization, Johnson stressed the need for using the nation’s historical concrete and meaningful experience. In this respect, Johnson suggested emphasizing those areas of freedom that existed in the old feudal order and during the “most recent period of militaristic regime.” The place to start was in the reeducation of the Japanese about the West, but “not through inculcation or indoctrination of the ways of life of the West.” It would not be enough to learn merely the form of democracy; the Japanese must “learn the true meaning of democracy.” The educational process must not go against the mores of the Japanese. To do so would only arouse emotional opposition. Johnson’s memorandum apparently became the modus operandi for the Psychology and Attitudes Committee. Under its chairman, F. N. Freeman, and its other members, Ernest Hilgard, William Clark Trow, and Emily Woodward, it was charged with studying Japanese opinions, and attitudes that nurtured those opinions, in an attempt to determine how social change through education could democratize Japan. While there is only internal and inferential evidence to suggest that Johnson’s memorandum was the basis for the report filed by the Japanese mission, there is little doubt that he played an important, and perhaps major, role in the investigation and subsequent report. One of the important characteristics of the report, typical of other committees and agencies Johnson served, was the inclusion of indigenous “Japanese educators appointed by the Minister of Education of Japan, and . . . other representatives of the schools and of various walks of life in Japan.”7 Consistent with Johnson’s usual orientation, the essence of the report actually came from the Japanese. Decentralization of the administrative machinery, broaden-

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ing of compulsory education, the establishment of a three-year secondary school to follow the nine years of compulsory education, and improved teacher training were the major recommendations. Crucial also was the “freeing of higher education from governmental control, with the establishment of economic and academic freedom.” In Johnson’s eyes, even more important than the specific recommendations were the underlying philosophy and tone of the report. The recommendations were confined to “broad patterns, with details to be filled in by Japanese educators.” A democracy could not be imposed successfully from the top; it had to build “upon elements already existing in the national culture that hold promise for democratic development.” In this respect, Johnson noted in the foreword to the report, “We believe in the power of every race and every nation to create from its own cultural resources something good for itself and for the whole world.” A basic principle, then, was “a respect for culture.” Only those factors interfering with future development were removed, such as the teaching of formal religious dogma in the schools and the practice of Shintoism, “which was chauvinistic nationalism under the guise of religion.” Relatively few teachers were removed; “some few texts had to be re-written, and some had to be discarded altogether.” Although Johnson would later summarize his findings from the Japan investigation in Education and the Cultural Crisis, there is no evidence he ever returned to his study of Japan. In contrast, the emphasis on the relationship between domestic civil rights and the Third World’s struggle against colonialism became his focus. Even before World War II ended, Johnson was quick to grasp the significance of the rising nonwhite world, which contained the majority of the world’s population. Earlier, in 1944, he had told a Columbus, Ohio, radio audience, “It often seems to come as a shock to white persons that in a world sense they are members of a minority—at least if color is to continue to be used as a basis for group differentiation. Out of the more than 2 billion human beings now living on this planet, only about 740 million, are, roughly speaking, white. The remaining two thirds are black, brown, and yellow.”8 Johnson’s interest in the world beyond the United States continued until his death. As the tensions of the Cold War worsened, he began more and more to discuss American segregation in the context of worldwide race relations. He compared colonialism in the Third World and segregation in the United States by using the United Nations and UNESCO as his forum. In the fall of 1946, after Johnson returned from Japan, Assistant Secretary of State William Benton once again proposed an assignment, which Johnson readily accepted.9 Benton had telegraphed Johnson asking that he

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accept an appointment to a national commission “to advise the State Department on American participation in the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.” In a lengthy letter that followed, Benton spelled out the role that Johnson and the United States were to play in UNESCO.10 The national commission was to be composed of one hundred members, sixty of whom would come from the “principal national voluntary organizations interested in educational, scientific and cultural matters.” Forty members, of whom Johnson was one, were appointed by the State Department. Benton further advised Johnson that later in the year a United States contingent “of five delegates would leave for Paris early in November for the General Conference of UNESCO.” Johnson was asked to serve as a member of the Committee on Information, whose function was “to aid and advise the Secretariat in facilitating a continuing and effective flow of information on UNESCO developments to the members of the commission.” In September 1946, the national commission met. Johnson was one of five nonvoting members of the American delegation named to represent the United States at the first session of the General Conference of UNESCO on November 19, 1946.11 Johnson’s colleagues were an impressive group that in addition to Benton, included Archibald MacLeish; Arthur Compton, chancellor of Washington University; Anne O’Hare McCormick, a member of the New York Times editorial board; George Stoddard, president of the University of Illinois and the former chairman of the Japan Mission; Milton S. Eisenhower; Chester Bowles; Anna M. Rosenberg, a member of the advisory board of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion; and George Shuster, president of Hunter College. Benton, MacLeish, Compton, McCormick, and Stoddard were the voting members. But Johnson knew that voting was only part of policy making. His shrewdness as a lobbyist and opinion maker would help him to utilize that position in the trip to Paris in the future. Even before he left, his appointment was duly noted in the Third World when the Haitian, Max L. Etheart, a former student of Johnson’s at Fisk, wrote that “this great honor is a further sign of international recognition and reflects on the whole Negro race.”12 Johnson returned to the United States at the end of 1946. He had not had an official vote, but he was already beginning to use his new international reputation and the UNESCO forum to exert pressure on race relations in the United States. Over Christmas vacation, Johnson, who in the fall of 1946 had been selected as the first African American president of Fisk University, was in Chicago for the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. The Chicago Defender headlined in bold type a press conference he held: “New Fisk President, Back in U.S. Expresses Deep

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Faith in UNESCO.”13 The Defender reported that Johnson had served as chairman of a subcommittee on social sciences and was named “rapporteur” (synthesizing the discussions) for the sessions of the international conference. Johnson reported that UNESCO’s first project had to do with fundamental education. He went on to say that the delegates had felt that “every person throughout the world must have access to the means for a basic education that will enable him to read and understand what is going on.” Then Johnson quietly added what was his theme in later months and years: this program “is applicable to our own country where in some areas children do not have the means for learning.” In the same press conference he noted that the project in which he was most personally interested was a study of world tensions that were “conducive to war.” This project would focus on “minority, immigration and colonial problems and offers the greatest challenge to the effectiveness of UNESCO.” Johnson continued to serve UNESCO actively until 1950. In 1947, he was a United States delegate to the Second General Conference of UNESCO held in Mexico City, and in 1948, he was a delegate to the Third General Conference, this time held in Geneva. The anonymity of many of the UNESCO documents and the lack of evidence in the Fisk archives about Johnson’s extensive participation suggest that his work after the Paris conference in 1946 was more ceremonial than substantive. He saw UNESCO as a world forum from which to lobby for human rights more than an arena in which he could formulate policy. With the imprimatur of UNESCO during the last decade of his life, Johnson gave many speeches based on the theme, “UNESCO Begins at Home.” While still a representative of UNESCO, in the fall of 1948 Johnson told a Vanderbilt University audience in Nashville that “UNESCO cannot have its exclusive philosophy, or . . . secure agrement [sic] or principles from all peoples or nations. Its attitude must be one of respect of diversity—a conscious cultural pluralism.”14 The Vanderbilt speech was titled “The Philosophy and Implementation of UNESCO.”15 As the title suggested, he outlined the basic assumptions of UNESCO as they related to the principles of “the dignity of man, the solidarity and equality of mankind, the values of culture and truth.” He further pointed out that “it is also evident . . . that UNESCO cannot accept those philosophies which deny the principles . . . which deliberately oppose the ideals of peace and happiness for all mankind.” The speech, which was written in outline form, closed with the subtopic, “Applicability at Home,” penned under the heading, “Why conferences cannot be held in South.” Ironically, within a year Vanderbilt was denied the right to host the United States National Commission for UNESCO meeting to be held in February or early March of 1949 because of Jim Crow.16

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Even before UNESCO, Johnson had suggested early in World War II what his approach would be when he wrote, “It is inevitable that the growing identification of American Negroes with other colored races of the Orient and South America; the changing conceptions of the significance of color and the place of non-Europeanized peoples and colonies; the strange alignment of races on the present urgent democratic front; the life and death interdependency between peoples of all colors will have their effect upon the status of the Negroes of the United States.”17 Toward the end of the war, Johnson enlarged upon this idea in a radio address in Columbus, Ohio.18 He contended that as the war ended, the paramount question was how to avoid the pitfalls of the past generation. It was obvious that one of the “deepest . . . of those pitfalls is race and color prejudice.” It was time to take a look at the United States’ allies and the world that “we are going to have to live in when the war is over.” The war was being waged against those who hated democracy and “who subscribe to the ideology of a master-race.” The allies included 540 million yellowskinned Chinese, 100 million brown peoples of the Philippines, South Asia, and the East India Islands, and most of the 120 million Latin Americans, “many of whom are proud of their Indian and Negro blood as well as their European ancestry.” In addition, there were 160 million Russians, “who believe passionately in the equality of all races as well as classes.” Poignantly, he added, “I do not mention as allies the 350 million people of India and the dark millions in Africa only because, although many of them are fighting and dying in Allied armies, existing color bars and colonial policies have made their contribution a mere fraction of what it might have been.” As long as color continued to be used for group differentiation, white people were destined to be in the minority. It was natural, then, that Johnson should view his appointment to UNESCO as a new base to fight for civil and human rights. As he lobbied to change public opinion and policy, a continuing theme of his articles and speeches became “UNESCO Begins at Home.”19 In the summer of 1948, he expounded on this theme at the University of Illinois. Following the now well-established Johnsonian pattern, he placed his argument within the framework of recent history. Unfortunately, the war was not for the “overwhelming mass of Americans, a renewal or deepening of faith in the historic American tradition.” Minorities had fought loyally and bravely, but the United States still did not consider it the “proper time to tamper with the basic status quo so far as segregated regiments and a racial hierarchy in the military structure were concerned.” Paradoxically enough, near the end of World War II, “some of the finest documents on human rights in recent times: The Four Freedoms; The Atlantic Charter; and the covenant (or charter) of the United Nations” were promulgated. The end

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of the war saw the United States in a position of world leadership. Americans, who had espoused the democratic creed echoed in the noble world documents, could “hardly believe their eyes and ears when it appears that people in many parts of the world are not nearly so ready to jump on the democratic bandwagon as we thought they would be and should be.” Johnson felt compelled to ask, “What is wrong with the product which we are offering the world, and to which we are finding so much unexpected consumer resistance?” From this premise, he went on to examine the contrast between the principles of the democratic creed and the realities of its “American style.” The key to understanding the world’s reluctance to embrace the democratic creed was the fact that the United States was not offering “to the other nations of the world this ideal blue-print but the actual product as they see it in operation in American Society.” Unlike Americans, many nations did not attribute the rich material wealth of this nation to the “American brand of democracy.” Natural resources and the exploitation of labor were also possible explanations. Johnson thought that the resistance to democratization lay in the “breakdown of American democratic theory when it comes up against the issue of race . . . [as being] responsible for the failure of the peoples of the world to rush up and buy our product as we took it for granted they would do at the first opportunity.” There were too many “undisturbed customs and . . . incidents involving the American treatment of minorities—Negroes, Jews, Orientals” for the colored peoples of the world to ignore. After all, of the fifty-five nations in the United Nations, over forty had “either a majority of colored people or a colored minority so substantial as to make their presence an important factor in the foreign policy of the country.” In fact, over twenty nations were represented in the UN councils by delegates who were “colored by . . . United States standards and who, everywhere in this country, run the risk of experiencing the same discrimination which is meted out to our own non-white citizens.” These threats were not restricted to the hinterland. Washington, D.C., shared with Johannesburg the dubious distinction of being the only world capitals where the “strict line of segregation is drawn.” This was not all; “[E]ven more galling to the representatives of some of the sister nations in the UN, is the United States Immigration laws.” Although tiny quotas were allotted to China, India, Japan, and Siam, “the remaining peoples of Asia are still barred from immigration and ineligible to citizenship.” To Johnson, the surprising thing was that “the attitudes of the Asiatics towards our western democracy is as friendly as it is.” Virtually every important issue brought before the Assembly or the Security Council since the formation of the UN had “involved the factor of race.” Yet the United States had been on the side opposed to the Third World. A case in point

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was the question brought before the General Assembly by the government of India concerning the treatment of Indian residents in South Africa. The United States sided with South Africa, “leaving to the Soviet Union the role of defending the rights of an oppressed colored minority.” Nor could Secretary of State James F. Byrnes of South Carolina answer the Soviet critic who pointed out the irony in his “insistence on free elections in the Balkans when South Carolina did not have them.” The danger, Johnson told his audience as he toured the country calling for “UNESCO to Begin at Home,” was that the “gap between the things we stand for in principle and the facts of the particular situation may be too wide to be bridged.” In the past, the United States had focused upon negative freedoms. Now the need was not protection against the government, but rather, “protection of the people by the government.” The Cold War had interjected a new force into the world arena, a “contest of political and social and ideological systems.” The present ideology stressed the value of freedom but was “less keenly alert to the need for social justice.” In the postwar era, there was a need for a more positive conception “of human rights—economic and social rights.” The right to do a job, a minimum standard of living, and social benefits now were a part of the people’s rights. The Soviet Union’s ability to meet these needs gave it a significant advantage in the Cold War. It was up to the United States to meet this challenge. The Soviet Union did not “discriminate on the grounds of race or religion.”20 Here, the Soviet Union not only had bargaining power with the “non-white peoples of the world but the peoples of Europe who have just gone through a period in which racial and religious differences were made the basis of ruthless persecution and, in fact extermination.” Johnson was not content to deal only in generalizations: “Race, in short, has become far more than a domestic issue. It has become the scale on which democracy is to prove its case on the world scene, there is need for more than words. It is my belief that some genuine act of democratic conviction at home—repeal of the poll-tax, enactment of federal fair employment practice legislation, outlawing of restrictive covenants, or the banning of segregation in our Armed Forces—would do more to strengthen our cause than the threat of superior weapons. The time of proof has come, and race is the touchstone.” In spite of the pragmatic logic that an affirmative civil rights program was “imperative for our survival in the days not too far away,” the suggestion of civil rights was too often met with the cry of treason. Yet it was time for the United States to take positive action. The external pressures of the Third World, the need for a stable peace, and the developing tensions in the United States were moving in that direction. It was not only important for the United States government to move in a positive direction; the same counsel applied to all other institutions in the “democracy.” It was with this

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idea in mind that Johnson suggested to an audience at Washington University in St. Louis in 1948 how and where institutions and governments could work for positive action. Johnson pointed up the paradox of educational institutions being concerned about international understanding while they were still segregated or quasi-segregated when he said, “I see no benefit in encouraging the admission of students from foreign countries into our colleges, so that we may learn to appreciate and understand them, . . . if we are unable to face the problem of building understanding between our own people of different racial groups.” Spending large sums of money to build international houses on campuses where “young Americans who were born and brought up on opposite sides of the same street” could not live together accomplished little, if anything. Social scientists had many of the necessary facts, he told his Washington University audience, but “we do not act on them.” From there, Johnson reiterated many of his familiar themes, now applying them to the nascent issues of the modern civil rights movement. Biologists and anthropologists had established the fact that there were “no essential differences between races.” But historical circumstances had continued to develop emotional attitudes which acted as if there were essential differences. Separation reinforced these attitudes, yet separation was continued. In the period of cold war and world tensions, “we have a situation in which we recognize those . . . attitudes, and the danger which they represent to American democracy, but we are not willing to undertake the measures necessary to change them.” Johnson mentioned that as president of Fisk University, he was in the untenable position of “teaching a respect for democratic values to young people whose opportunities for participation in the society of their birth is limited by race, and whose practical education has been almost entirely directed towards giving them a sense of their inferiority.” Johnson could think of only one problem more difficult for an educator, “that of teaching respect for democratic values to students whose practical education has taught them that the color of their skins gives them a superiority . . . ; and that democratic rights and responsibilities are justifiably restricted to their own race.” Johnson argued that the nation wasted valuable resources fighting continual resistance to change. As scholars acquainted with the scientific method, the academic community should be planning means of cooperation to “see that what separation has done must be undone by integration.” From this orientation, it should logically follow that educators would support federal aid to public education, but in almost all cases the adherence to segregation had motivated many educators, at least in the South, to oppose one of the most important formulas for “equalization of educational opportunities.” Instead of following a rational approach, the emotional attitudes, which were scientifically untenable, had

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witnessed the “southern states . . . struggle along giving half an education to their white children and a quarter of an education to their Negro children.” Although Johnson’s speeches at the University of Illinois and Washington University were typical of his approach, he did not isolate himself in the security of college campuses. In articles, speeches, and public statements during the decade that set the stage for the freedom movement, the Fisk president continued to expound upon the theme “UNESCO Begins at Home.” The titles of his presentations changed and the stated theme was more often than not foreign policy or the Cold War, but the arguments were familiar. In 1949, for example, he told a women’s club in Cleveland, Ohio, “Let us test this out by beginning at home a friendly invasion of the cultural, racial, and class blocks with our immediate neighbors.”21 In 1950, on the national radio program “Town Meeting,” he appeared with Congressman Books Hays of Arkansas to discuss the question, “What Effect Do Our Race Relations Have on Our Foreign Policy?”22 He told the nationwide radio audience, “[I]t is my sincere conviction that our racial system in America is the Achilles’ heel of both our domestic and foreign policy.” From this generalization, he went on to cite personal and political examples. For instance, he had visited India the previous December. There, in the newly independent nation, “the most frequent question asked about America in the eager, urgent scanning of the possibilities of a friendly alliance was, ‘what about the American Negro minority?’” Assistant Secretary of State George C. McGee, after a tour of the Near East, Asia, and Africa, listed “high among barriers to our cooperation with these countries reports of racial discriminations in the United States.” This nation had signed the United Nations Charter, which had pledged to “promote respect for and observance of human rights, and fundamental freedom for all without distinction as to race.” Yet civil rights in the United States were merely the domestic counterpart of human rights, which were “accepted now as the moral standard for a civilized world.” Johnson pointed out other incongruities in the United States’ domestic actions and its stated foreign policy objectives. He reminded his audience that he was not playing the part of a gadfly when he remarked, “I’d like to observe that I was not stressing the imperfections; I was simply holding up a mirror to the opinions and comments of other nations of the world.” His final comments represented the struggle in which black people were engaged as the decade of the 1950s began. He said, “I think the greatest obstacle to improving race relations is the general one of segregation. It is at the base of most of the discrimination. The greatest opportunity, I think, is the removal of segregation, educationally and by law.” Throughout the 1950s, until his death in 1956, Johnson kept up his attack. In the summer of 1951, he evaluated the civil rights struggle at mid-

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century. Again, the sociologist noted the influence of world events on changes in domestic race relations: “These changes have not been due entirely to spontaneous change of heart on the part of individuals, or to local education. There has been an irresistable [sic] compulsion to change stemming from our new and imperative international situation, and from the new forces moving in the world today.”23 But in the summer of 1951, he had hope. He saw the “pressure for internal change, initiated peripherally by powerful new international imperatives, . . . gaining strength increasingly from inner motivation.” If it continued, he anticipated a new era in race relations. On the other hand, there was clear danger for the nation with the present incursion into civil liberties by the “loyalty oath.” It was a strange kind of loyalty oath, remarked Johnson, one that in Mississippi, for example, required teachers to include in “the concept of loyalty, the support of segregation.” The future of the nation in civil rights and civil liberties was at the crossroads; it could choose either path. The pressures of minorities and their allies must continue. But he was still hopeful. Less than a month before his death, the New York Times Magazine published Johnson’s last article on a subject that he had studied throughout his career. In his concluding paragraphs, he returned to the relationship of international relations and civil rights: The issue today is human equality and national civil rights, and the touchstone is the racial segregation that prevents this human equality. Whatever our internal national differences on domestic issues, we are a total nation to the rest of the world, and no allowances can safely be made for regional defections from our basic American philosophy and practice. At stake is our survival in a world in which we are losing our allies by millions, the allies we need for military aid and support, friendship, trade and the essential raw materials for our industrial growth. The essence of our system of government and life is voluntary cooperation in a democratic process that respects the dignity and rights of individuals. Our faith in the power of the human spirit to achieve the ends of a free society has given hope to millions of mankind over the world. We cannot default on this promise. This is our moral challenge in a national crisis.24 Johnson’s final statement on civil rights and international relations was less than optimistic. His cold war arguments were a valuable lobbying tactic in the 1950s in support of the issues that are still being contested as we

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begin the twenty-first century in the post–Cold War period. In addition, they were issues important to American liberals of the era of the 1950s. The very essence of the democratic process, the drive for human dignity, and survival as a nation are still paramount issues for the United States. Even more important, these were the issues that were to mark the struggles of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and the 1960s.

Chapter 16

Conflict over Fisk Leadership

A

leader is often thought of as someone who brings people through conflict. Among the most salient names in black leadership are militants who advocated Black Nationalism, like Marcus M. Garvey, or nonviolent protesters who sought integration, like Martin Luther King, Jr. However, we sometimes overlook the leadership of those who tried to move society forward by changing attitudes. The 1940s were a decade in which many black leaders advanced their cause through legal means, research, and political persuasion. It was in this decade that the armed forces were desegregated and the NAACP staged a carefully planned and persistent set of legal challenges that led to the landmark Brown v. Education decision.1 As we have seen, Charles S. Johnson was among those who contributed to the advancement of blacks in the 1940s through these slow and deliberate measures. Because of his less confrontational approach, he was not always well liked within the black community and by other black leaders. Like the criticism he garnered during his involvement with race relations ventures, the controversy over his candidacy for the presidency of Fisk University illustrates the contrasts in black thought and leadership style in the 1940s. Prior to Johnson’s selection, Thomas Elsa Jones held the Fisk presidency beginning in 1926. Jones, a Quaker, was less conservative than prior white Fisk presidents. In his inaugural address, he stated: “Let us not close our eyes to the fact that the simple-minded ambitionless Uncle Tom type of Negro is passing and in his stead is arising an American citizen who owns his home, operates his business, pays his taxes and provides for his own. Every form of endeavor that is open to the white man is open to the Negro.”2 Jones’s presidency had both benefits and drawbacks for the students, faculty and alumni of Fisk. Prior to his presidency, there were a few 213

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blacks on the board of trustees; however, there were none that had been voted on by the alumni. President Jones and the board allowed three members of the alumni (later increased to five) to be on the board. According to sociologist Richard Robbins, “Jones had been outstanding as president, raising the school’s standards, expanding the physical plant, doubling enrollment, and recruiting an interracial, internationally-known faculty, whose racial balance was about two-thirds black, one-third white.”3 However, Jones also packed the Fisk board of trustees with white southerners, and neglected to allow any blacks on the trustee finance committee.4 Jones also had his share of troubles dealing with students. An incident in which the Jubilee Singers were contracted to perform in a Jim Crow Nashville theater created uproar on campus, and alienated Jones’s administration from the students. Finally, with the onset of World War II, Jones’s Quakerism put him in an awkward position with respect to the Fisk community. His pacifist position on U.S. involvement overseas grew increasingly unpopular. In late 1940, Jones sent his resignation to the board of trustees, to be effective as soon as possible after January 1, 1941. He claimed that the college needed new blood to revitalize it. The board gave Jones a one-year leave of absence for 1941 that was extended to several years, and subsequently most of the administrative duties fell on Dean Alrutheus A. Taylor’s shoulders. In response to Jones’s absence, members of the faculty formed a teacher’s union to protest their dissatisfaction with the administration. Despite the power vacuum in the president’s office, Fisk grew during the years 1941–45. This growth was remarkable in light of the wartime drop in enrollment experienced by most colleges. Fisk’s enrollment increased to the highest level since its founding, with 653 students in 1944.5 In 1945 rumors about the problematic conditions on the Fisk campus circulated among alumni and black intellectuals nationwide. Concerned about teaching quality, student attitudes, race relations on campus, and the management of the college investments, the alumni association proposed a fair, impartial, and thorough inquiry into the state of the university. The inquiry called for an investigation of the following areas: the philosophy and program of education; the administration and top leadership; faculty-administrative cooperation; the caliber of teaching personnel and the quality of instruction; faculty-student relations; student life and student morale; black-white relations on campus; and the investment of college monies. When President Jones resigned (again) in 1945, effective July 1, 1946, the inquiry was halted. Jones went on to become president of his alma mater, Earhlam College in Indiana. While it is possible that Jones left Fisk simply because he wanted a change of venue, one of the black trustees, Ernest R. Alexander, suspected that Jones had something to hide, and that he handed in his resignation “as soon as it became

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apparent that an investigation would be held.” As evidence, Alexander pointed to the suspicious way in which trustee L. Hollingsworth Wood, a long-time friend of Jones, eliminated the need for board secretary Carter Wesley’s signature on documents involving sale of property, investments, and so forth. This guaranteed that only Wood, Charlie Haydock, and Jones (three white men) knew the actual earnings from Fisk’s endowment stocks. Ernest R. Alexander at least implies that such an arrangement made it possible for the three white men to skim money from the treasury. The timing of Jones’s resignation may have made it possible to direct attention away from the university’s finances and toward the selection of the new president. Both alumni trustee Ernest R. Alexander and alumni president James E. Stamps asserted that these three men knew that the handling of Fisk’s finances could not stand up under investigation, so Jones had to “take the rap.”6 If it was the goal of Jones, Haydock, and Wood to direct attention to the selection of a new president, they may have succeeded. Upon learning of Jones’s resignation, James E. Stamps wrote a letter to the Fisk Board of Trustees noting the alumni’s deep interest in the type of man to be selected as the next president. He asked that the new president be “a man who is a proved educational administrator; who is a recognized scholar; and whose position in the world of affairs has been well established.”7 Stamps further requested that a black man be considered for the position and pointed to the trend toward selecting black presidents at many other private and public black colleges. The suspicion surrounding Fisk’s finances illustrates the growing atmosphere of tension at the institution and the growing mistrust of the university’s white leadership by its black alumni. 8 Charles S. Johnson would eventually be chosen as the first black president of Fisk University in 1946. With years of research and teaching experience as well as excellent connections with philanthropic organizations, Johnson was on equal footing with a group of candidates that included Charles H. Wesley, Rayford W. Logan, Benjamin E. Mays, Carter G. Woodson, Charles H. Thompson, and Ira DeA. Reid. However, Johnson’s selection was not without controversy. It was precisely Johnson’s ties to philanthropy that made some black leaders uncomfortable with his candidacy. Portraying Johnson as being too friendly with the white power structure, a group of alumni that included W. E. B. Du Bois led a national effort to derail his bid for the presidency. The attack on Johnson was based on Fisk’s long history of outside control by philanthropic organizations. Throughout the university’s history, Fisk presidents battled with these issues. Under its first president, Erastus Milo Cravath (1875–1900), Fisk had received the majority of its funding from local and national grassroots missionary organizations. Because of this support, the institution was able to develop a rigorous

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liberal-arts-based curriculum while maintaining independence from the local southern white political structure. As operating costs increased and missionary funds dried up, later Fisk presidents had to look for alternative funding sources. It was at this point that several white northern industrialists, who had previously supported only primary and secondary education for blacks, began to support black colleges. The shift came at a time when northern capitalists were widening their control over the South’s economy, and it most likely reflected a desire to exert greater influence over the training of the labor force. In contrast to a liberal arts curriculum that was part of Fisk’s original mission and that encouraged political and social advancement, the industrial education favored by the philanthropists provided blacks with skills appropriate for menial positions only. Rather than learning about literature, philosophy, and science, under this curriculum, blacks were trained in household duties, planting, fieldwork, personal hygiene, and horse shoeing.9 The first of the Fisk presidents to accept contributions from industrial philanthropists was James G. Merrill (1901–08). During the same time period, John D. Rockefeller established the General Education Board—a conglomeration of major industrial philanthropists and some lesser known, but equally influential individuals.10 The GEB contributed to the establishment of an applied sciences program at Fisk. Although Merrill claimed that liberal arts and industrial education were not “antagonistic,” under his leadership, Fisk University’s curriculum continued to shift toward industrial education. In addition to his cooperation with the GEB, Merrill asked Booker T. Washington for his support in raising funds for Fisk. This shift and the narrowing of academic freedom that accompanied it caught the attention of Fisk’s most prominent alumnus, W. E. B. Du Bois. When asked to deliver the Fisk graduation address in 1908, Du Bois took the opportunity to rebuke the University’s administration: “And so today this venerable institution stands before its problem of future development, with the bribe of Public Opinion and Private Wealth dangling before us, if we will either deny that our object is the highest and broadest training of black Men, or if we will consent to call Higher Education that which you know and I know is not Higher Education. And I say we in this case advisedly; for my brothers and sisters, if this happens: if the ideal is lowered or the lie told, the responsibility rests on us.”11 Not long after Du Bois’s speech, Merrill resigned. Upon his departure, he told the board of trustees, “The only real difficulty is the money side and this difficulty is so great that I have come to the conclusion that I have no longer a right to continue in my present position.”12 Perhaps the most serious attempt to alter the curriculum at Fisk was during Fayette A. McKenzie’s reign. In his inaugural address in 1915, he assured the white southerners and northern philanthropists that Fisk would aid in restoring the South to economic prosperity and increase the wealth of

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the nation—precisely the goals of these groups. Satisfied with McKenzie’s leadership, in 1920, the GEB agreed to support a campaign to raise a onemillion-dollar endowment for Fisk. With such large sums of money pledged to the university, the philanthropists were easily able to take control of its board of trustees from the former alliance of black educators and white missionaries.13 In 1923, a memo of the General Education Board called for the collection of more financial support for Fisk and emphasized the urgent need to train “the right type of colored leaders”—subservient leaders who would assist the Negro in becoming a capable worker and a respectable citizen. Following up on this memo, McKenzie curtailed the liberal arts curriculum, suspended the student newspaper, and refused to allow a campus charter of the NAACP. Further, he arranged special Jim Crow entertainment for the white benefactors of the university. Clearly, the “right type of colored leader” was one who would acquiesce in the segregationist social order in the South. As a result of his suppression of student initiative and narrowing of the curriculum, McKenzie was able to gain not only the support of the industrial philanthropists, but the praise of the local southern white population.14 McKenzie’s repressive approach, however, did not sit well with Fisk alumni and students. Alumni contributions were at an all-time low, and the feelings of discontent spread among students and alumni alike, until they caught the attention of W. E. B. Du Bois. When invited to give the commencement address at Fisk in 1924, Du Bois again rebuked the Fisk administration: I have come to address you and, I say frankly, I have come to criticize. . . . I come to defend two theses, and the first is this: Of all the essentials that make an institution of learning, money is the least. The second is this: The alumni of Fisk University are and of right ought to be, the ultimate source of authority in the policy and government of this institution. . . . Fisk University is not taking an honest position with regard to the Southern situation. It has deliberately embraced a propaganda which discredits all of the hard work which the forward looking fighters for Negro freedom have been doing. . . . It continually teaches its students and constituency that this liberal white South is in the ascendancy and that it is ruling; and that the only thing required of the black man is acquiescence and submission.15 During the months following Du Bois’s speech, alumni and student anger escalated against the university’s policies and conduct. In January of 1925, alumni groups from all over the United States met in New York City

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for the sole purpose of agitating for McKenzie’s resignation. On February 4, 1925, the Fisk students revolted. In a protest the day after the student revolt, over twenty-five hundred black Nashville citizens called for McKenzie’s ouster. Historians Joe M. Richardson and James D. Anderson, as well as Du Bois himself, believed this was a major factor in McKenzie’s resignation three months later. After the revolt, Fisk encountered much difficulty in securing funds. Philanthropists were reluctant to give money to an unstable university, and the white citizens of Nashville withdrew their support. In contrast, Hampton University, which maintained its industrial curriculum, was able to amass an 8.5-million-dollar endowment during this period. The conflict during McKenzie’s presidency left a permanent mark on the history of Fisk.16 This legacy of conflict was the lens through which Fisk alumni viewed Thomas Elsa Jones’s presidency, and it galvanized their determination to select a leader who was free from outside influence. It was also important that by 1945 Fisk was one of few elite black colleges that still had a white president. This circumstance was peculiar given Fisk’s ability to nurture black leaders. In addition to its best-known alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois, Fisk had shaped the careers of hundreds of black teachers, doctors, writers, musicians, social workers, scientists, and college faculty. Thus, it seemed very important at that time to pick the right black candidate. It was in this context that the process began. At the outset, twentyfour names were submitted—twelve blacks and twelve whites. In addition to the general issues of qualification, the nominating committee subjected the candidates to the following litmus tests: First, “[N]o Southern white man, irrespective of other merits, could be chosen in the present stage of [the university’s] social evolution;” and second, “it would not be wise to choose another Quaker17 at this time.”18 Although the short list of candidates included several names, the two finalists for the presidency were Charles H. Wesley and Charles S. Johnson. Johnson, of course, had been at Fisk for many years and had a strong national and local reputation. His research and campus leadership showed him to be familiar with the needs of college students. The other major candidate with qualifications and popularity was Charles H. Wesley. An alumnus of Fisk (1911), Wesley was the president of Wilberforce University in Ohio and the former dean of the Graduate School at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and held a Ph.D. from Harvard. Like Johnson, Wesley was described as a moderate by blacks and whites alike. In 1945, several members of the Fisk alumni, including trustees Ernest R. Alexander and James E. Stamps, approached Wesley and asked if he was interested in the Fisk presidency. Initially, Wesley declined

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the nomination. According to Janette Harris, Wesley’s biographer, he did so because he thought that pressure from alumni was not the appropriate way to elect a college president. Further, he was reluctant to leave his position at Wilberforce.19 Although sociologist Richard Robbins suggests that Wesley and Johnson became very involved in their quest for the Fisk presidency, there is scant evidence of this in the correspondence of the two. Publicly, both Johnson and Wesley claimed to have little interest. In fact, at a dinner in February of 1947, Johnson stated that he never had “designs on such a post up to that moment,” and had no relevant communication on the subject with Fisk’s administration.20 It was widely believed by Fisk alumni that Johnson’s candidacy for president was pushed by the white members of the board of trustees. In fact, Ernest R. Alexander accused the white trustees, particularly L. Hollingsworth Wood, of wanting to select a white man as president for a two-year period, in order to have time to build up Johnson in “the public eye as logical presidential timber.” However, the Fisk alumni were incorrect in their assumption that Wood and white philanthropy were backing Johnson. The records show that neither Wood nor Charles S. Johnson’s close friend Edwin R. Embree used their influence to sway the board in favor of Johnson. In fact, Edwin R. Embree wrote to Wood on July 18, 1946, to request that Charles S. Johnson not be chosen as president: “I hope you do not choose Charles Johnson. I feel he is much too fine a scholar and leader to waste on the controversial issues and administrative details of a college presidency. He is, of course, the outstanding figure and the natural choice, but I hope he will not take it.” Instead, Embree suggested Charles H. Thompson, dean of the Graduate School at Howard, for the position—“a mature, able man of high academic standing . . . he is not involved in any of the acute group rivalries.” Wood’s reply states clearly that he too does not favor making Charles S. Johnson the “recipient of the headaches of the presidency.”21 Not only was it an incorrect assumption that the white board members and philanthropists supported Johnson for the presidency, it is also incorrect that Du Bois was against Johnson from the beginning. Despite Robbins’s claim that Du Bois led the black trustees who were advocating Charles H. Wesley, Du Bois was not involved at the outset. In fact, a July 11, 1946, letter to Ernest R. Alexander documents that Du Bois was removed from the social and political situation at Fisk. In the letter, Du Bois requested that Alexander forward the answers to some rudimentary questions: “How many Presidents has Fisk had since Cravath? . . . How many trustees are there; how many are white and how many represent the alumni? Just how are the alumni trustees elected?” Once Alexander

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alerted Du Bois to the situation, however, Fisk’s most famous alumnus became quite involved—just as he had in the past when there was uproar among the alumni. In Du Bois’s mind, three groups would determine which candidate was appointed: northern philanthropists, southern liberals, and Fisk alumni. “The Northern philanthropists have gotten in the habit of kowtowing and being entirely subservient in opinion to Southern liberals. The Southern liberals are not wholly liberal and are sometimes selfishly desirous of the school trade and at other times determined to see that Negroes keep in their places and consequently prefer either a white man as president whom they can handle or a white folk’s ‘nigger.’” In Du Bois’s mind, Charles S. Johnson’s relationships with white philanthropies made him the “white folks’ nigger,” and therefore he preferred Charles H. Wesley, who had few ties with white philanthropies.22 With Du Bois’s involvement, the Fisk presidential selection process heated up quickly. It eventually came to a head with Du Bois threatening to accuse Johnson publicly of pressuring the board of trustees to select him. According to Du Bois, Fred L. Brownlee, one of Charles S. Johnson’s close professional and personal friends, said that Johnson had threatened to resign because he did not want to work under a black president. The implication was that Johnson had become accustomed to being the highest-ranking black in the institution and would resent any competition. A threat to resign by Johnson, who brought large sums of research dollars to Fisk, would have amounted to strong pressure on the administration. Although this is an interesting theory, it seems highly unlikely that a vocal Johnson supporter like Fred L. Brownlee would have reported this kind of information.23 When asked for written confirmation of the ultimatum, Brownlee did not comply. Du Bois had written to Brownlee stating, “For a Negro scholar of prominence to resign because he did not want to work under a Negro president would be a difficult matter to live down. Any man who can work under Tom Jones can work under Charles Wesley, UNLESS, the matter of color is decisive. And it is precisely that which influential alumni are already charging.” Denying any suggestion that Johnson may have had trouble working under black leadership, Brownlee replied to Du Bois’s inquiry by saying, “[Johnson] has served repeatedly on committees whose chairmen were men of color. He went to Fisk University not because Tom Jones is white, but because of an unrestricted opportunity to develop one of the finest departments of the social science in the United States.”24 Despite the lack of substance in these allegations, Alexander and Stamps encouraged Du Bois to express publicly his disdain for Johnson. Du Bois agreed and sought to place an article in a major publication, eventually settling with the Nation (September 7, 1946). Although the article

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did not refer directly to the ultimatum or Johnson, Du Bois provided a good enough description that those familiar with the situation at Fisk would know who its subject was: There can be no doubt as to the present situation; the Northern white trustees hesitate to put a Negro into the presidency; they would prefer a complacent, even second class, white man. The white Southern trustees would consent to a Negro president provided he was a Negro amenable to their guidance and not “radical” that is, not an advocate of the FEPC, the abolition of the poll tax, or any New Deal policies. It is rumored that they are in partial agreement on a man of this sort. Clearly Du Bois meant to suggest that Johnson was a “man of this sort.”25 In the Nation article, Du Bois chose not to discuss the ultimatum that he attributed to Johnson. Perhaps he did not accuse Johnson directly because he knew that to speak out so vehemently against another black leader would not have positive results—especially with such scant evidence that Johnson had threatened to leave Fisk if not given the presidency. While Johnson may not have been a radical, Du Bois’s suggestion that Johnson did not support New Deal policies, the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), and the abolition of the poll tax was absurd. As mentioned earlier, Johnson shaped the very New Deal policies to which Du Bois was referring. He devoted much time to research that supported agricultural reform, fair employment practices, and other Roosevelt-era policies that affected the lives of blacks in the South.26 Clearly, Johnson cared deeply about the advancement of blacks and the elimination of racism in society. In the cultural and educational arenas, his efforts to achieve these goals were quite successful. Why then was Du Bois so critical of Johnson? The answer lies with Charles S. Johnson’s connections to philanthropy. For a variety of reasons, Du Bois harbored a deep mistrust for the foundations—and this mistrust only grew as he became older. W. E. B. Du Bois’s hard-line perspective on white philanthropy was based on two essential elements: his own experience and the political framework through which he viewed the world. On many occasions, philanthropists stymied Du Bois’s scholarly and cultural pursuits. For example, he was denied funding for his Negro Encyclopedia project by Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller’s GEB. And at various times during his work for the NAACP and Atlanta University, he felt the sting of censorship and a systematic removal of support for anything that might be controversial. But one of Du Bois’s most dismaying experiences must have been his relationship with Booker T. Washington. On one occasion, in particular, his efforts

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to secure research monies had been blocked by Washington’s “Tuskegee Machine.” To Du Bois, Johnson resembled Booker T. Washington. Certain connections between the two men were quite compelling. As stated earlier, Johnson adopted some of the strategies of Booker T. Washington, even if he moved away from Washington’s accommodationist stance. And Johnson certainly did inhabit some of the same circles as Washington. For example, Johnson was a favorite of the Rosenwald Fund. During the early years of the Fund, Washington played a similar role—assisting Julius Rosenwald with his school building projects by deciding which counties would receive one.27 Another connection between “The Wizard of Tuskegee” and Johnson was their close relationship with Robert E. Park. Lastly, there was Johnson’s involvement with the Urban League. This organization was founded in part by Ruth S. Baldwin, the widow of William H. Baldwin, Jr.—a close friend of Booker T. Washington, a Tuskegee trustee, and a major industrial philanthropist. Because Washington believed that the Urban League reflected his views more accurately than the NAACP, the Wizard of Tuskegee gave his support to Baldwin’s organization. These connections may help explain Du Bois’s disdain for Johnson—a man who tried to make overtures to him time and time again. Above all, Du Bois mistrusted philanthropy because he viewed the world through a Marxian lens. According to this perspective, it was in the interest of the wealthy to perpetuate racism in order to create division among the working classes. Even if Johnson was successful in creating educational opportunities for blacks, in Du Bois’s mind, the capitalistic forces with which he was collaborating would ultimately undermine his accomplishments.28 In a 1946 speech given at Knoxville College in Tennessee, Du Bois made even more explicit his disdain for Johnson and black leaders like him who collaborate with white philanthropy. Entitled “The Future and Function of the Private Negro College,” Du Bois’s speech stated his opinions on the character and role of the black college president. He noted that the college president “must be not a financier and collector of funds but an educational administrator capable of laying down an educational program and selecting the people who can carry it out.” Considering the time period and location in which Du Bois’s speech was delivered, it is easy to speculate that the topic was motivated by his arguments with Johnson and the Fisk board of trustees.29 When the day came to make the decision as to who would be the new Fisk president, the trustees began their deliberations with an unofficial count. The result was Charles H. Wesley leading nine to six, with some undecided members. However, after a brief discussion of the candidates led by black newspaper publisher Carter Wesley30 (no relation to Charles

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H. Wesley), the final votes were cast, with an eleven to eight majority in favor of Johnson. Originally a vehement supporter of Charles H. Wesley, the black publishing entrepreneur spoke in favor of Charles S. Johnson at the last minute, and this may have been decisive in Charles S. Johnson’s selection. Because the realistic issues of economic demands and fiscal stability were never far from the minds of both white and black trustees, it is likely that the task of matching a 1.5-million-dollar endowment pledge by the GEB was on the minds of all who attended. Although Charles H. Wesley was a qualified candidate for the presidency, he did not have the developed contacts within the white philanthropic community necessary to raise this amount of money. According to John Hope Franklin, a board member during Johnson’s presidency, “Charles Wesley’s world was a black world. Johnson’s world was a white world. Wesley would not have been able to attract funds as Johnson did.”31 Upon Johnson’s selection Du Bois decided to remain silent about his disagreement with the Fisk board’s decision. He made this clear in a letter to trustee Alexander that notes, however reluctantly, the possibility that Johnson would make a good president: “He has the ear of the foundations and he will probably get the money that Fisk sorely needs. He will probably rebuild the university physically and may be able to get a faculty about him of the sort of teachers that Fisk needs. At any rate, the only thing that we can do now, it seems to me, is to keep still and give him a chance.”32 Ironically, this letter praised Johnson for the same traits Du Bois condemned in the Knoxville speech. Eventually, Du Bois acknowledged the importance of fundraising in a president’s position. He implied this in a 1958 statement to historian Merle E. Curti: “During my whole career, I have tried not to be put in a position where collecting money from philanthropists would be any considerable part of my work. For that reason, I have always declined to be candidate for the presidency of any college or organization, where I had to raise funds. . . . [T]oday, philanthropy is being guided by Big Business to ward off Socialism and Communism, to control labor unions, and to curb all sorts of “radical” thought.”33 Even as Du Bois acknowledged the necessity of working with philanthropy to fund a university, he continued to express doubt that any change can come from collaboration with the wealthy white power structure regardless of the good intentions of those involved. Johnson did not publicly campaign for the presidency but readily accepted when offered the position. Johnson’s decision to move from research to administration was complex, just as Johnson the individual was complicated and inscrutable. Accustomed to the prestige that accompanied her husband’s international stature, Johnson’s wife Marie may have encouraged him to accept the presidency. Johnson himself may have also

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seen the presidency as a way to cement the future of the Social Science Department and Race Relations Institute at Fisk. Yet these explanations alone seem inadequate. There is little evidence in the personal correspondence between Johnson and his wife that he made decisions solely on the basis of his wife’s persuasion. Likewise, Johnson’s power within the university was enough to guarantee the continued operation of any program with which he was affiliated. A more compelling theory for Johnson’s acceptance of the Fisk presidency is based on his past as a leader and researcher. He may have seen it as an opportunity to apply his ability to design, implement, and find funding for innovative programs. Johnson may have also seen a chance to enlarge Fisk’s role as an incubator for black leadership, scholarship, and culture—to create a place not unlike the Harlem of the 1920s in which he had played such a pivotal role. Although prior to his selection many alumni did not support him, by the time of his investiture his popularity had grown widely. Because Johnson was the first black president of Fisk, and because of his national reputation, his inauguration was celebrated with ceremony, seminars, and song—a far cry from the inaugurations of the past. As demonstrated by the correspondence between important philanthropists and board members, Johnson’s inauguration was also carefully orchestrated to highlight the success of the university and encourage financial support.34 His long time friend Edwin R. Embree (who was, coincidentally, made a trustee of Fisk University during the inauguration ceremonies) chaired the program committee. Citing his great admiration for Johnson, Embree accepted the trustee appointment in spite of being overburdened with board of trustees responsibilities from other organizations. Johnson, while pleased to have Embree at the helm of the inaugural festivities, was very particular about the ceremony and made suggestions on every aspect of the event, from the kind of paper used for the invitations to the speediness with which the invitations were sent.35 In keeping with Johnson’s scholarly interests, the campus bristled with intellectual activity at the time of the inauguration. Seminars explored such issues as the future of the southern economy, education, human rights, religion and the university, and the role of alumni at the private college. Among the twenty-five hundred guests were national leaders in government, education, philanthropy, and industry. The coverage of the inauguration by the press was both local and national. Major newspapers nationwide, such as the New York Times, reported the story. The scope of his inauguration is not surprising given his connections with various circles of national leadership. For example, President Harry S Truman sent his congratulations: “It gives me real pleasure to extend congratulations to Dr. Charles S. Johnson on the occasion of his inauguration as president of

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Fisk University. This distinguished scholar has served the country many times in the past. Dr. Johnson will now work with increased stature and the added resources of a great university.”36 Johnson’s inauguration marked the beginning of one of the most productive periods in Fisk’s history. When his tenure as Fisk’s first black president is measured by the traditional standards used by college administrators and boards of trustees to measure success, his years as president of Fisk are outstanding. In less than a decade under his leadership, Fisk built five major buildings, continued to develop an outstanding international faculty, acquired a world-class fine art collection compliments of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and moved into a condition of acceptance for a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Association of University Women, and the Association of Schools of Music.37 On the eve of his death, Johnson was preparing to launch a Ford Foundation-funded closed-circuit television system to allow Fisk students access to lectures from scholars nationwide.38 Under Johnson, Fisk’s budget was doubled, and over a million dollars was added to its endowment. Through his inaugural speech “Four Pillars of Faith,” Johnson set the stage for his presidency. He acknowledged what he valued in an educational institution and in his life: “a practical realism and scientific discipline in education, social responsibility in human relations, international knowledge and understanding as the key to survival and self-discovery.” As Richard Robbins has pointed out, Johnson’s goals for the university were in line with his previous agenda as a sociologist: “It [his agenda] did not differ greatly from what he had said and done for years as a sociologist: he was an ‘educational realist;’ he moved ahead firmly and as swiftly as possible, once the facts were known and the strategy for change was adopted.” Just as he had in the past, Johnson assessed the university’s situation, drew upon his experience and contacts, and moved forward in pursuit of his goals for Fisk. He envisioned Fisk University as a place to develop future black leaders who, like himself (and Du Bois, for that matter), would contribute to the black struggle for full citizenship through intellectual advancement.39

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Chapter 17

The Basic College: Nurturing Scholars and Leaders Charles Johnson believed in the whole concept of identifying young black bright kids who thrive in an environment where they have good teachers and encouragement. He was trying to demonstrate too that it did not matter what your color was as long as you have the potential.1

N

ot wholly convinced, in the early 1950s, of the will of the United States to desegregate American education, President Johnson created an environment at Fisk that gave young black students the benefits of integration. At Fisk, prominent artists and intellectuals of varying races and nationalities came together to nurture students and encourage scholarship. Not only was the campus integrated in terms of its faculty and guest speakers, but it boasted a student body of blacks, international students, and a small group of white students all attending classes together. According to one of the Fisk students, Jane Fort: During Dr. Johnson’s presidency, the campus burst with intellectual activity: the faculty was full of well-trained professors, the best in their fields. There was regular convocation with national and international speakers, the impact of the summers’ various meetings, including, but not limited to the Race Relations Institute, was felt throughout the academic year. The campus also enjoyed a concert series that brought international performers and the annual Spring Music and Arts Festival in which the humanities 227

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were celebrated through performances by our campus groups and national and international presenters as well. During my years, we heard from and had an opportunity to meet and interact with such notables as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes and so many others that we may have taken it all too much for granted.2 Charles S. Johnson’s interactions with students set the tone for a campus that nurtured and challenged students. Chief among his strategies was the Basic College, an early-entry program. Among many of the students on campus, Johnson was remembered as a legendary figure. They were aware of his work with the Harlem Renaissance, his influential Race Relations Institutes, and his research as a sociologist. Johnson’s international reputation preceded him in all of his actions on the campus. Although he could be somewhat aloof, students also recall his calming demeanor and warm sense of humor. Most significantly, Johnson was thought of as a student advocate—someone who had the interests of students in mind and considered their futures as well as their college years. One of Johnson’s goals for academic and social preparation at Fisk was to develop student’s abilities and self-esteem by encouraging them in “terms of their own strength and identity.” According to Basic College alumna Peggy Alsup, Johnson was fond of saying, “[T]his is where we come to give these kids the strength that they are going to need to confront the rest of the world.” Johnson’s focus was on “nurturing and incubating” students—giving them academic tools, self-worth, and confidence. Johnson would say, “[T]here are many different ways to make change.” His way often involved research and cooperation between blacks and whites, and these were principles he stressed with students. According to Basic College student Jane Fort, “Johnson’s experiences prior to coming to Fisk, his integration of white faculty and students on campus and his establishment of an on-going dialogue experienced through the Race Relations Institute, put him at the forefront of leaders on the scene in the 1950s.” Further, Fort adds, “Given the fact that lynchings were still acknowledged occurrences then, Dr. Johnson’s activities were indeed ‘activist.’” Fisk student body president Prince Rivers characterizes Johnson’s approach as intellectual activism: “In a sense he had a history of activism with the Crisis [sic - actually means Opportunity] magazine, the Southern Regional Board which was one of the few integrated educational organizations in the South, and the race relations institute . . . he was not the type who would be out marching in the streets. He was aware that any action he took would also be a reflection on Fisk University. The first thing that would

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have an impact on what decision he made was that the retaliation would be against the University itself and not towards him personally.” Thus, the type of “activism” that he practiced was in line with the needs of the university. He had to think about the sustainability of the institution, its financial base, and the effect of his actions on the students and faculty. For Johnson, providing a first rate education for blacks within a racist society was activist.3 During the middle years of his presidency, Johnson was faced with enrollment problems. Due to the Korean War, increasing numbers of Fisk students were drafted: 100 in 1950 and 240 in 1951. Of course, this phenomenon was not happening only at Fisk. Many institutions across the country were making internal adjustments in anticipation of their future loss in enrollment and resultant loss of revenue from tuition. The fact that Fisk was a coeducational school gave it some reprieve—there was the likelihood that enrollment of female students would increase. In order to compensate for the current and potential loss in enrollment, Johnson and the board of trustees made plans in 1951 to strengthen recruitment. Alumni throughout the country were enlisted to attract and help select students.4 An innovative idea that Johnson introduced was the recruitment of students from black junior colleges throughout the South—a relatively untapped resource. With the promise of eventual graduate study, Johnson believed that Fisk could enroll a minimum of 250 students from junior colleges. Johnson also made overtures to attract students from the local area. Prompted by requests from over 200 prospective Nashville students, Johnson reorganized the academic schedule to allow for afternoon, evening, and Saturday classes. He also made attempts to host an ROTC unit at Fisk. For some reason, neither the army nor the navy ever accepted his offer.5 Charles S. Johnson’s agenda included graduate training and research as well as undergraduate education for blacks. In his efforts to recruit students as well as to increase the number of black researchers in the United States, Johnson called upon the General Education Board once again. In a November 28, 1951, letter to Robert Calkins, Johnson wrote, “The role of Fisk in the new educational alignment seems to be that of preparing students for the successful carrying [on] of graduate and professional work. Its center of gravity, we believe, might well shift from the A.B. and B.S. to the M.S., and at the M.S. level mesh its operations . . . for further graduate training to the Ph.D.” Although Johnson pushed hard for increased graduate opportunities, the General Education Board was not willing to commit to funding in this area. Part of the board’s reasoning was that recent court cases6 had created more opportunities for blacks in

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the South; the “rapid increase in graduate opportunities for Negroes in white schools” made enhancing the graduate programs at Fisk unnecessary.7 Nevertheless, Charles S. Johnson felt it was still important to increase graduate opportunities at black colleges. Unlike the General Education Board, he was not as confident of the future place of blacks in American higher education. Even if Johnson saw the end of segregation on the horizon, he was probably not convinced that it would bring about true equality for blacks.8 Given his outlook, Johnson tried to craft innovative programs that would nurture talented young black students. He believed that by taking them out of an unfriendly and unsupportive secondary school and putting them into a college setting, he could cultivate a passion for learning and an interest in advanced study. As he had done in the past with the social science department, Johnson wanted to create a place of cultural ferment—a meeting place for black intellectuals in which creativity would flourish as it had during the Harlem Renaissance. This was the philosophy behind the Basic College Early Entrant Program. Born out of a self-study conducted earlier in Johnson’s presidency and funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1950, the purpose of the Basic College was to seek out a few exceptional high school students (at the junior and senior level) each year and allow them to proceed at an accelerated pace toward the bachelor’s or master’s degree. In addition, the Basic College exposed students to a variety of national and international scholars, artists, and political figures in small-group settings.9 President Johnson founded the Basic College on the principle of individual ability and preparation. His goal was to raise the national standard for liberal arts education and to enrich a student’s overall educational process. Further, Johnson aimed to prepare students for graduate study, and to create a nucleus of black intellectual leaders. An important feature of the program was interdisciplinary cooperation among faculty members in order to produce a more well-rounded, curious student. Although acceleration was stressed, it was not the overall goal of the program. A student’s age, general maturity, and achievement on standardized tests were all considered as the student progressed through the university. During the first year, the Basic College students were set apart from the rest of the student body. They attended separate courses, lived in separate residence halls and participated in extracurricular activities designed especially for them. The participants ate breakfast and lunch with other students but took their dinner separately. Members of the faculty and visiting luminaries ate with the group several times each week so that their meals were occasions for “interesting conversation and informal association between students and faculty members.”10 Some of the guests included a young Martin Luther King,

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Jr., Langston Hughes, Georgia O’Keeffe, Carl Van Vechten, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Even as it exposed its students to the intellectual currents of the outside world, the Basic College sought to insulate them from some of the social pressures of college life. For this reason, Basic College students were not allowed to join fraternities, sororities or other “regular” college organizations. Because of their youth, most of the students seemed to benefit from their isolation within the university. For example, Jane Fort was pleased with her experience: “As a participant in this program, I feel the BC [Basic College] ‘college within a college’ aspect was extremely important and played a crucial part in the success of such a venture. . . . After the second or third year, we were integrated into the junior year of college. That initial ‘nurturing’ gave us important resources to help bridge any gaps between our high school years and college. During the first year, we took our dinner meals in our residences and were joined by faculty and visiting campus guests for conversation and intellectual exchange. We were indeed most fortunate to be part of such a program.” Another student, Vivian Norton, notes that the “Basic College students bonded so closely during those years that the bonds have not broken to this day.”11 By the second year, President Johnson’s idea had blossomed into a well-developed program. According to Johnson, “Fisk has now developed a certain reputation for this program which may prompt more families to enroll their sons and daughters” at the institution. However, the initial Ford Foundation grant of $120,000 was not enough to sustain the program. Most students were not able to attend the university with only the assistance of the Ford Scholarship. Initially, students were given a full scholarship of $705 each, but later the amount was decreased to $370. With great persistence and some help from Fisk board member William H. Baldwin, Jr., Johnson was able to secure three additional years of funding from the Ford Foundation: “[M]y notion was that we should be made able to continue the basic college subsidy to the end of the college period of the students [3 years] and provisions for new students over a sufficient period to test the value of our experimental program. That would mean about $150,000.” A factor in Johnson’s ability to fund the Basic College program was the strong friendship that the Fisk president developed with Clarence Faust, president of the Ford Foundation. This was one of many new philanthropic connections Johnson had sought to cultivate during his presidency. Just as he had with Edwin R. Embree of the Rosenwald Fund, Johnson worked hard to develop friendships with new foundation leaders. As a new person came to the helm of one of the philanthropies, Johnson would find ways to make inroads with him and to build a strong relationship.12 For example, when Robert Calkins left the General Education Board and J. Harris Purks succeeded him as president of the board,

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Johnson immediately began setting up visits to New York and phoning Purks.13 When Faust visited the campus, he commented that “the program at Fisk embodied more of the elements of what the Ford Foundation would like to see accomplished than any of the other programs [throughout the country],14 and the Fisk program was important to follow for its possible educational values.”15 After the first two years, Johnson decided to expand the Basic College Program to include all freshmen and sophomores, thus replacing the institution’s core curriculum. However, the university maintained its early entrants program as a separate entity. In the plan for the new Basic College, Johnson outlined what he called his cardinal principles, “individual placement in each course according to the preparation and ability of the particular student . . . [and] individual progress at varying rates, depending on a particular student’s actual capacity and achievement.” The new Basic College assured that: (1) The weaker students will get two years of fundamental training instead of one year in English, Mathematics, and . . . a language. After completing the more elementary course in English, for example, the students will proceed in the following year to the more advanced English course. They will thus have a chance to strengthen themselves very considerably in the skills of effective reading and writing which are absolutely essential to sound college work. (2) The stronger students will no longer be held back by the presence of much weaker students in their classes. These stronger students will be able to move ahead more rapidly, and, we believe, with greater zest for their whole college program. Noting “When a number of alert and quick minds are brought together, the whole group can reach a higher level of interest and achievement,” Fisk also offered many accelerated honors classes in each subject.16 Early entrant students, of course, were among the brightest, with the first group scoring among the top twenty percent of all students in the United States on entrance exams. As the concept of the Basic College changed, so did the early entrants program. As noted, the early entrants were initially cloistered on campus. This gave Fisk the advantage of being able to experiment with new courses with a select group of students. Many of the courses used in the new Basic College had been tested on the early entrants. While the Basic College was largely successful, there were some drawbacks that the administration sought to correct. For example, some of

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the older early entrants felt detached from the “regular” freshmen who were of the same age. According to Peggy Alsup, a former Basic College student, “The Basic College was a very isolated, insulated experiment . . . they kept us by design from the rest of the university.”17 Further, the grading system for the early entrants’ classes was much more severe than for other classes. This resulted in poor morale within the group. With these issues in mind, the administration revamped the program during the third year. The early entrants were placed in the same courses as the advanced freshmen. However, the expectation placed on the early entrants was that they would perform distinctly better than the average undergraduate.18 Despite their young age, the early entrants excelled in the academic setting. In 1952, the Cooperative General Culture Test, a standardized achievement test, was administered to the group and to regular freshmen and sophomores. The early entrants scored better than the top freshmen by a wide margin, even though they had had one or two years less of formal schooling. A set of scores from 1953 on the General Education Test of the Graduate Record Examination again showed the early entrants to be distinctly superior. This time two-thirds earned scores that placed them in the top third by national sophomore norms. And the early entrants also took the University of Chicago admission examination. On this exam, they ranked among the upper 30 percent of all who had taken the test and scored above average in English.19 Although the early entrants were academically advanced, not all of them were mature enough to cope with college situations. Because the students were younger, sometimes only fifteen or sixteen years of age, the social regulations were stricter for them. Provoked by these restrictions, the students would, in the words of then Student Body President Prince Rivers, “act out.” For example, two of the early entrants reported having “The Too Youngs” embroidered on their jackets. In addition, another girl of only fifteen felt that the ban on dating junior and senior Fisk men was unfair and stated, “I might as well resign myself to becoming an erudite old maid with a Ph.D.” Prince Rivers, who, although not in the Basic College program himself, was close in age to many of its students, said, “I think the program clearly demonstrated . . . [that] students at the 11th grade were intellectually capable of performing at a college level. The question was not the academic ability but the social development of those students. Most of these students did have difficulty adjusting socially to their environment. . . . They were dealing with college situations.”20 The success of President Johnson’s early entrants experiment showed that students could “accomplish far more in the environment of the Basic College than they could accomplish in their high schools. . . . [Many] can accelerate, saving time and also doing a higher quality of work

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than they would do without the opportunities and the competitive stimulus of the Basic College.” Part of the success of the program was due to the interdisciplinary cooperation among faculty members and wellthought-out design. Not only did the students succeed as undergraduates, but “better than 91% of [the] BC group . . . earned at least one advanced degree and nearly 100% [were] involved in some kind of community service leadership.” Among the Basic College students who went on to become leaders in their fields were Hazel O’Leary, the former secretary of energy in the Clinton administration; David Levering Lewis, biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois and historian of the Harlem Renaissance; Ferris Patton, professor of genetics at Yale University; Johnnetta Cole, former president of Spelman College and anthropologist; and numerous others. Through hard work, Johnson met his goal of creating a group of leaders who would move the black struggle for full citizenship forward. He taught students what he believed: “[T]he only way for evil to triumph is for good men to sit idly by and do nothing.” In Johnson’s words, the Basic College brought “a distinct addition at a strategic point to the nation’s pool of potential leaders and . . . [it] greatly strengthen[ed] Fisk University in its effort to improve the whole quality of its program and make itself a greater University.”21 Charles S. Johnson exploited the potential of high school students who were not academically challenged in the existing school structure. He gave capable students an opportunity to develop at their own individual pace. He placed equal stress on a “student’s academic achievement and on his whole development as a person.” Through exposure to art and culture in a small-group setting, the Basic College program engaged students in the learning process. These activities were not supplemental to the curriculum but an essential part of it. Johnson thought that creative energy from writers, artists, and poets who described the black experience in their work could enliven the learning process. For example, the Basic College students benefited from exposure to the Fisk International Student Center (IRC). According to Prince Rivers, “[The] Fisk International Center was the hub of the intellectual community. Through it, Fisk provided entertainment and education for all of Nashville. For example, we used to have a film series every Saturday and Sunday night and we’d play foreign films and the Nashville community was welcome. . . . Fisk was one of those places in Nashville where all people could get together and mingle without concern.”22 Likewise, Basic College student Richard Thornell recalled the cultural activities available on the Fisk campus: “Fisk was a wonderfully nurturing environment. [It] was a cultural oasis. We had the best foreign film series in the city.”23 In Basic College student and historian David Levering Lewis’s words, “The International Student Center was the most exciting point in all of Nashville because the nou-

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velle vague of French movies came to America thanks to Charles Johnson. That brought people from Vanderbilt. There’s no question about Brown v. Board when it came to the film festival.”24 President Johnson also provided opportunities for students to meet cultural luminaries face to face in small, intimate settings. Basic College student Peggy Alsup reported, “I remember that just as he did in the Harlem Renaissance, he was always inclusive of everybody. He used to have dignitaries and famous people come to the campus and he would make sure that the students were there. I went to a dinner at the Heritage House [president’s house] for Herbert Parker, the black actor. Of course back in the early 1950s, he was really something. I was intimidated by the whole thing, but I just remembered being at this dinner with Johnson’s gracious wife and Herbert Parker. For a kid who had not been anywhere this was just the most exciting thing in the world. There were a lot of students at that dinner.”25 Johnson’s vision for the Basic College was lauded in 1954 when the Chicago Tribune took notice, stating, “Fisk probably did as much as any other institution to dramatize Negro higher education” and “Yale University’s recently announced change in curricular set up is in line with the Basic College Program at Fisk.”26 Despite this public acclaim, the Basic College early entrants program ended in 1956 with Johnson’s death. Disappointingly, Johnson’s successor, Stephen J. Wright, did not build on the legacy of the Basic College program. As with many of the programs that Johnson spearheaded, he neither made provisions for its continuation nor shared his funding sources. In words best expressed by Prince Rivers, “His style of leadership could sometimes be his biggest weakness in that Johnson had great vision and plans for Fisk but he did not share those visions with his subordinates. So when Johnson died many of his ideas and dreams died with him.”27 Although beneficial in some cases, Johnson’s ideas and style could work against him in others. He was an extremely private person who preferred to present and implement his plans as a finished product rather than build them through consensus. As mentioned previously, he trusted few people and rarely discussed his ideas with others. Only Johnson knew the totality of his ventures. Because its innovative and ambitious president failed to pass on his ideas and neglected to train a protégé in the ways of working with philanthropists, Fisk lost substantial funding after Johnson’s passing, and its reputation waned in the years after his administration. His leadership style would also become a hindrance in his dealings with faculty during his presidency, specifically in his handling of McCarthy Era controversies that erupted on campus. As president of Fisk, when forced to choose between supporting the abstract principles of civil liberties and the concrete idea of stabilizing the university, Johnson reluctantly chose the university’s financial future.

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Chapter 18

The Red Scare Hits Home

D

uring the McCarthy Era, there were many instances in which academic freedom, and in particular, the extent of the faculty members’ right to express themselves outside of the classroom, were challenged. For example, no less a figure than Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, was pressured to leave his position at the California Institute of Technology because of McCarthy Era investigations. Incidents like this pitted the professors’ right to speak out according to their conscience against their institutions’ well-being. Such incidents frequently resulted in bitter debate and unjust dismissals, even in the most prominent research universities. Such controversies could be even more damaging at black colleges, which lacked the political clout of the major universities. It was just such an event that hit the Fisk campus during the later years of Johnson’s presidency. A controversy involving Lee Lorch, a white Fisk math professor, provides an example of the collision of civil liberties with civil rights and the cause of black higher education. Not unlike most college and university presidents, Johnson had many difficult decisions to make during his tenure at Fisk. He was forced to balance the opinions of his constituents (that is, faculty, staff, trustees, donors, alumni, students, and local Nashville citizens) with his own convictions and agenda. Regarding philanthropy in particular, Johnson faced the pressure of meeting donor expectations that accompanied monetary donations. As we have seen, Johnson also was confronting issues that weighed heavily on the shoulders of black college presidents. He had to contend with the racist attitudes of southern whites, who feared that the equal education of blacks would lead to demands for equality in other areas. Above all, Johnson’s presidency took place during what may have been the most important turning point in the history of black civil rights during the twentieth century—the Brown v. Board of Education decision.1 The uncertainty surrounding this decision created a need for Johnson to weigh his 237

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actions carefully in terms of their effect on the future of race relations in the South. It was in this context that Johnson was handed the dilemma of dismissing one of his faculty members, Lee Lorch, or putting the future of Fisk in jeopardy. In making a decision, Johnson stayed close to his overall philosophy, which he best expressed in a 1942 interview with the Chicago Defender: “The difference between random behavior and a program is largely that of the ends in view. The thing that gives meaning to any single act is the larger context in which it is set. No strategy is sound that does not envisage the total picture in such a way that a person can be helped in deciding, in smaller individual cases, what is soundest and most important to stress and what, on the whole, is of minor consequences.”2 This incident pitted the pragmatic philosophy of an entreprenuring administrator against that of a confrontational activist. The incident had tragic consequences for both individuals; it also showed how the setting of a black college altered traditional assumptions about academic freedom, civil liberties, and the cause of black higher education. As one of the few places that a black student could get a first-rate education, Fisk played a crucial role, and this made it even more important to secure its future. Questions of academic freedom at Fisk are not unique to Charles S. Johnson’s presidency. Perhaps the greatest violations of academic freedom came during Fayette A. McKenzie’s presidency. His heavy-handed tactics, including curtailing the curriculum and limiting student and faculty speech, were a clear violation of the accepted principles of academic freedom. As mentioned in chapter 16, they resulted in student revolt and his eventual removal from the presidency. While the definition of academic freedom was, and continues to be, fluid, it had, by McKenzie’s time come to focus on the right of professors to research and teach what they pleased. For example, the 1915 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Statement on Academic Freedom set forth guidelines to ensure that college professors would have both freedom within the classroom and freedom to research and publish on the subjects of their choice. By curtailing the curriculum, McKenzie clearly violated the AAUP’s definition of academic freedom.3 Methodical research, in Johnson’s opinion, was “a necessary prelude to liberal reform and change in public policy.” His long career of research, publishing, government service, and public speaking had shown that “social science could be joined to advocacy—in various degrees of militancy— in the sense that a solid foundation of research would serve the advocates [he among them] in demonstrating the depth and scope of racial inequality preventing millions of African Americans from achieving ‘full American citizenship.’”4 In addition to his publications, Johnson made major contributions in human communications and created venues for self-expression,

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dialogue, and progressive change. Whether he was publishing artistic works in Opportunity, helping an emerging scholar get a Rosenwald Fellowship, or giving a very young Martin Luther King, Jr. an opportunity to speak at the renowned Fisk Race Relations Institutes, Johnson made significant contributions to the advancement of blacks in the United States. While Johnson chose a nonconfrontational style, he fought on many occasions for the exchange of diverse ideas and freedom within the academy. Perhaps the crowning incident in this regard was his successful struggle to promote the free flow of ideas at the 1944 Race Relations Institute, despite pressure from James G. Stahlman, publisher of the Nashville Banner, and Fisk President Thomas Elsa Jones. Johnson’s insistence on open discussion at the Race Relations Institute falls squarely within the AAUP’s definition of academic freedom—the right of the professor to teach. The radical ideas discussed (integration, voting rights, and socioeconomic advancement for blacks) were part of Johnson’s research, and surely he had a right to teach them. But what happened when a professor wanted to present radical ideas not connected to his or her research? There was much controversy over whether academic freedom should apply outside of the classroom and outside of the professor’s discipline, especially when the faculty member’s controversial statements and affiliations with so-called radical groups might have put the institution in jeopardy. In its 1940 Statement of Principles, the AAUP moved in the direction of expanding academic freedom to include broad-based civil liberties as well as the right of the professor to research and lecture freely within his or her field: “When [the college or university teacher] speaks or writes as a citizen he should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.” The AAUP’s statement implies that professors merit the same freedoms within the institution as do citizens of the United States under the Constitution. The effort to expand academic freedom provoked a backlash by some, who thought this kind of freedom shielded professors from any responsibility for their actions. Unlike other public figures, who were given free speech but were expected to bear the consequences of unpopular opinions, professors—who were protected by tenure—were asking for a broad mandate to express their opinions on all subjects without any negative career consequences. Because of the continuing debate, the final wording of the 1940 AAUP statement was still ambiguous.5 Although his involvement in the Race Relations Institutes showed Johnson to be a staunch defender of civil rights, his advocacy of civil liberties is a more complex issue. In some instances, he clearly defended the right to free speech and association. In 1948, for example, he was called before the Tenney Committee (Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, State Senate of California) as a result of his affiliation with

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the National Sharecroppers Fund. In a strong defense of civil liberties, Johnson denounced the committee’s inquiries as “witch-hunts” and stated that they were “much more un-American than the un-American activities being pursued.” And, again in 1949, when called to testify on the alleged communist infiltration of black colleges, Johnson assured the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) that there was no evidence to substantiate this claim.6 However, in other cases, particularly those dealing with internal university affairs, Johnson’s defense of civil liberties was less clear. In 1949, Fisk physics professor Giovanni “Ross” Lomanitz took the Fifth Amendment when called to testify about his alleged communist affiliation. Lomanitz was cited for contempt of Congress. Shortly afterward, President Johnson informed Lomanitz, who was untenured, that his contempt charges made it impossible for Fisk to offer him another year of work under contract. Although offered the opportunity to work without a contract, Lomanitz refused and left Fisk. Johnson had been officially in the Fisk presidency for only two years when the Lomanitz controversy came across his desk. Coupled with the pressure of being the first black president of Fisk, his newness in the role may have had an impact on his decision. The Lomanitz situation was not the kind of publicity that Johnson wanted as he was attempting to build the university’s endowment, attract top-rate scholars, and move Fisk into the mainstream of American higher education.7 Another civil liberties question came up in 1951, this time regarding renowned Fisk alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois. In an effort to label all racial protest as disloyal, reactionaries in Congress indicted Du Bois on the flimsy charge of failing to register as an agent of a foreign power.8 Although offering support to Du Bois may have seemed logical on the part of black college presidents, only Charles Johnson spoke out on his behalf. According to Du Bois, “Of the 50 presidents of Negro colleges, every one of which I had known and visited—of these only one, Charles Johnson of Fisk University, publicly professed belief in my integrity before the trial; and only one congratulated me after the acquittal.” Perhaps because Du Bois was strongly connected to Fisk alumni, Johnson thought it important to support him. Regardless of his reasoning, Johnson’s support of Du Bois is evidence of his unconditional respect for the man—the same man who fought rather vehemently against Johnson’s selection as president and labeled him as “reactionary.”9 Perhaps the most complex incident in Johnson’s record regarding civil liberties and academic freedom was the case of Lee Lorch. This incident pitted Johnson’s philosophy of gaining equality for blacks against his belief in academic freedom. A math professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, Lee Lorch came to Fisk in September 1950 with excellent cre-

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dentials but also as a controversial civil rights activist. Charles S. Johnson was well aware of Lorch’s record when he appointed him for an initial three years. Lorch had been denied reappointments at both the City College of New York and Pennsylvania State University due to his political activities on behalf of blacks. Despite Lorch’s reputation, Johnson gave him an opportunity when other institutions did not. According to historian Ellen Schrecker, “To get such a job, a full-time, tenure-track position in an American college, a blacklisted professor would have to go to the South to the small, poor, denominational Negro colleges that were so desperate for qualified faculty members that they would hire anybody with a Ph.D., including teachers other educational institutions dared not touch.”10 Although Schrecker’s description of private black colleges during the 1950s is representative of many of these colleges, Fisk University was a special case. Although meager compared to that of predominantly white institutions, Fisk had a sizable endowment (of just over four million dollars) and no operating deficit. Further, the Fisk University that had accepted Lee Lorch on its faculty was the same institution that attracted Sterling A. Brown, Horace Mann Bond, E. Franklin Frazier, James Weldon Johnson, Robert E. Park, Arna Bontemps, John Hope Franklin, Robert Hayden, and Aaron Douglas. Johnson was instrumental in persuading the majority of these scholars to come to Fisk and saw the hiring of the academically well-respected Lorch as yet another step toward moving Fisk into the mainstream of American higher education. Johnson may have had a chance to hire someone less controversial than Lorch, but perhaps he believed that Lorch would adapt his methods to the specific situation of the South and that the two of them could work together.11 Lorch proved to be a model faculty member in terms of his teaching, research, and involvement with students. Upon accepting the appointment at Fisk, Lorch was made the acting chair of the mathematics department; after a year, he officially became chair of the department. Following his initial three-year contract, he was reappointed for another two-year period, although the question of his tenure was deferred until 1955. Lorch easily moved from associate to full professor, and according to his colleagues, was a respected member of the Fisk community. In fact, the Fisk math department reached its highest level of excellence due to the work of Lorch and Professors Robert Rempfer and Gertrude Rempfer. During Lorch’s stay at Fisk, five of his students went on to get Ph.D.’s in math or math education—“a very high percentage in a school whose total enrollment was about 400.” Lorch’s students were among the first from Fisk’s math department to pursue the Ph.D.12 In the eyes of at least some of the faculty, including many of Johnson’s most ardent supporters on other issues, Lorch was “a genuinely accepted member of the Fisk community.”13

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It was a familiar sight to see Lorch with black faculty friends such as Blyden Jackson, James Lawson, Vivian W. Henderson, and Herman H. Long, relaxing in their favorite hangout on the corner of Sixteenth and Jefferson Streets, and discussing topics ranging from politics to athletics. As Blyden Jackson recalls, “Lee Lorch was the one white fellow who was as much a member of the group as any of us.” At Fisk, Lorch continued his efforts on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. Along with three other faculty members, Lorch made a concerted effort to end discrimination within the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. In a 1951 Science article, Lorch stated, “It is our view that the scientific societies, with their talk of the international character of science, must recognize its interracial character and put an end to discriminatory practices at meetings, etc.” Lorch also became active within the NAACP, serving as state vice president and a member of the Nashville chapter.14 Lee Lorch lived near Fisk, “in the heart of the black community.” Following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision that declared segregation in public education unconstitutional, Lorch, along with Robert and Gertrude Rempfer, petitioned the Nashville school board to admit their daughters to Pearl Elementary School, an all-black school near the Fisk campus.15 Lorch initially asked the principal of Pearl Elementary if his daughter could enroll. The principal, who had known Lorch’s daughter for many years, said that he would welcome her. According to Lorch, he and the Rempfers felt compelled to establish “an atmosphere of peaceful compliance with [the Brown decision] and to show there was white support in the South for it.” Their requests “were denied pending a final implementation decree by the United States Supreme Court.” Upon hearing the school board’s decision, Z. Alexander Looby, a black attorney for the NAACP, announced that legal action would be taken against the school board. But soon after, on September 7, 1954, Lorch was subpoenaed by the HUAC and was required to testify in Dayton, Ohio, on September 15, 1954.16 According to Lorch, the Nashville Tennessean knew about the subpoena before it was served and informed President Johnson immediately. Lorch thinks that it is likely that the Tennessean provoked the subpoena: “At that time the Nashville Tennessean was a very prominent newspaper, and it was busy backing Gordon Browning for governor. Browning was running on a platform of preservation of segregation. He said that one hundred percent of the whites and ninety-nine percent of the blacks wanted things to stay as they were. He would see that they did. This was his program. And of course our action showed that the one hundred percent wasn’t quite one hundred percent. The Nashville Tennessean then

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began to make inquiries about me, and I was immediately subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.”17 In response to the HUAC’s questioning, Lee Lorch testified that he was not a member of the Communist Party during his appointments at Fisk. In the opinion of both Warren Taylor and Frank Fetter of the AAUP, Lorch offered this testimony “contrary to his conscience, in order to safeguard his institution against unfavorable publicity.” Lorch believed that “one of the purposes of this shotgun expedition was to smear Fisk University and to procure unfavorable publicity for it.” As an “unfriendly witness” (his words), he refused to answer questions regarding his past membership in the Communist Party in 1941 during his graduate study at the University of Cincinnati, noting that political affiliations and activities were personal and guarded by the First Amendment. Although reported by many as having invoked the Fifth Amendment so as to not incriminate himself, Lorch did not. As a result of his lack of cooperation with the HUAC, Lorch was cited for contempt of Congress.18 The next day, both the Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville Banner gave substantial coverage to the hearing and published a statement, released in advance, by Charles S. Johnson. Johnson stated, “Fisk’s position regarding communism, in the present state of the nation and world, is forthright and unequivocal. We do not knowingly, employ or retain faculty members who hold this allegiance.” Further, Johnson declared that “in these times, invoking the Fifth Amendment when there is a clear opportunity to affirm or deny is for all practical purposes tantamount to admission of membership. Under any such circumstances, Fisk University would have to take prompt steps to release the person from its faculty.”19 In preparing the advance press release, Charles Johnson most likely alluded to the wrong amendment. According to the AAUP, Johnson, who issued the statement without formal consultation with the board of trustees, probably drew no distinction between the First and Fifth Amendments—invoking either brought about the possibility of negative publicity. In making this statement, Johnson clearly placed avoiding the backlash from the local white community before defending the civil liberties of his faculty member.20 Over the next few weeks, Johnson let the Nashville papers know that the board of trustees would be reviewing Lorch’s case and considering his dismissal from Fisk. On October 28, 1954, Lee Lorch appeared before the Fisk board of trustees at the request of President Johnson, who told him to “hold himself in readiness to answer questions.” Ironically, charges were never brought against Lorch by the university, nor did he receive any official statement from President Johnson. In fact, Lorch’s main source of information on his status with the university came via the

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local press. During his appearance before the Fisk board of trustees, Lorch gave a prepared statement that was thirteen single-spaced pages in length. The majority of the statement criticized HUAC and its procedures. However, Lorch also made it clear that he believed this incident was retaliation by Nashville segregationists, who disagreed with his activism on behalf of black civil rights.21 The decision to dismiss Lorch did not come quickly. On November 19, 1954, with one member dissenting, the Fisk board of trustees voted not to renew Lee Lorch’s appointment at the university. According to Lorch, the board initially voted seventeen to two in favor of retaining him; but “then one of the white members of the board, a local manufacturer, got up and . . . said that if . . . [the] decision stands, he . . . [would] resign from the board and spread his resignation in the press, and that the other dissenting member would do the same.” Although Lorch attributes a great amount of power to this local manufacturer (Dan May), according to John Hope Franklin, who was present at the board meeting, “Dan May didn’t have great influence and usually didn’t understand the issues being discussed.” Several months later, at the next quarterly board meeting, a boardappointed executive committee voted ten to one not to renew Lorch’s contract. Although Lorch continued to petition the board of trustees, the executive committee’s decision was approved on April 29, 1955, by the full board with all white members present voting for Lorch’s dismissal and most black trustees voting to retain him. However, a few black trustees, including John Hope Franklin, supported Johnson and felt that Lorch was given due process. It is clear that Johnson was as responsible for the move to dismiss Lorch as the white trustees.22 Prior to and after Lorch’s official dismissal, many Fisk faculty, staff, alumni, and students pledged their support for him. Along with several other faculty members, Professor Nelson Fuson of the physics department offered to take a cut in pay to make up a salary for Lee Lorch. Further, the local chapter of the AAUP came to Lorch’s defense. Faculty and students circulated petitions, wrote letters, held meetings, and spoke to the administration on Lorch’s behalf. A later AAUP investigation noted that “twenty-two student leaders, 150 alumni, 157 citizens, . . . [and] forty-seven of seventy eligible faculty members, . . . made representation to President Johnson and the Board in behalf of the retention of Professor Lorch.” Although this investigation reprimanded Johnson for a violation of academic freedom, the authors did not give a detailed definition of academic freedom—they merely referred to Lorch’s constitutional rights as a citizen. As Ellen Schrecker points out in her 1986 publication No Ivory Tower, even as late as 1953 there was not a single agreed-upon definition of academic freedom.23

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By and large, the protest activity that arose over the Lorch controversy was a spontaneous outpouring of support, not a publicity stunt by Lorch himself. Although he may have assisted in the organization of the activities, it is apparent that Lorch’s friends were profoundly loyal and defended his integrity and rights. However, it was precisely these protest activities on his behalf that the board of trustees cited as a reason for Lorch’s dismissal: “[T]here has been continual agitation of the question on the campus to the detriment of the pursuit of teaching and studying . . . stimulated by some person or persons who had little or no regard for the adverse effect that it might have on the healthy pursuit of learning.”24 In Johnson’s mind, the greatest good for Fisk was to disassociate the university from Lorch. Perhaps this is the reason why he returned Lorch’s National Science Foundation (NSF) award. According to Lorch, “Shortly after my appearance before HUAC, the National Science Foundation approved my application for a research grant (the first such for Fisk). Without consulting me, Dr. Johnson returned the check to NSF.”25 Why would Charles S. Johnson, an ardent advocate of civil rights, not have fought to retain a man whose views on black advancement were similar to his own? On the surface, the decision not to renew Lorch’s contract seems nothing more than the denial of academic freedom and the reasonable safeguards of academic due process. However, to reach this conclusion ignores the important issues of Johnson’s leadership style, the history of Fisk, and the context of the South in the 1950s.26 Charles S. Johnson’s dismissal of Lorch had little to do with the difference between invoking the First or Fifth Amendment or Lorch’s right to do so under the concept of academic freedom. Instead, the dismissal was most likely based on a difference in the type of civil rights activism practiced by Johnson and Lorch. As mentioned, Johnson had a southern perspective. He doubted the effectiveness of protest events because he thought that under southern conditions they might lead to violence and be more detrimental than helpful.27 Instead of promoting acts of outright confrontation, Johnson took a pragmatic approach and tried to find allies within the white power structure. And in many cases, this strategy had paid off. He had convinced philanthropic leaders like Edwin R. Embree to fund one of the most important centers for race relations research in the South, and to assist young black scholars in their quest for educational funding. This center and the scholars it produced furnished a barrage of information that demolished the assumptions of segregation. Johnson clearly believed his work was important and was wary of anything that might threaten it.28 In contrast, while Johnson worked from his base in the South, Lorch was from the Northeast and was much more confrontational in his style.29

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While in New York, Lorch had sublet his Stuyvesant Town apartment to a black family in open defiance of that New York housing project’s policy of excluding blacks. This resulted in his termination from a teaching position at the City College of New York (Now CUNY, the City University of New York). In the words of Nelson Fuson, Lorch’s colleague, “Lorch was an activist for integration. Many people were afraid that they, or the breadwinners of their family, would risk being fired if they publicly supported an unpopular cause like desegregation even if it was the correct cause. But Lorch was not one of these!”30 As a college president, Johnson had a style that was generous and nurturing, but also somewhat controlling. In the past, Johnson had sometimes been possessive of his creations. He had been criticized by other black sociologists—W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier, for example—for hoarding resources for Fisk and acting as the gatekeeper of black sociological research. Johnson continued this diligent yet controlling style of management as president of Fisk. He was known among the faculty as a demanding leader. Certainly, this style of leadership would have come into conflict with what would have been seen as impertinent actions on the part of Lorch.31 Although his decision to dismiss Lorch was not commendable, in making it, Johnson was being true to his own agenda of securing Fisk’s future. Even Lee Lorch acknowledged that Johnson was under a great amount of pressure: “It must be understood what a black institution is. It’s not an institution controlled by African-Americans; it’s one attended by them. The control still rests in the hands of those who control the rest of society. With some of the historically black institutions of the South, in those days, every single member of the board was white. . . . The then president of Fisk was the first nonwhite president in its history.”32 Although Johnson’s defense of Du Bois and the fight against censorship of the Race Relations Institutes showed that he would not cave in to outside pressure under every circumstance, he understood that Fisk’s survival depended on preserving at least a few allies within the conservative white community. In the Lorch incident, it was apparent that those few allies had retreated. Although not merely a puppet of philanthropists, as Fayette McKenzie had been, Johnson had to be particular about the battles he fought. He made his decisions with the best interest of Fisk in mind. Johnson chose to preserve Fisk, while compromising his commitment to the principles of civil liberties.33 Just as Johnson was detailed—almost meticulous—about the research and activities of the Fisk Race Relations Institutes, he had his own vision of how Fisk would react to the Brown decision. After Brown, the atmosphere in the local community was tense, and Johnson chose to put

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the survival of Fisk before the testing of desegregation. That he made this decision was no accident when we consider his philosophy on integration. Although he supported Brown by contributing research toward Kenneth Clark’s studies and making affirmative public statements after the decision, Johnson clearly believed that integration alone would not bring about black equality. When asked in 1942 if blacks should insist upon integration, he replied, “No, because integration is not something that can be commanded or conferred. They should insist upon equality of status in their own right as Negroes and without social and economic penalties for their physical differences.” Contrary to those who thought that the legal end to segregation made black colleges unnecessary, Johnson saw a continuing need for these institutions. At the 1956 United Negro College Fund Campaign meeting, Johnson said with conviction, “The time is now to strengthen these colleges; to give their virtues greater power in this crisis. These institutions are not beggars; nor are they or should they ever become the pathological and apologetic symbols of the intellectual products of their nurturing. The time is now to help them set the example for the nation, of a democratic and dynamic education, that can save the nation itself for its greater destiny in the world.” Coming from anyone but Johnson, this statement might be attributed to the “rhetoric of fundraising.” Johnson, however, “rarely practiced the art of hyperbole” during his career. A lifelong champion of black colleges, it is likely that he was expressing a deeply felt conviction.34 For Charles Johnson, dismissing Lee Lorch was not an easy decision. Vivian W. Henderson, who otherwise was an ardent supporter of Johnson, recalled decades later, “I disagree[d] with Dr. Johnson. . . . I really think . . . [he] did something that was against his principles.” The Lee Lorch matter, Henderson continued, “was one of the things that contributed to his [Johnson’s] death. . . . He brooded over it.”35 In fact, Johnson told Nelson Fuson in confidence that Lorch was wronged but that he had to do it for the institution. Perhaps this is why, in writing to the president of Philander Smith College regarding Lorch’s future employment, he gave a shining recommendation of the mathematician and went to great lengths to avoid mentioning the controversy: “I shall only say that Dr. Lorch is a very competent mathematician. Our decision not to renew his contract was not on the basis of his mathematical ability or his racial attitudes.” The Lorch family would be in the news again. In the fall of 1957, the nation was shocked by the eruption of the crisis at Central High School in Little Rock. This time it was Grace Lorch, Lee Lorch’s wife, who was in the limelight for fighting for desegregation. In a letter to the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, George G. Iggers gives an eloquent explanation of Grace Lorch’s crime: “Amidst the reports of hatred and defiance outside

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Central High School there was one note of compassion which helped redeem Little Rock in the eyes of the decent world—the story of a greyhaired housewife who dared walk into the angry mob, put her arm around a frightened 15-year-old girl, and escort her home.”36 When the AAUP first adopted the principle of academic freedom as the professor’s right to research freely, it was based on a nineteenth-century German model. Although the American academy adopted this German concept, the extent of this professorial right has always been unclear. Because of the pragmatic nature of American higher education, with its increasing attention to social, political, and applied sciences, American professors are more likely to operate within the public sphere than their German counterparts. A program like the Race Relations Institute, for example, which aimed to reshape public attitudes and policies, would not have been part of the curriculum of a German university. Unlike the nineteenth-century Germans, the Americans were operating under a constitutional guarantee of free speech, which was afforded to all American citizens. These factors led them to demand greater freedom in public utterances outside of their discipline. The final statement of the AAUP regarding “extramural utterances” was ambivalent. On the one hand, it stated that professors should not be prohibited from “expression to their judgments upon controversial questions, or that their freedom of speech outside the university should be limited to questions falling within their own specialties. . . . [Further, they should not be denied the right to] support . . . organized movements which they believe to be in the public interest.” On the other hand, the AAUP was quick to point out the need for professors to avoid making “hasty or unverified or exaggerated statements, and to refrain from intemperate or sensational modes of expression.” As stated in 1955 by Richard Hofstadter and Walter Metzger, the extent of academic freedom continues to be a “vexing question.” Johnson most likely saw Lorch’s dismissal as a necessary sacrifice for the long-term benefit of black higher education, specifically at Fisk. In certain instances, values collide in ways that make it impossible to take the “right” course of action from all viewpoints. Such was the case in Johnson’s handling of the Lorch affair. He saw Fisk as an institution that would meet the needs of blacks in a transitional era—an era free of legal segregation but without a guarantee of full integration. Johnson understood that to secure Fisk’s future existence and prosperity he needed, at various times, cooperation from both southern whites and the Fisk community.

Chapter 19

Solomon on the Cumberland

A

s Charles S. Johnson moved forward in his career, from the early years when he was a young student sitting in Joshua B. Simpson’s class at Virginia Union University until the end of his life when he was an international leader, he always operated from a well-thought-out plan of action. Assimilation within the context of cultural pluralism was his objective. In order to reach this goal, he needed a power base with wide support. Specifically, this support had to include significant funds, the confidence of those in power, the blessings of most of the black community, and the cooperation of white liberals from all regions of the United States. To get and to maintain this support, Johnson made many compromises. When he felt the need to defend his actions, he did so in the name of strategy.1 Although the compromises often benefited Johnson’s public career, he always attempted to use his personal advancement to further the cause of black people and ethnic and economic minorities.2 His laudatory article on Booker T. Washington, written during Johnson’s last year as editor of Opportunity, and his vehement criticism of Marcus Garvey in the 1920s did him no harm at the counsel table of white philanthropies. Once he had the ear of the foundations, he exploited his position of influence wisely. For example, Johnson used his power base at Fisk to establish a strong research center and to train black social scientists. His liberal use of the Fisk data bank for his own personal publications enhanced his reputation and that of his department. It was during these years that he began to articulate his new theories with the conceptualization of the sociology of tensions. In the 1940s, when racial discrimination became an issue of strategic importance for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a popular one with foundations, Johnson and his staff were the logical place for them to 249

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turn. His private criticism of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., gave Johnson, Embree, and Alexander a lever in coercing the Rosenwald Board to fund an extensive program in race relations. Again, he used the new base with wide liberal support to launch the Race Relations Institutes. When his quiet approach of working from behind the scenes failed, as it did during the controversy of 1945–46, he openly battled the forces seeking to close down the Race Relations Institutes. His victory in this confrontation resulted in the firm establishment of a new forum, located in Nashville, Tennessee, the gateway to the South, near the Cumberland River. This new forum served to educate the South and the nation in race relations. It allowed Charles H. Houston and Thurgood Marshall an opportunity to address the nation from the region where segregation was both custom and law. Furthermore, it provided an integrated institution under the direction of blacks in the South where strategy for the civil rights struggle could be planned. In fact, it was the first truly interracial forum in the South used by Martin Luther King, Jr., to carry the message of the Montgomery Improvement Association to the nation. Despite his influential position and crucial role in the life of African Americans, Johnson was not a popular leader in the sense of Booker T. Washington. Neither was he militant and controversial in the style of W. E. B. Du Bois. Johnson did not stimulate mass movements like Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Unlike these men, the Fisk sociologist could have walked into a bar in Harlem, on Beale Street in Memphis, or on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta without causing any excitement. Except to those few who knew him or the isolated intellectuals who appreciated what he was saying, Johnson was anything but charismatic. This lack of charisma, combined with the rapid pace of events in the modern civil rights movement after his death, may help explain why Johnson’s place in history has been obscured. Despite his present lack of standing in the pantheon of American and African American history, later generations may find that Charles S. Johnson truly deserves to be ranked with the great leaders of the first half of the twentieth-century. Johnson, like Washington before him, reversed the normal twentieth century pattern of black leadership in the United States coming from the North, by establishing a base in the South. On the other hand, much of the work of Du Bois and virtually all the work of figures like Garvey and Randolph was undertaken in the North where statutory segregation did not exist. Of course, in his own career Johnson occasionally fell short in realizing certain goals based on his stated principles and beliefs. For example, the failure to integrate the Southern Education Reporting Service (SERS) and the Lee Lorch debacle were not consistent with the many successes in Johnson’s extraordinary career. Nevertheless, in the context of Johnson’s long and distinguished record, these two failures do not outweigh his many achievements. Johnson never fought the impossible bat-

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tles, at least not in the public’s view. There does not seem to be any record of his involvement in the Scottsboro case. Nor was he apparently a part of the strategy of the NAACP’s appeal to the United Nations in 1946 asking that blacks be declared an oppressed minority. Again, in the years immediately following World War II, there is no record that he was active behind the scenes in the Truman Committee on Civil Rights that produced the report To Secure These Rights. While he avoided controversial encounters that were dominated by organizations like the northern-based NAACP, his mere presence as an anonymous member of the crowd at the A. Philip Randolph MOWM meeting in Madison Square Garden in 1942 suggests that at heart he supported the northern radicals. But in the end, his power base was too valuable to sacrifice for a short-term catharsis. Johnson’s contributions were many and complex. He performed a function analogous to that of Booker T. Washington in directing the South and the nation as they moved from the nadir of race relations to the more hopeful period of the modern civil rights movement. Like Washington, Johnson made many compromises. Often his positions, like those of Washington, were misused to the advantage of the forces of conservatism in race relations. Unlike Washington, Johnson understood that the latenineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrialization of the United States changed the role of blacks in the workplace. He did not make the mistake of preparing blacks for a world that had passed. His academic training gave him historical perspective that Washington lacked. Once Johnson gained a power base, he was willing to risk alienating his white supporters when he believed he was on sound moral and intellectual ground and had a reasonable chance of winning, as for example, in the fight to save the Race Relations Institutes. Whenever possible, however, Johnson worked with, rather than challenged, white allies. Perhaps there is no better example of Johnson’s approach to working with whites in race relations than his interaction with the South’s elder statesman Will W. Alexander and the Yankee neoabolitionist Edwin R. Embree. The historian Dewey J. Grantham, Jr., has characterized the relationship of Johnson, Alexander, and Embree as a triumvirate.3 An incomplete listing of the triumvirate’s accomplishments would include publishing The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (1935), which influenced New Deal policy benefiting the dispossessed of both races; successfully lobbying for passage of the Bankhead-Jones Act in 1937, which helped give poor farmers of both races a stake in the agricultural economy of the South; securing funding necessary to launch the Race Relations Institutes, which would act in the early years as a think tank on race relations; and thwarting the attempt of James G. Stahlman to close the Race Relations Institutes, therein assuring the continuance of an integrated open forum in the gateway to the South where racial discrimination, segregation, and poverty could be addressed.

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Both in and out of the classroom, Johnson was foremost a teacher at heart. In his role as an informal teacher outside academia, Johnson’s greatest contribution may have been the development of young talent. From the Harlem Renaissance to the eve of the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., Johnson touched most of the black leaders in the areas of culture and literature, social science and research, institutional leadership, and race relations diplomacy. From Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes to Lewis Wade Jones and Giles A. Hubert, and from Charles R. Lawrence and Preston Valien to Vivian W. Henderson and Herman H. Long, the hand of Charles S. Johnson can be seen. Johnson’s many achievements as a sociologist, cultural entrepreneur, and race relations diplomat are better known than his progressive innovations as a college president. However, when looked at in the context of his overall career, these accomplishments exemplify the same well-thought-out plan as his earlier work. As president of Fisk University, he sought to advance the status of blacks within society in general while preserving and promoting a specific black culture on campus. Although it was assumed that Johnson was hand picked to be the first black president of Fisk by white philanthropy, a closer review of the facts demonstrates that his past experience and expertise influenced his selection, not direct intervention by outside forces. Clearly, some philanthropic leaders, like Edwin R. Embree, thought Johnson’s skills were better utilized in the area of research and did not actively support his candidacy. At the same time, the black trustees and alumni came to understand that Johnson was the one individual who could achieve for Fisk what it most needed at the time: financial stability. They realized that his ties to philanthropy could be a benefit to Fisk, and apparently had enough confidence in him to believe that he would not succumb to outside control as Fayette A. McKenzie, a previous president, had done. In the end, this group won out over those who painted Johnson as a conservative in race relations in the mode of Booker T. Washington. By selecting a moderate like Johnson, the black trustees and alumni took a pragmatic position to keep the university financially sound. Johnson’s administration vindicated this group’s beliefs. Johnson did build the endowment and expand the campus in terms of infrastructure and curriculum. The many innovative programs established under his leadership made effective use of his philanthropic ties. The Basic College Program, for example, brought together the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations in an effort to create opportunities for black scholars at a time when the future of education for blacks was uncertain. Not surprisingly, as the idea evolved, it was lauded by Yale University as a program to be emulated by the Ivy League school. At the core of the Basic College Program was John-

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son’s appreciation for education and culture. By placing young students in intimate settings with the intellectual, political, and cultural luminaries of the time, he helped to propel them forward in their educational careers. One can only wish that his successor as president of Fisk, Stephen J. Wright, had kept the Basic College Program. It is incalculable what the impact might have been on African American leadership in America during the next fifty years. While it must be acknowledged that in the beginning of the twentieth century, Du Bois, along with John M. Hope, was one of the few individuals in the South who dared to speak out against racism, it must also be recognized that much of Du Bois’s later militancy came during the years when he enjoyed the relative security of the North.4 When one compares Johnson and Du Bois during the years from 1935 to the mid1940s, when both men resided in the South, there are more similarities than differences. Du Bois was more outspoken and more willing to confront openly those in a position of power. But during the 1930s, much of Du Bois’s work was essentially the same as that Johnson was doing at Fisk, researching, publishing, and training young black sociologists. It should be noted that Du Bois’s pioneering work The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and the Atlanta University studies covering more than a decade of the beginning of the twentieth century were impressive examples of what historians would later characterize as contributions by service intellectuals.5 Scholarship and the work of the service intellectuals were all-important to black progress, but they were not really militant activities such as those that characterized the life of southern labor organizer Angelo Herndon. Du Bois was ahead of Johnson in appreciating Pan-Africanism, but Johnson need not apologize for his understanding of and work for the alleviation of colonialism, racism, and poverty. As a sociologist, the Fisk scholar had a genuine appreciation of the culture of what is today called the Third World. On the other hand, Johnson did not share Garvey’s total commitment to Africa. Nor did he relate to the masses in the way that Garvey and Randolph did. But his concern for the poor was a constant theme in his work. His long-range planning, lobbying for programs to aid blacks during the New Deal, and work in race relations after World War II all were attempts to answer the needs of the urban poor whom Garvey had identified. On the eve of World War II, A. Philip Randolph was able to inspire thousands of blacks to pressure the Roosevelt administration for what became the Fair Employment Practices Committee, and later became the Federal Employment Practices Commission. Johnson never could have marshaled the man on the street, but with his work for the New Deal agencies and in his relationship with the likes of Will W. Alexander and

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Edwin R. Embree, he did make an impact upon public policy. One need look no farther than the Bankhead-Jones Tenancy Act of 1937. This does not diminish what Randolph accomplished, but rather, it points out a fact that Johnson believed: change must be worked for at many levels. At the end of Johnson’s life, Martin Luther King, Jr., was just emerging as a regional and soon to be national leader. Although much of the notion of “creative tensions” that King talked about was very close to the sociological theories of Park’s famous student, it is doubtful that Johnson would ever have publicly encouraged direct action and civil disobedience. Nevertheless, when the Montgomery bus boycott developed on the eve of Johnson’s death, the Fisk president dispatched his successor as chairman of the Department of Social Sciences, Preston Valien, and the Fisk team to Montgomery to do another study.6 While it is symbolic that King was the last major speaker at the final Race Relations Institute held at Fisk during Johnson’s life, it is also suggestive that by inviting King, Johnson was looking into the future. The Fisk scholar could not move the masses, but he and his staff at Fisk could provide the battle plans for action. And this they did in the Race Relations Institutes. In short, Johnson’s career shared many of the characteristics of other twentieth-century leaders for black liberation from segregation and racism, but he cannot be placed firmly in the camp of any one of them. And this may be the lesson of Charles Spurgeon Johnson’s life. He was not one to close options. His friends and opponents alike never were quite sure in which direction he would go. Although he was committed to a set of moral and sociological principles and generally operated from an overall plan of action, he defies ideological classification. Integration, or what he as a sociologist called assimilation, was his goal. But this did not mean rejecting black history and culture; nor did it mean being a white European in a black skin. It did mean being an American. Yet Johnson was uniquely international in his commitment to cultural pluralism. He envisaged a world composed of the best of Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the rest of the world. In the United States, he worked with whoever was going his way. If, like Virginius Dabney, they detoured, he kept on alone until he found new allies— always moving toward his goal. Hence, he could work with Alexander, the white southerner; Embree, the liberal neoabolitionist; Rosenwald, the philanthropist; Thurgood Marshall, the integrationist; and Emmett J. Scott, the latter-day Garveyite. After all, race was sociological-ideological and only incidentally biological. In the significant role that Johnson played for almost four decades in the struggle to overturn segregation and to advance black people and all oppressed people, he had time neither for ideological factionalism nor for popularity contests.

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A generation after the sociologist’s death, Herman H. Long recalled that Johnson “had a quality of wisdom that put him in demand even far outside the context of things that related to Negroes.” During the twentyeight years that Charles Spurgeon Johnson toiled “beyond the Veil” from his base first in Chicago and New York and then on the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tennessee, he devoted his life to stimulating social change, improving human relations, and lifting “the Veil.” Johnson gave unsparingly of himself in sharing his wisdom with the South, the nation, and the world. He was Solomon on the Cumberland; he was sui generis.

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Epilogue

T

he lights burned late in the office of the president of Fisk University during the night of October 26, 1956.1 Charles S. Johnson and his staff were finishing a report that he planned to present to the Fisk trustees in New York on October 29. At the end of the long session, Johnson was very relaxed. In a rare mood of intimate candor, he reflected on his years as president. Facetiously, he asked one of his assistants, “How would you like to be president?” Johnson observed that he was tiring of the burdens of the post, and that he regretted not delegating more responsibility to subordinates. He went on to comment, “I don’t have much interest myself anymore, and I would like to get out of this.” Although not perceivable to his contemporaries, it appears in retrospect that he had been repeating the theme for some time. In June, he had written Claude A. Barnette about his disappointment with matters at the Southern Educational Reporting Service.2 In his letter, he remarked, “I shall have to say that this is perhaps one of the most difficult work periods that I have had to experience in the long career of full scheduled work.” On October 26, Johnson wrote a long letter to Fred L. Brownlee.3 Again, the theme of fatigue was evident, along with the suggestion of failing health.4 Johnson noted, “[I]t seems impossible to escape the demands of this place, while one is on the scene. We have tried getting away from it, but now it seems that the better thing is to take some time out under the pressure of a local irritation, to go through several days of a check-up at the hospital.” Johnson had often expressed his frustration at the nonacademic tasks required of a college president. He once remarked to Fisk chaplain William J. Faulkner that he disliked the job of “holding out a tin cup for gifts.”5 He made a similar observation to his old colleague Rupert B. Vance, who worked with him on The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy. But as Johnson boarded the train in Nashville for New York on the morning of October 27, he was in good spirits. After the meeting in New York, he would rest. 257

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Shortly before two o’clock in the afternoon, the train stopped in Louisville. Johnson got off to buy a newspaper and headed back to the train. He collapsed on the platform, dead of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. Johnson’s friends immediately came to the aid of his wife Marie, but she preferred to make most of the decisions about the funeral. Before the funeral, Johnson lay in state at Heritage House on the Fisk campus. As mourners signed the register, they saw two letters of condolence. One was from the president of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower. The other was from W. E. B. Du Bois, who had pioneered the type of research that Robert E. Park and Johnson perfected, and who had subsequently been one of the founders of the NAACP that in later years laid the basis for constitutional desegregation. In short, Du Bois’s life, like Johnson’s, had been dedicated to fighting discrimination and improving the status and conditions of black people. Now one of the international giants of the black world joined the highest elected leader of the Western world in paying respect to Charles S. Johnson. The passing of Charles S. Johnson left a void that was never fully filled at Fisk, in the South, and in the nation.6

Appendix I.

Interviews Conducted in Preparation of the Text Peggy Alsup, March 31, 1999 Victor Grant Backus, May 20, 1971 Cleo Blackburn, November 21, 1971 Horace Mann Bond, May 20, 1971 Arna Bontemps, March 27, 1971 Ina Corinne Brown, March 2, 1972 Maurice C. Clifford, August 7, 1974 Patricia Johnson Clifford, August 6, 1974 Leslie M. Collins, November 17, 1970 Leslie Collins, March 17, 1998, April 27, 1999 Phillip Coombs, April 22, 1975 Earl E. Daily, April 22, 1999 Edmonia Grant Davidson, September 30, 1971 Albert W. Dent, November 4, 1971 James Dombrowski, November 5, 1971 Aaron Douglas, December 21, 1970 Gladys Forde, March 19, 1999 John Hope Franklin, June 5, 1999 Lettie Galloway, January 24, 1972 Frank Porter Graham, October 20, 1971 Vivian W. Henderson, November 13, 1971 Giles A. Hubert, November 4, 1971 Blyden Jackson, March 22, 1972 Guy B. Johnson, October 19, 1971 Jeh-Vincent Johnson, September 13, 1999 Julia Johnson, December 10, 1970 Lewis Wade Jones, September 10, 1971 259

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Appendix I

Thomas Elsa Jones, November 20, 1971 Charles R. Lawrence, March 30, 1972 David Levering Lewis, August 3, 2001 Herman H. Long, September 9, 1971 Lee Lorch, February 26, 1998 Colbert A. McKnight, March 24, 1972 Jitsuichi Masuoka, January 23, 1972 John Matheus, January 23, 1975 Benjamin E. Mays, May 19, 1971 Hattie M. Perry, November 7, 1971 Aaronetta Pierce, April 1, 1999 Prince Rivers, March 25, 1999 Alfonso Smith, January 3 and January 7, 1999 Joseph Taylor, November 22, 1971 Joseph Taylor, April 14 and April 29, 1999 Richard Thornell, August 23, 2001 Bonita H. Valien, September 27 and September 29, 1971 Preston Valien, September 27, 1971 Rupert B. Vance, October 27, 1971 Robert C. Weaver, August 16, 1974 Raleigh A. Wilson, November 13, 1970 Nona E. Work, February 3, 1971 Donald Wyatt, November 4, 1971

Appendix II.

Books Authored by Charles S. Johnson Johnson, Charles Spurgeon. The Negro College Graduate. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1938 ——— and Chicago Race Relations Commission. The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1922. ———. “Charles S. Johnson.” In American Spiritual Autobiographies. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948. ———. Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South. New York: American Council on Education, 1941. ———. The Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research. New York: Holt & Company, 1930. ———. Shadow of the Plantation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. ———. Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic. Edited by Wilbur Watson. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1987. ———. Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1943. ———, Elizabeth Allen, Horace Mann Bond, Margaret McCulloch, and Alma Forrest Polk. Into the Main Street: A Survey of Best Practice in Race Relations in the South. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1947. ———, Edwin Embree and Will Alexander. The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies and Statistical Surveys, 1933–35. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1935. ———. ed., Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea. New York: National Urban League, 1927.

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Appendix II

———, and Associates: Lewis W. Jones, Buford H. Junker, Eli S. Marks, and Preston Valien, and Consultants Edwin R. Embree and W. Lloyd Warner. Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties: Listing and Analysis of Socio-Economic Indices of 1104 Southern Counties. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935. ———, and Associates. To Stem this Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States. Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1943. ———. A Preface to Racial Understanding. New York: Friendship Press, 1936. ———. Education and the Cultural Crisis. Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951. ———. Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1987. Long, Herman, and Charles S. Johnson. People vs. Property: Race Restrictive Covenants in Housing. Nashville, Tennessee: Fisk University Press, 1947. Weatherford, Willis, and Charles S. Johnson. Race Relations: Adjustments of Whites and Negroes in the United States. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1934.

Appendix III.

Manuscript Collections Used in Text Ames Papers

Jesse Daniel Ames Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina

Amistad Collection

Amistad Research Collection, Tulane University

Barnett Papers

Claude A. Barnett Papers, Chicago Historical Society

Brownlee Papers

Fred L. Brownlee Papers, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

CIC Papers

Commission on Interracial Cooperation Papers, Atlanta University

Cullen Papers

Countee Cullen Papers, Amistad Research Center, Dillard University

Du Bois Papers

W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Frazier Papers

E. Franklin Frazier Papers, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Johnson Papers

Charles S. Johnson Papers, Special Collections, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee

Jones Papers

Thomas Elsa Jones Papers, Special Collections, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee

Moton Papers

Robert Russa Moton Papers, Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama

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Appendix III

NAACP Papers

NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

NUL Papers

National Urban League Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Odum Papers

Howard Odum Papers, Southern Historical Society, University of North Carolina

Private Letters

Private Letters of Charles Johnson and Marie Johnson in the possession of Patricia Johnson Clifford

Rockefeller Archives

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York

Rosenwald Papers

Julius Rosenwald Fund Papers, Special Collections, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee

Schomburg Papers

Arthur A. Schomburg Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cultures, New York Public Library

UNCP Papers

University of North Carolina Press Papers, Southern Historical Society, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Wesley Papers

Charles H. Wesley Papers, Wilberforce, Wilberforce, Ohio

Notes Chapter 1. From Bristol to Nashville 1. Charles S. Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” n.d. [1947], 3–4, Johnson Papers. 2. Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 3. This experience apparently made a lasting impression on Johnson. See, for example, Charles S. Johnson to Walter White, October 31, 1929 (NAACP Papers, Administrative File, Personal Correspondence, C-98). This letter was pointed out by Charles F. Cooney of the Library of Congress staff. Julia Johnson, Charles S. Johnson’s sister, recalled her mother telling a similar story many times (interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1970). 3. Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 3–4; Johnson to White, October 31, 1929 (NAACP Papers); Julia Johnson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1970. 4. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1903), 234. 5. Ibid., 40. 6. See Arna Bontemps, 100 Years of Negro Freedom (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1961), 222–234; Edwin R. Embree, 13 Against the Odds (New York: Viking Press, 1946), 47–70; Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography”; and Julia Johnson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1970. 7. Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 1. Alfred M. Lee, Social Problems in America (New York: Holt, 1955). 8. Alonso de Villegas, The Lives of Saints (Likley, England: Scolar Press, 1977); Charles H. Spurgeon, Sermons of the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon (New York: Sheldon, 1860); and Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952). 9. Julia Johnson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1970. 10. Johnson to White, October 31, 1929 (NAACP Papers). 11. See Embree, 13 Against the Odds, 52–56; and John M. Ellison to Patrick Gilpin, October 17, 1974.

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12. Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 96–98, 339; and John M. Ellison to Patrick J. Gilpin, October 17, 1974. 13. Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 7–8. 14. Arna Bontemps, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 27, 1971; and Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 7–8. 15. See Embree, 13 Against the Odds, 52–56. 16. Ibid.; and Johnson, “A Spiritual Autobiography,” 7–8. 17. Ibid., 4, 9. 18. Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922); and Martin Bulmer, “Charles S. Johnson, Robert E. Park, and the Research Methods of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 1919–22: An Early Experiment in Applied Social Research,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4, no. 3 (1981): 289–306. 19. Ralph L. Pearson, “Charles S. Johnson: The Urban League Years. A Study of Race Leadership” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1970), 62. 20. See Embree, 13 Against the Odds, 58–59. 21. See Charles to Marie Johnson, October 26, 1919 (Private Letters). 22. See “Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 1893–1956, Biographical Notes,” Introduction to the Shelf List, Johnson Papers; Guy B. Johnson, “Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 1893–1956,” Social Forces 35, no. 3 (March 1957): 279; “Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 1893–1956, Achievements and Honors,” assembled by Bonita Valien (1959), Johnson Papers; and Preston Valien, “Sociological Contributions of Charles S. Johnson,” Sociology and Social Research 42 (March–April 1958): 243–248. 23. St. Clair Drake, introduction to Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South, by Charles S. Johnson (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), ix–xix; Arna Bontemps, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 27, 1971; Aaron Douglas, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, December 22, 1970; and Victor G. Backus, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, May 20, 1971.

Chapter 2. From Riot to Renaissance 1. See Edwin R. Embree, 13 Against the Odds (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), 55–57. 2. Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960’s: A Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), 71; and Martin Bulmer, “Charles S. Johnson, Robert E. Park, and the Research Methods of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 1919–22: An Early Experiment in Applied Social Research,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4, no. 3 (1981): 289–306. See also Ralph L. Pearson, “Charles S. Johnson and the Chicago Commission on Race Relations,” Illinois Historical Journal, 81 (autumn 1988). 3. This quotation and the following discussion are drawn from Pearson, “Chicago Commission,” 60–104.

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4. Emmet J. Scott to Charles S. Johnson, August 3, 1918 (Johnson Papers). Lewis Wade Jones remembers that it was accepted tradition that Johnson had used materials from The Negro in Chicago to ghost much of Scott’s book, Negro Migration During the War (New York: Arno Press 1920) (Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971). 5. Quoted in Ralph L. Pearson, “Charles S. Johnson: The Urban League Years. A Study of Race Leadership” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1970), 54, 55–57. 6. Arna Bontemps, introduction to A Bibliography of Charles S. Johnson’s Published Writings, 1893–1956, compiled by George L. Gardiner (Nashville: Fisk University Library, 1960), 6. 7. Charles S. Johnson, “Public Opinion and the Negro,” Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life 1, no. 7 (July 1923): 201–206. 8. See V. D. Johnston, review of The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot, Report by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, in Opportunity 1, no. 1 (January 1923): 27. 9. See Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, 60–104. 10. Robert C. Weaver, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 16, 1974. 11. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemna (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944); and Howard Odum, Social and Mental Traits of the Negro (New York: AMS, 1968). 12. Nancy J. Weiss, The National Urban League 1910–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), especially chapters 11, 12, and 14. 13. Ibid., 173. 14. Ibid., 157. 15. Embree, 13 Against the Odds, 58; and Weiss, National Urban League, 357. 16. For a discussion of the surveys see Weiss, National Urban League, 218–19. 17. Ibid., 219. 18. “How It Began,” Opportunity 25, no. 4 (October–December 1947), 184. 19. Nancy Joan Weiss, “‘Not Alms, But Opportunity’: A History of the National Urban League, 1910–1940” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1969), 337. 20. Eugene Kinckle Jones, “‘Cooperation’ and ‘Opportunity,’” Opportunity 1, no. 1 (January 1923): 5. 21. This quotation and the following discussion are based on Charles S. Johnson, “Race Crossing,” Opportunity 3, no. 27 (March 1925), 67–68. 22. See “Mental Measurements of Negro Groups,” Opportunity 1, no. 2 (February 1923): 21–25; “The Verdict of ‘Common Sense,’” Opportunity 1, no. 6 (June 1923): 2; “Blind Spots,” Opportunity 2, no. 13 (January 1924): 3–4; and “The Intelligence of Negro Children,” Opportunity 5, no. 3 (March 1927): 66–67. 23. See “Another Vexation of the Psychologists,” Opportunity 2, no. 19 (July 1924): 194. 24. See “A Note on Consistency,” Opportunity 4, no. 37 (January 1926): 4. 25. See “Evolution in Tennessee,” Opportunity 3, no. 31 (July 1925): 195.

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26. “Why We Are,” Opportunity 1, no. 2 (February 1923): 3. 27. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance,” in “The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Papers and Addresses Read by Conferences, Institutes, Societies, Clubs, Etc.” 5, no. 28 (April 22 1955): 9; (unpublished typescript assembled by Fisk University Library, Special Collections, January, 1959). 28. “The Six” refers to Jessie Redmon Fauset, Walter White, Alain Locke, Caspar Holstein, and James Weldon Johnson, in addition to Charles S. Johnson. See also Cary D. Wintz, Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Houston: Rice University Press, 1988), 128, noting Langston Hughes credited Johnson, Locke, and Fauset as the “midwifes” of the Harlem Renaissance. 29. Mary Schmidt Campbell et al., Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America (Harlem, New York: Abradale Press, Harry N. Abrams, 1982); Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson: Entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance,” in The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972), 220, 227; Blyden Jackson, “A Postlude to a Renaissance,” Southern Review 25, no. 4 (1990): 746–765; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem was in Vogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Ralph L. Pearson, “Charles S. Johnson: The Urban League Years” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1971); Ralph Pearson, “Combating Racism with Art: Charles S. Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance,” American Studies 18, no. 1 (1977): 123–134. 30. Weiss, National Urban League, 229. 31. Jackson, “Postlude,” 746–765. 32. See “The Debut of the Younger School of Negro Writers,” Opportunity 2, no. 17 (May 1924): 143–44. 33. Lewis, Harlem; Walter White, The Fire in the Flint (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); and Jessie Redmon Fauset, There is Confusion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924). 34. Johnson, “Negro Renaissance,” 10–11. 35. Ibid., 11. 36. Quoted in Ethel Ray Nance, “The New York Arts Renaissance, 1924–1926,” Negro History Bulletin 31, no. 4 (April, 1968), 16. 37. Johnson, “Negro Renaissance,” 3. 38. See for example, Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1969); Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow, 1967); and Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 1968). 39. “Opportunity’s Literary Prize Contest Awards,” Opportunity 2, no. 21 (September 1924): 277. 40. “Opportunity’s Prize Contest,” Opportunity 2, no. 22 (October 1924): 291. 41. “Contest Awards,” Opportunity 4, no. 41 (May 1926): 156–57; and “A Contest Number,” Opportunity 4, no. 42 (June 1926): 173. 42. “The Contest for Negro Writers,” Opportunity 5, no. 4 (April 1927): 107.

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43. See “Contest Awards,” Opportunity 3, no. 29 (May 1925): 142–43; “Contest Awards,” Opportunity 4, no. 41 (May 1926): 156–57; and “The Contest Spotlight,” Opportunity 5, no. 7 (July 1927): 204–205, 213. 44. “The Opportunity Dinner,” Opportunity 3, no. 30 (June 1925): 176–77. 45. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), 214–15. 46. See for example “Pot-Pourri,” Opportunity 3, no. 30 (June 1925): 187; “The Awards Dinner,” Opportunity 4, no. 42 (June 1926): 186; and “The Contest,” Opportunity 5, no. 6 (June 1927): 159. 47. “Opportunity’s Literacy Record for 1925,” Opportunity 4, no. 38 (February 1925)” 38. 48. “Stories and Poetry of 1926,” Opportunity 5 (January 1927): 5. 49. See “An Opportunity for Negro Writers,” Opportunity 2, no. 21 (September 1924): 258. 50. See “On Writing About Negroes,” Opportunity 3, no. 32 (August 1925): 227–28. 51. See “Some Perils of the ‘Renaissance,’” Opportunity 5, no. 3 (March 1927): 68; and “A Note on the New Literary Movement,” Opportunity 4, no. 39 (March 1926): 80–81. 52. See Charles S. Johnson’s introduction to Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea (New York: National Urban League, 1927), 11–13; and from Johnson, “Negro Renaissance.” 53. See Johnson, “Negro Renaissance,” 8. 54. Jean Tomer, Cane (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Candace Press, 1996). 55. Thomas Elsa Jones to Charles S. Johnson, May 25 (Jones Papers). 56. Thomas Elsa Jones to Eugene Kinckle Jones, May 31, 1927, Jones Papers. 57. Eugene Kinckle Jones to Thomas Elsa Jones, June 15, 1927, Jones Papers. See also Charles S. Johnson to Jesse O. Thomas, June 23, 1927, NUL Papers. 58. For example see Charles S. Johnson to Thomas Elsa Jones, July 25, 1927, Jones Papers. 59. John Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), 121. Leonard Outhwaite and Edwin R. Embree were able to observe Johnson’s skills as a race relations researcher during the New Haven Negro Problems Conference, a meeting of black leaders and philanthropists. E. Franklin Frazier was also interested in the position given to Johnson. However, the foundation officers thought he would be too outspoken. In 1927 Frazier mentioned to W. E. B. Du Bois that he was interested in the Fisk position. Frazier to W. E. B. Du Bois, January 18, 1927, Frazier Papers; Edwin Embree to Thomas E. Jones, April 14, 1937, box 198, folder 1, Rosenwald Papers; Bernice Balfour, “The Quiet Pioneer at Fisk,” The Crisis 85, no. 1 (1978): 29–32; John Bracey, August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, eds., The Black Sociologists: The First Half Century (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1971); John Bracey, August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, “Black Sociologists: First Half Century,” in The Death of White Sociology, ed. J. A. Ladner (New York: Random House, 1973). 60. Charles S. Johnson to Thomas Elsa Jones, February 8, 1928.

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61. Charles S. Johnson to Marie Johnson, Wednesday [1928?], Private Letters. 62. Johnson to Thomas Elsa Jones, March 13, 1928, Jones Papers. 63. The following discussion is from Weiss, “Not Alms, But Opportunity,” 337, 349, 363, 364. 64. Johnson to Schomburg, March 19, 1935, Schomburg Papers. 65. The following discussion is based on A. Gilbert Belles, “The Julius Rosenwald Fund: Efforts in Race Relations 1928–1948” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1972), 166–71. 66. Robert C. Weaver, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 16, 1974, New York. 67. Brochure of testimonial dinner, Moton Papers, General Correspondence, box 138, folder 1082, NUL Papers. 68. Charles S. Johnson to Countee Cullen, January 16, 1929, Cullen Papers.

Chapter 3. The Mentor: Robert E. Park 1. John Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic, by Charles S. Johnston (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), xlvi. 2. Winifred Raushenbush, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist (Durham: Duke University Press, 1979), 77. 3. See Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960’s: A Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), 80; Charles S. Johnson to Thomas Elsa Jones, February 8, 1928, Jones Papers; and “Notes on an Exploratory Discussion of the Role of the Social Science Institute in the University’s Human Relations Program,” December 30, 1942, Johnson Papers. 4. Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. 5. Patricia Johnson Clifford, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 6, 1974. 6. See Roscoe C. Hinkle, Jr., and Gisela J. Hinkle, The Development of Modern Sociology: Its Nature and Growth in the United States (New York: Random House, 1954), 42, note 28; and Stanford M. Lyman, Militarism, Imperialism and Racial Accommodation: An Analysis and Investigation of the Early Writings of Robert E. Park (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992), 133. Among the published works of Park’s students are Romanzo C. Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii (New Jersey, Patterson Smith, 1937); Bertram Doyle, Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (New York: Dryden Press, 1939), The Negro in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1949), and Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957); Charles Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1934), Growing Up in the Black Belt (New York: Schocken Books, 1941), and Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943); Donald Pierson, Negroes in Brazil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Edward Reuter, The American Race Problem (New York: Crowell, 1938); Everett Stonequist, Mar-

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ginal Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937); St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: Torchbooks, 1962); Thompson, Race Relations and the Race Problem: A Definition and Analysis (1939); W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1973; and Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemna (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944). 7. See “An Autobiographical Note” (dictated by Park to his secretary at Fisk University and found among his papers after his death), published in The Collected Papers of Robert Ezra Park, vol. 1: Race and Culture, edited by Everett Cherrington Hughes et al. (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1950; reprint 1964), v–ix; Who Was Who in America, 1943–1950, s.v. “Park, Robert Ezra”; International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, s.v. “Park, Robert E.”; and Raushenbush, Robert E. Park. 8. Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 41. 9. See Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 40–57 and passim. 10. Ibid., 63. 11. Ibid. 12. See A. Gilbert Belles, “The Julius Rosenwald Fund: Efforts in Race Relations 1928–1948” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1972), 4–8, 31–32. Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Candace Press, 1996). 13. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971. 14. See Park, “An Autobiographical Note,” in Race and Culture, v–ix; and Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 126. 15. Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 101; also cited in Naomi Farber, “Charles S. Johnson’s The Negro in Chicago,” American Sociologist (fall 1995), 78–88, 81. 16. Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 101, 148–149, 153–154, 176. 17. In the 1950s Johnson wrote with apparent admiration, “Dr. Howard Odum, of the University of North Carolina, [had] the ‘scientific integrity and personal courage’ to retreat from the position which he took in the early work Social and Mental Traits of the Negro (1910)” (“Working Papers on the Changing Status of the Negro and of Racial Theories in America,” written for the Legal Committee of the NAACP in connection with the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on school segregation, n.d., 17, Special Collections, Fisk University.) Robert Shufeldt, The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1907). 18. See for example The Philadelphia Negro (1899). 19. The following is drawn from Park, “An Autobiographical Note,” in Race and Culture, vi–vii. 20. Lewis A. Coser, ed., introduction to Georg Simmel (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 1–26; Gunnar Myrdal “A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science,” in An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), vol. 2, appendix 2, 1050–1051; and Park, “An Autobiographical Note,” viii. 21. Ernest W. Burgess, “Social Planning and Race Relations,” in Race Relations, Problems and Theory: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Park, edited by Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

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1961), 17, quoted in Turner, Social Control, xvi; and Robert E. Park, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969). 22. See Park, “Nature of Race Relations,” 3–45. 23. Ibid., 30. 24. Ralph H. Turner, in Robert E. Park on Social Control and Collective Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), xxxii. 25. See Robert E. Park, “Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro,” in Papers and Proceedings: Eighth Annual Meeting, American Sociological Society, Held at Minneapolis, Minn., December 27, 29, 30, 1913, 8, 66–83; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 204–20. 26. Robert E. Park, introduction to Negro Politicians, by Harold F. Gosnell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), xiii–xxv; reprinted as “Politics and ‘the Man Farthest Down,’” in Park, Race and Culture, 166–76. 27. Park, “Man Farthest Down,” 167. 28. Robert E. Park, introduction to The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South, by Bertram W. Doyle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), xi–xxiv; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 177–88. 29. Park, Race and Culture, 185. Park failed to take note of Indian-white relations of the period. 30. Park, Race and Culture, 186. 31. Ibid., 185. 32. Ibid., 183. 33. Ibid. 34. Park, “Nature of Race Relations,” 23. 35. Oliver Cromwell Cox argues in Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks, 1970, 468), “that because white people are endogamous with respect to Negroes, it does not follow that Negroes are also endogamous.” Therefore, the analogy with other minority groups has certain weaknesses. 36. See Robert E. Park, “The Bases of Race Prejudice,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140 (November 1928): 11–20; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 230–43; and Lyman, Militarism, 98. 37. See Park, “Nature of Race Relations,” 45. 38. Turner, in Social Control, xxxiv 39. Robert E. Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man,” American Journal of Sociology 33, no. 6 (May 1928): 881–93; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 345–56. 40. See Park, “Racial Assimilation,” 204–20. 41. Here Park was taking a very conservative view of slavery, in the tradition of many conservative whites of the time. 42. Park, “Racial Assimilation,” 220. 43. See Robert E. Park, “Personality and Cultural Conflict,” Publication of the American Sociological Society 25, no. 2 (May 1931): 95–110; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 357–71. 44. Robert E. Park, “Education and the Cultural Crisis,” American Journal of Sociology 48, no. 6 (May 1943): 728–36; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 316–30.

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45. Robert E. Park, introduction to The Marginal Man, by Everett V. Stonequist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), xiii–xviii; reprinted as “Cultural Conflict and the Marginal Man,” in Park, Race and Culture, 372–76. 46. Park, “Cultural Conflict,” 376. 47. Park, “Education and the Cultural Crisis,” 318. 48. See Robert E. Park, introduction to Shadow of the Plantation, by Robert E. Park (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), ix–xxii. 49. See Robert E. Park, “A Race Relations Survey: Suggestions for a Study of the Oriental Population of the Pacific Coast,” Journal of Applied Sociology 8, no. 4 (March–April 1924): 195–205; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 158–65; and Robert E. Park, “Experience and Race Relations,” Journal of Applied Sociology 9, no. 1 (September–October 1924): 18–24; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 152–57. 50. See Margot H. Wormser and Claire Selltiz, How to Conduct a Community Self-Survey of Civil Rights (New York: Association Press, 1951). 51. Park, “Race Relations Survey,” 195–205; and “Experience and Race Relations,” 152–57. 52. See Myrdal, An American Dilemma 2, appendix 2, 1015–64. 53. See Robert E. Park, “Behind Our Masks,” The Survey: Graphic Number 56, no. 3 (May 1, 1926): 135–39; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 244–55; and Park, “Nature of Race Relations,” 3–45. 54. Park, “Race Relations Survey,” 195–205; and “Experience and Race Relations,” 152–57. 55. See, Robert E. Park, “The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures with Special Reference to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 4, no. 2 (April 1919): 115–129, discussed in Lyman, Militarism, 95–112; Turner, in Social Control, ix. 56. Lyman, Militarism, 106. 57. Ibid., 106. 58. Ibid. 59. A sampling of the earlier writing would include W. E. B Du Bois, The Negro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1915] 1970); Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958); and Carter G. Woodson, The African Background Outlined: or Handbook for the Study of the Negro (New York: New American Library, 1936). 60. A sampling of such writing would include Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1969); John H. Bracey, Jr., “Black Nationalism Since Garvey,” in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, edited by Nathan L. Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), 259–79; E. U. Essien-Udom, “Black Identity in the International Context,” in Huggins, Kilson, and Fox, Key Issues, 233–59; and Vincent Harding, “Beyond Chaos: Black History and the Search for the New Land,” in Amistad 1, edited by John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 267–92. 61. See Robert E. Park, “Education in its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures: With Special Reference to the Problems of the Immigrant, the Negro, and Missions,” Paper and Proceedings: Thirteenth Annual Meeting,

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American Sociological Society, Held at Richmond, Va., December 27–28, 1918, 13, 38–63; reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, 261–83. 62. See Cox, Caste, Class and Race, 462–77; and Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 2, 1049–52, 1055, 1066–69, and passim. 63. See Myrdal, “A Methodological Note on the Principle of Cumulation,” in An American Dilemma, vol. 2, appendix 3, 1065–70. 64. Werner J. Cahnman, “Robert E. Park at Fisk,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14 (1978): 328–336, 333. 65. See Lorenzo D. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), published after Park’s death.

Chapter 4. The Park-Johnson Model 1. Willis D. Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson, Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1934), vii. See also, George Peter Antone, Jr., “Willis Duke Weatherford: An Interpretation of His Work in Race Relations, 1906–1946” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1969). 2. Hattie M. Perry, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 7, 1971. Edmonia Grant Davidson had a similar impression of Weatherford (interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 30, 1971). Frank P. Graham spoke much more kindly of Weatherford (interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, October 20, 1971). 3. Preston Valien, “Sociological Contributions of Charles S. Johnson,” Sociology and Social Research: An International Journal 42, no. 4 (March–April 1958), 245. 4. See Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 3–4, 9, 11, 18. 5. Charles S. Johnson, “Race Relations and Social Change,” in Race Relations and the Race Problem: A Definition and an Analysis, edited by Edgar T. Thompson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1939), 270. 6. Charles S. Johnson, Race and Race Relations (New York: American Missionary Association, 1943), 3, Johnson Papers. 7. See Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 51, 105–6, 109. 8. Ibid., 274–89. 9. See Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 310; and Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and W. W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys. 1933–35 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 1. 10. See Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 56–57, 311. 11. See Johnson, Embree, and Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 4–5, 10–11. 12. See “Myth Makers and Mobs,” Opportunity 1, no. 4 (April, 1923), 3–4. 13. Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 340. 14. Johnson, “The New Frontage on American Life,” in The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke (New York: Atheneum, 1959), 291. 15. See “The Negro Youth,” Opportunity 6, no. 9 (September 1928), 258.

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16. Johnson to Jones, August 17, 1945 (Johnson Papers). 17. Johnson, A Preface to Racial Understanding (New York: Friendship Press, 1936), 174–75. 18. Ibid., 161. 19. See Opportunity 1–6 (1923–1928); Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations; Robert E. Park, introduction to Shadow of the Plantation, by Charles S. Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); and “Can There Be a Separate Negro Culture” (Swarthmore, Penn.: Race Relations Institutes, Swarthmore College, [1933?], Johnson Papers). 20. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation, 22–23. 21. Lorenzo D. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949). 22. See Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 448. 23. See Opportunity 1–4 (1923–1926) and 6 (1928); Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations, 234; and Johnson, “The New Frontage on American Life,” in The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke (New York: A and C. Boni, 1925), 278–98.

Chapter 5. The Johnson Model 1. Willis D. Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson, Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1934), 444–45. 2. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “How to Overcome Economic and Social Problems,” in “The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Papers and Addresses Read at Conferences, Institutes, Societies, Clubs, Etc., 1928–1942,” vol. 3, no. 4 (September 23, 1929); assembled by Fisk University Library, January, 1959 (13 vols.; unpublished typescript), Special Collections, Fisk University. 3. Johnson, “Race Relations and Social Change,” in Race Relations and the Race Problem, edited by Edgar Thompson (New York, Greenwood Press, 1960), 300. 4. See St. Clair Drake, introduction to Charles S. Johnson, Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South (New York: Schocken Books, 1967; originally published by the American Council on Education, 1941), 325–27. 5. See “Social Assimilation Defined” [1928?], Johnson Papers. 6. Charles S. Johnson, A Preface to Racial Understanding (New York: Friendship Press, 1936), 162. 7. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “Race Riots,” in “The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Other Speeches, Indicating Neither Time Nor Place Nor Type,” vol. 13, no. 14; unpublished typescript assembled by Fisk University Library Special Collections, March, 1959. 8. Johnson to Embree, September 27, 1944, Johnson Papers. 9. See Charles Spurgeon Johnson, “Group Tensions: The American Negro Minority,” in “The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Papers and Addresses Read at Conferences, Institutes, Societies, Clubs, Etc., 1944–1948,” vol 4, no. 3; unpublished typescript assembled by Fisk University Library Special Collections, January, 1959. 10. Johnson to Embree, February 20, 1936 (Rosenwald Papers).

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11. Charles S. Johnson and Associates, To Stem This Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1943), x. 12. See Charles S. Johnson, “The Present Status of Race Relations in the South,” Social Forces 23, no. 1 (October 1944), 27. 13. Charles S. Johnson, “Sociology of Racial Conflict,” 1945 [1941?], Lecture No. 4 (Westtown, Penn.: Institute of Race Relations, Westtown School, Johnson Papers). 14. See Johnson, “Group Tensions: The American Negro Minority.” 15. See Charles S. Johnson’s The Negro College Graduate (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), and Education and the Cultural Crisis, Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 16. Johnson, The Negro College Graduate, vii. 17. See Charles S. Johnson, Education and the Cultural Crisis: Build the Future: Addresses Marking the Inauguration of Charles Spurgeon Johnson (Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1949); “Education and the Cultural Process: Introduction to Symposium,” American Journal of Sociology 48, no. 6 (May 1943), 629–32; and “Social Science Symposium,” April–May, 1941, Rosenwald Papers. 18. See Charles S. Johnson, “The Next Decade in Race Relations,” Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 3 (summer 1944): 441–46; and Johnson, “Bridges for Intercultural Understanding,” January 10, 1946, Johnson Papers. 19. See Peter J. Kellogg, “Northern Liberals and Black America: A History of White American Attitudes, 1936–1952” (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971).

Chapter 6. Park to Johnson to Myrdal 1. See John H. Bracey, Jr., “Black Nationalism Since Garvey,” in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, edited by Nathan I. Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), 259–79; see especially 267. 2. Johnson, A Preface to Racial Understanding (New York: Friendship Press, 1956), 184–85. 3. Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), 324. 4. Negro Housing: Report of the Committee on Negro Housing, Nannie H. Burroughs, chairman, vol. 4 of Physical Aspects, Special Economic Factors, Home Ownership, prepared by Charles S. Johnson, edited by John M. Gries and John Ford for the President’s Conference on Home Ownership and Financing, Washington, D.C., 1932. 5. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971. See also George L. Gardiner, compiler, A Bibliography of Charles S. Johnson’s Published Writings, 1893–1956 (Nashville: Fisk University Library, 1960). Gardiner cites “A Study of Negro Families in the Area Selected for Nashville Negro Housing Project with a Supplementary Study of the Social and Economic Status of the Negro in Nashville,” by Charles S. Johnson, director of the study for the City

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Planning and Zoning Commission and the Federal Housing Advisory Committee, Fisk University, Department of Social Science, 1934 (unpublished typescript). 6. Weatherford and Johnson, Race Relations (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1934), 327–28. 7. Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and W. W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys, 1933–35 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 65. 8. Johnson and Associates, To Stem This Tide (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1943), 127–28. 9. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), vol. 2, appendix 2, “A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science,” 1035–64, and appendix 3, “A Methodological Note on the Principle of Cumulation,” 1065–70. 10. What Myrdal actually said was, “[A]ny change in any one of these factors, independent of the way in which it is brought about, will, by the aggregate weight of the cumulative effects running back and forth between them all, start the whole system moving in one direction or the other as the case may be. . . .” Ibid. vol. 2, 1067. 11. Ibid., 669. 12. See Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 2, 929. 13. Ibid., 647, 879. 14. Ibid., 928. 15. Vincent Harding, “Beyond Chaos: Black Identity and the Search for the New Land,” in Amistad 1, edited by John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 267–92. 16. In later years Myrdal was attacked for advocating a type of genocide. Although such a charge deserves serious investigation, it appears, on the surface, more likely that he was drawing upon his Swedish background (he was a member of the Royal Population Commission which recommended population control) and may have been misrepresented by later scholars and politicians. Two factors suggest this refutation. First, he saw the Catholic Church as the greatest obstacle to “population control.” Yet today in urban America it is the Catholic ethnics who are among the most militant enemies of blacks. Second, his large field staff included such men as Johnson, Ralph J. Bunche, and E. Franklin Frazier who surely would have detected and reported such sentiment. 17. See Johnson and Associates, To Stem This Tide, x. 18. Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), 284. 19. Charles to Marie Johnson, January 13, 1941, Private Letters. 20. Ibid.

Chapter 7. Internationalism: Between the World Wars 1. “A Caribbean Issue,” Opportunity 4, no. 47 (November, 1926): 334. 2. See “Our Caribbean Possessions,” Opportunity 3, no. 28 (April 1925): 98.

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3. See “American Investments in Latin America,” Opportunity 6, no. 4 (April 1928): 99–100. 4. See “Hayti,” Opportunity 3, no. 31 (July 1925): 195; and “White House Incident,” Opportunity 4, no. 46 (October 1926): 304. 5. See “King Cotton in Africa,” Opportunity 3, no. 3 (July 1925): 196. 6. See “Civilization,” Opportunity 3, no. 26 (February 1925): 36. 7. See “Abyssinia,” Opportunity 4, no. 45 (September 1926): 271–73. 8. John Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic, by Charles S. Johnson (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), xxvi, xxix; see Charles to Marie Johnson, August 9, 1930, Private Letters. 9. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xxvi. 10. Emmett J. Scott to Charles S. Johnson, August 3, 1918 (Johnson Papers). Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration during the War (New York: Arno Press, 1920); and Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922) (Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971). Robert E. Park’s biographer discusses a letter from Park to Emmett J. Scott dated January 21, 1918, noting that “Johnson had collected 1,200 letters in the course of the study of wartime black migration, and that he [Park] and Johnson were planning to edit and publish these letters.” (Winifred Raushenbush, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist [Durham: Duke University Press, 1979]). 11. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xxxi. 12. Ibid., xxxiii. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., XXXIII, XXXVI. 15. Ibid., xxv–xxvi, xxxiii, xli. 16. Ibid., xliii. 17. See John Matheus, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, January 23, 1975. 18. Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, Private Papers. 19. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xxv. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., xxv–xxvi. 22. Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, and August 9, 1930, Private Letters. 23. Charles to Marie Johnson, August 9, 1930 (Private Letters); also quoted in Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xli. 24. See Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into the Existence of Slavery and Forced Labour in the Republic of Liberia, Monrovia, Liberia, August, 1930; and “The Present Status of Liberia” [1943?], Johnson Papers. The following discussion is based on the Report of the International Commission unless otherwise indicated. 25. Johnson to Countee Cullen, April 4, 1930, Cullen Papers. 26. See for example Johnson, “African Diary” (1947), and “Bitter Canaan: A Story of the Negro Republic of Liberia” (1947 draft), Special Collections, Fisk University; Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, and August 9, 1930, Pri-

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vate Letters; and John Matheus, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, January 23, 1975. 27. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xliv. 28. Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, Private Papers. 29. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xlii. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., xxxv. 33. Charles to Marie Johnson, July 9, 1930, Private Letters; see Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xlii–xliii. 34. This and the following discussion is based on Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, and August 9, 1930, Private Letters, and Standfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, xli–xliii, quoting Johnson’s African diary. 35. See Report of the International Commission and “The Present Status of Liberia” [1943?], Johnson Papers. 36. The following drawn from Charles to Marie Johnson, April 1, 1930, Private Letters. 37. Ibid., April 20, 1930, Private Letters. 38. Ibid., April 1, 1930, Private Letters. 39. See April 20, 1930, Private Letters, and John Matheus, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, January 23, 1975. 40. Patricia Johnson Clifford, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 6, 1974. 41. This and the following taken from Charles to Marie Johnson, April 20, 1930, Private Letters. 42. Charles to Marie Johnson, July 9, 1930, Private Letters. 43. John Matheus, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, January 23, 1975. 44. See for example, Johnson, “Present Status of Liberia.” 45. Charles to Marie Johnson, August 9, 1930, Private Letters. 46. Report of the International Commission. 47. Johnson, “Bitter Canaan” (1947), 119. 48. See “Present Status of Liberia.” 49. See “Liberia’s Future in Rubber,” Opportunity 3, no. 35 (November 1925), 325. 50. Johnson to the U.S. Department of State, October 1, 1930, draft in Johnson Papers. 51. Johnson, “Bitter Canaan” [1947], 194. 52. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, lvi. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., xii. 56. Ibid., lviii. 57. See ibid., lviii–lxv. 58. Johnson to Russel B. Babcock, November 30, 1948, Johnson Papers. 59. Stanfield, introduction to Bitter Canaan, lix. 60. Johnson, Bitter Canaan.

280

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Chapter 8. The Department of Social Sciences 1. The following discussion is based on Thomas E. Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 20, 1971. 2. See Johnson to Thomas E. Jones, February 8, 1928; Jones to Johnson, February 13, 1928, Jones Papers; and Edwin R. Embree to Johnson, February 29, 1928, Johnson Papers. 3. This point, as well as much of the general background for this section, is drawn from the following interviews with Patrick J. Gilpin: Cleo Blackburn, November 21, 1971; Horace Mann Bond, May 20, 1971; Ina Corinne Brown, March 2, 1972; Edmonia Grant Davidson, September 30, 1971.; Giles A. Hubert, November 4, 1971; Lewis Wade Jones, September 10, 1971; Thomas E. Jones, November 20, 1971; Herman H. Long, September 9, 1971; Hattie M. Perry, November 7, 1971; Joseph Taylor, November 22, 1971; Bonita H. Valien, September 27, 1971; Preston Valien, September 27, 1971; and Donald Wyatt, November 4, 1971. Many similar questions were asked of the above individuals. In later footnotes on points of agreement, noncontroversial material, and general information shared by all department members, the citation will read “Composite Interview 1.” 4. See Johnson to Jones, July 25, 1927; Jones to Johnson, August 9, 1927; Johnson to Jones, September 28, 1927; and “Memorandum,” Johnson to Jones, attached to letter, September 28, 1927, Jones Papers. 5. See “Memorandum,” Johnson to Jones, September 29, 1928, Jones Papers. 6. See Jones to Johnson, October 10, 1928, Jones Papers. 7. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971; Thomas E. Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 20, 1971; and Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971. 8. For a list of additional foundations, see Preston Valien, with the assistance of Johnnie R. Clarke and Ruth E. Vaughn, “History of the Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University, 1911–1948,” unpublished manuscript (August, 1950), Johnson Papers. 9. Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. 10. Valien, “History of the Department of Social Sciences.” 11. Johnson to Pauline Redmond, June 1, 1939, Johnson Papers. 12. Johnson to Herman H. Long, May 15, 1941, Johnson Papers. 13. Johnson to Redmond, June 1, 1939, Johnson Papers. 14. Johnson to Mary McLeod Bethune, September 17, 1936, and Bethune to Johnson, September 24, 1936, Johnson Papers; and Johnson to Embree, September 26, 1936, Rosenwald Papers. 15. See Johnson to H. Elaine Bryant, February 27, 1943, Johnson Papers. 16. See Johnson to Long, May 15, 1941; Long to Johnson, May 26, 1941; Johnson to Long, July 11, 1941; Long to Johnson, July 15, 1941; and Johnson to Long, August 2, 1941, Johnson Papers and Composite Interview 1. 17. See Valien, “History of the Department of Social Sciences”; and Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972.

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18. See Valien, “History of the Department of Social Sciences” and “Memorandum on Department of Sociology and Anthropology,” Fisk University, 1939, Jones Papers). 19. Anyone beginning to compile a comprehensive list would immediately add the names of Lewis C. Copeland, Charles R. Lawrence, and Edward Nelson Palmer. 20. See Edgar T. Thompson, “Sociology and Sociological Research in the South,” in In Search of the Regional Balance of America, edited by Howard W. Odum and Katharine Jochner (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1945), 114–23; Stanley H. Smith, “Sociological Research and Fisk University: A Case Study,” in Black Sociologists: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by James E. Blackwell and Morris Janowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 164–90; and Mark Hanna Watkins, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, February 9, 1975. 21. Johnson to Embree, September 15, 1938, Rosenwald Papers. 22. Johnson to Embree, January 31, 1946, Rosenwald Papers. 23. Johnson to Embree, November 29, 1940, Rosenwald Papers. 24. The following discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1; “Memorandum for Social Sciences Department,” 1939, Jones Papers; Johnson to Embree, November 29, 1940, Rosenwald Papers; and Johnson to Joseph A. Wright, April 7, 1941, Johnson Papers. 25. Charles V. Smith, “Contributions of Charles S. Johnson to the Field of Sociology,” Journal of Social and Behavioral Sciences 18, no. 3 (spring 1972), 30. 26. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971; and Mark Hanna Watkins, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, February 9, 1975. 27. Jones to Johnson, March 8, 1945, Johnson Papers. 28. Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. See also Johnson to Jones, January 10, 1930, Jones Papers. 29. Johnson to Embree, January 11, 1936, Rosenwald Papers. 30. Ina Corinne Brown to Patrick J. Gilpin, February 23, 1972. 31. See Fisk University Program of African Studies (Nashville: Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University, 1943); Valien, “History of the Department of Social Sciences,” and Composite Interview 1. 32. Jones to Johnson, May 3, 1944; and Johnson to Lorenzo D. Turner, May 26, 1944, Johnson Papers. 33. See “Memorandum: Conference of African Studies,” Fisk University, November 5, 1943, Johnson Papers. 34. See Edward B. Reuter to Johnson, October 16, 1945, Johnson Papers. 35. See “The Inter-Departmental Curriculum in African Studies: Plans for 1948–1949, Fisk University”; Valien, “History of the Department of Social Sciences”; and Composite Interview 1. 36. “Prospectus for a Program of African and Caribbean Studies,” n.d., Johnson Papers. 37. Johnson to Dorothy A. Elvidge, March 20, 1945, Johnson Papers. 38. This point and the following discussion are drawn from Composite Interview 1.

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39. See Charles S. Johnson, “Haiti as a Laboratory for Cultural Research,” Phylon 8, no. 3 (3rd quarter, 1947), 252–64. 40. For a detailed discussion see Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson: An Intellectual Biography” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1973), 411–420. 41. See Giles A. Hubert, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 4, 1971; and Rayford W. Logan, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), especially chapter 9, 141–56. 42. This interpretation is based on Giles A. Hubert, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 4, 1971. 43. Former Fisk students who served in the Estimé administration were Franck Le Gendre, under-minister of state for labor; Clement Jumelle, director of the Labor Bureau; Max L. Etheart, chief statistician in the Coffee Bureau; Alain Turnier, first assistant to the minister of state for Economic Affairs; and Roger Dorsainville, Haitian consul general at New York (Johnson to Embree, March 17, 1948, Rosenwald Papers). 44. Giles A. Hubert, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 4, 1971. 45. Composite Interview 1. 46. See Eric Williams to Johnson, March 31, 1955, and Johnson to Arna Bontemps, April 12, 1955, Johnson Papers. 47. The academic purist may argue that some of the individuals named below were technically carried on the organizational chart for the Department of Race Relations or came under Johnson’s direct influence during the time he was President of Fisk. A functional analysis, however, suggests that identifying them with the Department of Social Sciences is no less valid. 48. “Report of the President,” Fisk University, 1937–1938, 33, Rosenwald Papers. 49. See Johnson to Embree, September 21, 1939, Rosenwald Papers; and Johnson to Harold Z. Phelps, June 3, 1939, Johnson Papers. 50. Johnson to Embree, October 30, 1939, Rosenwald Papers. 51. The following is based on Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, February 13, 1975. 52. Ernest E. Neal is better known in the popular culture as the father of Kathleen Cleaver, one-time wife of Eldridge Cleaver. Both were well-publicized black activists in the 1960s. See “Kathleen Cleaver’s Dad, Ernest Neal, Dies at 60,” Jet 41, no. 19 (February 3, 1972), 53.

Chapter 9. Beyond the Classroom: Service Intellectual 1. Among the first historians to popularize this term was Richard S. Kirkendall. 2. See William A. Link and Arthur S. Link, American Epoch: A History of the United States Since 1900, 7th ed., vol. 1, War, Reform and Society, 1900–1945 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 293–295; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958); see especially 369–381 and

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generally chapters 2–5 and 19–22. See also Paul E. Mertz, New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). 3. See “Note” in Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and W. W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys 1933–35 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935). 4. See Johnson to Alexander, April 15, 1935, CIC Papers. 5. Part of this discussion is drawn from Cecil Holland’s cogent review, “Sharing the Land,” in Survey Graphic 24, no. 12 (December 1935), 622–23. 6. Johnson, Embree, and Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 65. 7. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971. 8. See Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 66. 9. Charles to Marie Johnson, January 20, 1934, Private Letters. 10. Ibid., November 23, 1934. 11. Robert C. Weaver, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 16, 1974. 12. Johnson to Arthur A. Schomburg, February 4, 1935, Schomburg Papers. 13. Johnson to Claude A. Barnett, March 26, 1935, Barnett Papers. 14. Johnson to Barnett, telegram, April 13, 1935, Barnett Papers. 15. Johnson to Alexander, April 15, 1935, CIC Papers. 16. Johnson to Barnett, April 30, 1935, Barnett Papers. 17. Form letter, Barnett to Dear friend, March 20, 1936. The Barnett Papers contain two large folders of correspondence reflecting his attempts to lobby for support. 18. Link, American Epoch, 309. 19. See Dewey W. Grantham, The South in Modern America: A Region at Odds (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), especially chapter 6 and page 160. Grantham cites, inter alia, Paul E. Mertz, New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), and Peter Daniel, “The New Deal, Southern Agriculture and Economic Change,” in The New Deal and the South, ed. James C. Cobb and Michael V. Namorato (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984), 41, 55. 20. See Grant McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953). 21. A. Gilbert Belles, “The Julius Rosenwald Fund: Efforts in Race Relations 1928–1948” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1972), 40. 22. The following discussion is from Margaret Just Butcher, The Negro in American Culture (New York: New American Library, 1971), 121–22; Johnson to Jones, January 10, 1930, and n.d. [1931?], Jones Papers; and Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. 23. This discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1; “Report of the President,” 1935–36, 57, Rosenwald Papers; and Charles S. Johnson, “The Conflict of Caste and Class in an American Industry,” American Journal of Sociology 42, no. 1 (July 1936): 55–65. 24. Charles to Marie Johnson, Monday [summer of 1935], Private Letters.

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25. Johnson to Arthur A. Schomburg, November 23, 1939, Schomburg Papers. 26. Hattie M. Perry, Johnson’s secretary, believes that the study was not published because its findings were too controversial. Hattie M. Perry, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 7, 1971. 27. Johnson, “Conflict of Caste and Class,” 55–65. 28. The following discussion and quotations are from Charles to Marie Johnson, Monday [summer, 1935], Private Letters. 29. Charles to Marie Johnson, June 13, 1935 and June, n.d. [1935], Private Letters. 30. Johnson to Arthur A. Schomburg, October 16, 1935, Schomburg Papers. 31. Belles, “Julius Rosenwald Fund,” 169–70. 32. For example, see Charles to Marie Johnson, June 28, 1935, and Johnson to Thomas E. Jones, July 8, 1935, Private Letters. 33. Johnson to Arthur A. Schomburg, October 16, 1935, Schomburg Papers. 34. Ibid., September 27, 1935. 35. The following discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1; “Report of the President,” Fisk University, 1935–36, 1936–37, and 1937–38, Rosenwald Papers; and “The Educational Program of the Department of Social Sciences,” n.d., Johnson Papers. 36. Johnson to Barnett, May 12, 1936, Barnett Papers. 37. The following discussion is from Composite Interview 1; “Report of the President,” Fisk University, 1935–36, 1936–37, and 1937–38; and Johnson to Embree, August 11, 1936, Rosenwald Papers; “The Educational Program of the Department of Social Sciences,” n.d., Johnson Papers; and The Urban Negro Worker in the United States, 1925–1936, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938, 1939). 38. See Johnson to Embree, August 11, 1936, Rosenwald Papers; and The Urban Negro Worker in the United States, 1925–1936. 39. See “Memorandum on Department of Sociology and Anthropology,” Fisk University, 1939, and “Memorandum for Social Sciences Department,” Fisk University, 1939, Jones Papers; and Johnson to Embree, September 27, 1935, Rosenwald Papers. 40. The following discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1; “The Negro Public Schools: A Social and Educational Survey,” vol. 4, section 8, in Louisiana Educational Survey: Survey of Elementary and Secondary Education, 7 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Educational Survey Commission, 1942); Johnson to Elizabeth McDougald, September 29, 1941, and October 27, 1941, Johnson Papers; and Johnson to Embree, September 19, 1941, Rosenwald Papers. 41. See Giles A. Hubert, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 4, 1971; and Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971. 42. See “Report: Fisk, Tuskegee Institute and Farm Security Administration,” to Albert R. Mann, General Education Board, June 24, 1941; “Training of Agriculture Specialists and Rural Community Workers,” n.d.; J. R. Otis to Johnson, August 22, 1941; and Johnson to Otis, October 28, 1941, Johnson Papers; and

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Embree to Johnson, July 7, 1941, and Johnson to Embree, September 26, 1940, Rosenwald Papers. 43. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971; and Giles A. Hubert, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 4, 1971. 44. See Giles A. Hubert to Johnson, September 9, 1942, Johnson Papers. 45. The following discussion is based on Cleo Blackburn, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 21, 1971. 46. See “The Educational Program of the Department of Social Sciences,” n.d., Johnson Papers; and “Fisk Annual Reports, 1936–1937,” Rosenwald Papers. 47. “Bethlehem Center,” mimeographed pamphlet, n.d., Johnson Papers. 48. Johnson to C. W. Sheppard, February 13, 1946, Johnson Papers. 49. See Johnson to Jones, October 12, 1937, and July 12, 1939, Jones Papers. 50. See Johnson to Jones, July 12, 1939, Jones Papers; Johnson to James Stahlman, June 17, 1946, Johnson Papers; and Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971. 51. This quotation and the following discussion are taken from “Report of the President,” Fisk University, 1937–39, 38, Rosenwald Papers. 52. See Preston Valien, with the assistance of Johnnie R. Clarke and Ruth E. Vaughn, “History of the Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University, 1911–1948,” unpublished manuscript (August, 1950); and “The Educational Program of the Department of Social Sciences, n.d., Johnson Papers; Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971; and Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971. 53. The following discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1; “Report of the President,” Fisk University, 1937–38; Johnson to Dorothy Elvidge, October 31, 1941; and Bonita Valien to L. J. Bowles, June 30, 1939, Rosenwald Papers; “Memorandum for Social Sciences Department,” 1939, Jones Papers; Johnson to W. T. Couch, March 2, 1940, UNCP Papers; and Ina Corinne Brown to Patrick J. Gilpin, February 18, 1972. 54. More fully identified as E. Franklin Frazier, The Free Negro Family: A Study of Family Origins Before the Civil War (Nashville, Tenn.: Fisk University Press, 1932); Horace Mann Bond, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1934); Arna Bontemps, Black Thunder: Gabriel’s Revolt, Virginia, 1800 (Boston: Beacon Press, [1936] 1968); Sterling Brown, The Negro in American Fiction (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1937); Bertram W. Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1937); and Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell, Black Workers and New Unions (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina, 1939). 55. Gunnar Myrdal, with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 2 vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill, [1944] 1964). See Doxey A. Wilkerson, Special Problems of Negro Education, Staff Study Number 12, prepared for the Advisory Committee on Education, 19 vols. (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1939). 56. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971.

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Chapter 10. The Publications 1. See Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research (New York: Henry Holt, 1930), v–xi. 2. See Johnson to Jones, March 13, 1928, Jones Papers; and Johnson to Countee Cullen, January 16, 1929, Cullen Papers. 3. Charles S. Johnson, A Preface to Racial Understanding (New York: Friendship Press, 1936); The Negro College Graduate (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1938); and Education and the Cultural Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1951). 4. The following discussion is drawn from Johnson’s Shadow of the Plantation, introduction by Robert E. Park (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1934] 1969; Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South, Introduction by St. Clair Drake (New York: Schoeken Books, 1967; originally published by the American Council on Education, 1941); and Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper & Brothers,1943). 5. Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation. 6. James H. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York: Free Press, 1993), 59–60. 7. Ibid., 60 8. Ibid., 66. 9. Ibid., 66–67. 10. Ibid., 88. 11. Ibid., 78–81, 83–84. 12. Ibid., 83. 13. Ibid., 83–84, fn. 16. 14. Ibid., 13. 15. Ibid., 54, 91. 16. Ibid., 132. 17. Ibid., 10. 18. Ibid., 59–60. 19. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 1; Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation; and Willis D. Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson, Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1934), 442–48. 20. The following information is from an untitled and undated memorandum [1936?]; Johnson to Homer P. Rainey, May 7, 1936, and January 21, 1938; Rainey to Johnson, December 18, 1937; and Johnson to W. A. Bass, March 29, 1938, Johnson Papers. 21. See Johnson, Growing Up in the Black Belt, introduction to the 1967 edition, by St. Clair Drake, ix–xix and 242. 22. Composite Interview 1, and Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. 23. The following discussion is drawn from Composite Interview 1, and Charles S. Johnson et al., Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties: Listing and Analy-

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sis of Socio-Economic Indices of 1104 Southern Counties (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), v–vi, 265, and passim. 24. Howard Odum, Southern Regions (n.p., n.d.); and Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South (New York: Russell & Russell, 1935). 25. See Gunnar Myrdal, with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose, preface to An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, [1944] 1964), li–lxii; Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation; Composite Interview 1; and Gunnar Myrdal to Patrick J. Gilpin, April 21, 1972. 26. Joseph Taylor, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 22, 1971. 27. See Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation; see especially ix and 227. 28. Ibid., 294. 29. Henry Lee Moon, “Note to Washington,” New Republic 108 (March 1943): 325–26. 30. The story is repeated by the journalist Roger M. Williams in The Bonds: An American Family (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 106. 31. Composite Interview 1. 32. Ophelia Settle Egypt to Patrick J. Gilpin, January 26, 1972. 33. August Meier to Patrick J. Gilpin, November 26, 1975. 34. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971; and Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971. 35. See Arna Bontemps, introduction to Black Thunder: Gabriel’s Revolt, Virginia, 1800 (Boston: Beacon Press, [1936] 1968), vii–xv.

Chapter 11. The Best of Booker T. Washington 1. Gunnar Myrdal, with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, [1944] 1964), 466. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). 2. The following discussion of the economic and social conditions of the South is drawn from Calvin E. Hoover and Benjamin U. Ratchford, Economic Resources and Policies of the South (New York: Macmillan, 1951); Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and W. W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Field Studies & Statistical Surveys, 1933–35 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935); Charles S. Johnson, The Economic Status of Negroes: Summary and Analysis of the Materials Presented at the Conference on the Economic Status of the Negro, Held in Washington, D.C., May 11–13, 1933, under the Sponsorship of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1933); Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 1; Report on Economic Conditions of the South, prepared for the President by the National Emergency Council, executive director, Lowell Mellett (Washington, D.C., July 25, 1938); and George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945, vol. 10 of A History of the South,

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edited by Wendell Holmes Stephenson and E. Merton Coulter (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967). 3. This point and the following quotation from Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 1; see especially 231 and 282. 4. John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 20–21. 5. Ibid., 21. 6. Ibid., 19. 7. See E. Charles Chatfield, Jr., “The Southern Sociological Congress, 1912–1920: The Development and Rationale of a Twentieth Century Crusade” (M.A. thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1958), iv, 46, 80–99; Edward Flud Burrows, “The Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 1919–1944: A Case Study in the History of the Interracial Movement in the South” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1954), 45–109, passim; Wilma Dykerman and James Stokely, Seeds of Southern Change: The Life of Will Alexander (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Myrdal, An American Dilemma, vol. 2, chapter 39; and Tindall, Emergence of the New South, 177–83. 8. For a detailed treatment see Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971); Thomas A. Krueger, And Promises to Keep: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 1938–1948 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967); Lillian Smith, “Southern Defense-II,” Common Ground 4, no. 3 (spring, 1944), 43–45; and Smith to Guy B. Johnson, June 12, 1944, UNCP Papers. 9. Almost half a century ago, J. Reuben Sheeler used this term to characterize the approach of white liberals in the area of race relations during the nineteenth century. See Sheeler, “The Negro in Western Virginia and West Virginia Prior to 1900” (Ph.D. dissertation, West Virginia University, 1954). 10. Roi Ottley, New World A-Coming (New York: Arno Press, [1943] 1969), 238–39. 11. Lewis Wade Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 10, 1971. 12. Charles S. Johnson, “Racial Tensions in America,” 1945, Johnson Papers. 13. Charles S. Johnson, “More Southerners Discover the South,” Crisis 46 (January 1939): 14–15. 14. Johnson to Embree, May 31, 1945, Rosenwald Papers. 15. Johnson to Dombrowski, January 3, 1944, Johnson Papers. 16. See Charles S. Johnson, “The Social Philosophy of Booker T. Washington,” Opportunity 6, no. 4 (April 1928): 102–105, 115. 17. For example, see S. P. Fullinwinder, The Mind and Mood of Black America (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1969), 111–13; and Ralph L. Pearson, “Charles S. Johnson: The Urban League Years. A Study of Race Leadership” (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1970), 99–116. 18. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, [1903] 1961), 53. See David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), for an excellent analysis of the relationship between Du Bois and Washington.

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19. August Meier to Patrick J. Gilpin, November 26, 1975; see Burrows, “Commission on Interracial Cooperation,” 45–109. 20. Hancock to Claude A. Barnett, October 8, 1959, Barnett Papers. 21. See Tindall, Emergence of the New South, 585–87; John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 301–302. 22. This judgment is based upon an examination of the Jessie Daniel Ames Papers, UNCP Papers. See also, Egerton, Speak Now, 302–303. 23. The following is drawn from Burrows, “Commission on Interracial Cooperation, ” 45–109, and Egerton, Speak Now, 301–303. 24. Egerton, Speak Now, chapter 7, 301–316. 25. Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971). 26. For a more detailed treatment see Raymond Gavins, The Perils and Prospects of Southern Black Leadership: Gordon Blaine Hancock, 1884–1970 (Durham: North Carolina Press, 1977), especially chapters 5 and 6, 100–160; Egerton, Speak Now, chapter 7, 301–316; Matthew William Dunne, “Next Steps: Charles S. Johnson and Southern Liberalism,” Journal of Negro History 83, no. 1 (winter 1981); and Mays, Born to Rebel. 27. Mays, Born to Rebel, 214; Egerton, Speak Now, 303–304. See also Gavins, Hancock, 117. 28. A reprint can be found in the Ames Papers; Egerton, Speak Now, 304. 29. See Ames to R. T. Hamilton, June 10, 1943, Ames Papers. Jessie Daniel Ames repeated the story many times in the correspondence in her collected papers. This particular letter is cited only because it presents a convenient summary in one place. See also Egerton, Speak Now, 304–305. 30. Mays, Born to Rebel, 215; Gavins, Hancock, 117–118. 31. Mays, Born to Rebel; Gavins, Hancock; Egerton, Speak Now, 305; and Hancock to Ames, May 20, 1942, Ames Papers. 32. Hancock to Ames, May 20, June 8, 1942, Ames Papers. 33. “Preliminary Conference on Race Relations: Tentative Agenda,” June 30, 1942, Ames Papers. 34. Mays, Born to Rebel, 216. 35. In addition to Charles S. Johnson, who was named chairman, other members of the editorial committee formed at the Durham conference included Gordon B. Hancock; P. B. Young; Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse; Horace Mann Bond, president of Fort Valley State College; Ernest Delpit, a union leader from New Orleans; F. D. Patterson, president of Tuskegee Institute; Rufus E. Clement, president of Atlanta University; James E. Jackson of the Southern Negro Youth Congress; and William M. Cooper of Hampton Institute. 36. Benjamin E. Mays, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, May 19, 1971. 37. Young to Ames, November 20, 1942, Ames Papers. For similar statements, see Hancock to Ames, November 22, 1942, and Ames to Young, November 18, 1942, Ames Papers; Johnson to Claude A. Barnett, December 17, 1942, and Barnett to Johnson, December 22, 1942, Barnett Papers.

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38. What is apparently the original manuscript is in the Johnson Papers. Two published sources are Charles S. Johnson et al., To Stem This Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1943), 131–39; and Charles S. Johnson, “Southern Race Relations Conference,” Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 1 (winter 1943): 133–39. 39. Benjamin E. Mays remembers that he favored an outright call to abolish segregation. It was his thinking that the South was not going to support the council anyway. When he was outvoted, he publicly supported the other members (Benjamin E. Mays to Patrick J. Gilpin, July 11, 1974). See also Mays, Born to Rebel, 218. 40. Claude A. Barnett to Johnson, December 22, 1942, Johnson Papers. 41. Egerton, Speak Now, 306; and Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind. Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). 42. See Clip Sheet, Series 2, no. 9, May 15, 1943, Ames Papers. This was a handout sheet that Ames prepared for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. 43. Benjamin E. Mays to Patrick J. Gilpin, July 11, 1974. 44. See Roi Ottley, New World A-Coming, 238–39. 45. See Johnson to Doan, May 5, 1945, Johnson Papers. 46. Memorandum, Ames to Committee on Cooperation, March 9, 1943, Ames Papers. 47. Burrows, “Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 1919–1944,” 281–82. See also the published document in Johnson, To Stem This Tide, 140–42. For the manuscript, see “Statement of Conference of White Southerners on Race Relations,” April 8, 1943, Rosenwald Papers. 48. See “Report of the Committee on Resolutions of the Collaboration Committee as a Whole,” June 16, 1943, Rosenwald Papers. For published accounts, see Mays, Born to Rebel, 366–367, and Egerton, Speak Now, 307–312. 49. “Report of the Committee on Resolutions of the Collaboration Committee as a Whole,” June 16, 1943, Rosenwald Papers; and Mays, Born to Rebel, 366–67. 50. Mays, Born to Rebel, 366–67. 51. Char1es S. Johnson, “The Joint Durham and Atlanta Collaboration Conference in Richmond,” memorandum to Edwin R. Embree, June 21, 1943, Johnson Papers. 52. See Dabney to Young, June 19, 1943, Ames Papers; Dabney to Odum, July 26, 1943, and Odum to Dabney, July 30, 1943, Odum Papers. 53. See Ames to Young, April 28, 1943, Ames Papers; William Clifton Allred, Jr., “The Southern Regional Council, 1943–1961” (M.A. thesis, Emory University, 1966), 46–50; and Henry Paul Houser, “The Southern Regional Council” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1950), 104–5. 54. Allred, “The Southern Regional Council, 1943–1961,” 25. 55. Johnson to Barnett, August 17, 1943, Johnson Papers. 56. Odum to Embree, December 8, 1943, Odum Papers. 57. See Houser, “Southern Regional Council,” 44–45. 58. See Ames to Young, April 12, 1943, Ames Papers; Dabney to Odum, July 7, 1943, and Odum to Guy B. Johnson, December 11, 1944, Odum Papers. 59. See minutes of the “Meeting of Executive Committee,” April 29, 1944, Odum Papers.

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60. Johnson to Louis Wirth, July 16, 1949, Johnson Papers. 61. Mitchell to Johnson, September 29, 1950, Johnson Papers. 62. See Mitchell to Johnson, August 1, 1950, and Mitchell to Johnson, June 3, 1953, Johnson Papers.

Chapter 12. The Rest of Booker T. Washington 1. George E. Haynes to Thomas E. Jones, January 23, 1931, Jones Papers. 2. See “Charles Spurgeon Johnson, 1893–1956, Biographical Notes,” in “Introduction to the Shelf List,” Johnson Papers. 3. See Odum to T. Lynn Smith, May 1, 1945; Smith to Odum, May 4, 1945; Odum to Smith, May 8, 1945; Odum to Johnson, May 9, 1945; Johnson to Smith, May 17, 1945; and Charles G. Gomillion to Johnson, June 12, 1945, Johnson Papers; and Rupert B. Vance, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, October 27, 1971. 4. Memorandum, Southern Sociological Society to Members of the Southern Sociological Society, April 15, 1946, Johnson Papers. 5. Johnson to Juliette V. Phifer, May 7, 1946, Johnson Papers. 6. This and the following discussion are drawn from Charles S. Johnson et al., Into the Main Stream: A Survey of Best Practices in Race Relations in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), viii–ix. 7. Margaret C. McCulloch maintains that Into the Main Stream was Johnson’s work, and she merely worked under his direction (Margaret C. McCulloch to Patrick J. Gilpin, July 19, 1971). Horace Mann Bond has no recollection of ever working on Into the Main Stream (Horace Mann Bond, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, May 20, 1971). 8. The following is from Johnson, To Stem This Tide. 9. Quotations from the SERS grant request, contained in a letter from John J. Scanlon to Patrick J. Gilpin, April 21, 1972. 10. Colbert A. McKnight, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 24, 1972. 11. “Integration’s Bible,” Newsweek (April 24, 1972): 81–82. 12. Ibid. 13. See, for example, Johnson to Philip H. Coombs, June 20, 1955; Simeon Booker to Don Shoemaker, June 30, 1955; P. B. Young to Virginius Dabney, October 25, 1955; Charles H. Thompson to Dabney, April 13, 1956; and Johnson to Claude A. Barnett, June 15, 1956, Johnson Papers. 14. See Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson: An Intellectual Biography” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1973), especially chapter 1. 15. The Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations was developed by Johnson in Fisk University’s Department of Relations during World War II. Bonita H. Valien had the chief responsibility for putting the publication together. See Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson and the Southern Educational Reporting Service,” Journal of Negro History 63, no. 3 (July 1978): 501–509 and passim. 16. Chiang-Fu-tsund, National Central Library, Chungking, Szechwan, China, to Rosenwald Fund, February 28, 1945; and Elizabeth Allen to Manuel Gamio, March 13, 1945, Rosenwald Papers.

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17. Johnson to Carlos E. Castaneda, October 11, 1945; Bonita H. Valien to Alicerose Barman, July 10, 1946; and Johnson to Virginius Dabney, July 13, 1955, Johnson Papers. 18. The following discussion is based on Colbert A. McKnight, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 24, 1972; John J. Scanlon to Patrick J. Gilpin, April 21, 1972; and Philip H. Coombs, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, April 22, 1975. 19. See Harry S. Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, May 16, 1954); and Robin M. Williams, Jr., and Margaret W. Ryan, eds., Schools in Transition: Community Experience in Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954). 20. John J. Scanlon to Patrick J. Gilpin, April 21, 1972; and Philip H. Coombs, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, April 22, 1975. 21. See George S. Mitchell to Board of Directors, Southern Regional Council, Inc., July 20, 1954, Johnson Papers. 22. Mitchell to Johnson, April 15, 1954, Johnson Papers. 23. See memorandum from Mitchell to Participants in the Williamsburg Meeting, May 20, 1954, Johnson Papers. This report was mimeographed and apparently disseminated to the SRC and to foundation personnel across the country, such as those of the Fund for the Advancement of Education. 24. Vivian W. Henderson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 13, 1971; Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971; and Preston Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27, 1971. 25. Gilpin, Johnson and SERS, 197–208, 201–202. 26. Johnson’s private correspondence to his wife and the quoted letter of April 6, 1954, are from Gilpin, “Johnson and SERS,” 201–202. 27. Coombs to Johnson, May 4, 1954, Johnson Papers. 28. Gilpin, “Johnson and SERS,” 203. 29. Ibid. 30. The following from Gilpin, “Johnson and SERS,” 203. 31. Johnson to Jesse O. Thomas, n.d. [June, 1954], Johnson Papers. 32. See Johnson to McKnight, June 19, 1954, Johnson Papers. 33. Johnson to Coombs, June 20, 1955, Johnson Papers. 34. Johnson to McKnight, June 19, 1954, Johnson Papers. 35. Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971, Washington, D.C. 36. See Bonita H. Valien to McKnight, February 21, 1955, Johnson Papers. 37. See “Minutes of the Fourth Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Southern Reporting Service,” March 6, 1955; and McKnight to Valien, June 12, 1955, Johnson Papers. 38. Johnson to P. B. Young, July 13, 1955, Johnson Papers. In March Johnson was attending a meeting of the United Negro College Fund (Dabney to Johnson, March 14, 1956, Johnson Papers). 39. Philip H. Coombs, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, April 22, 1975. 40. See, for example, Johnson to Coombs, June 20, 1955; Johnson to Don Shoemaker, June 22, 1955; and Johnson to Dabney, July 13, 1955, Johnson Papers. The following discussion is based on these letters.

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41. Johnson to Coombs, June 20, 1955, Johnson Papers. 42. Johnson to Coombs, July 13, 1955, Johnson Papers. 43. Claude A. Barnett to Johnson, June 4, 1956, Johnson Papers. 44. Thomas R. Waring to editor of the Augusta Courier, June 28, 1954, Johnson Papers. 45. See, for example, Young to Dabney, September 1, 1955; Young to Dabney, September 3, 1955; Young to Dabney, October 25, 1955; and Dabney to Johnson, March 14, 1956, Johnson Papers. 46. See, for example, Charles H. Thompson to Dabney, April 13, 1956, and Johnson to Barnett, June 15, 1956, Johnson Papers. 47. Johnson to Barnett, June 15, 1956, Johnson Papers.

Chapter 13. The Department of Race Relations: Confronting de facto Segregation 1. See John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 7th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [1947] 1994), chapter 21, especially 448–460. 2. Charles to Marie Johnson, Monday, n.d. [June, 1942], Private Letters. 3. See “Memorandum of Will Alexander, Charles S. Johnson, and Edwin Embree on the Rosenwald Fund’s Program in Race Relations,” June 27, 1942, attached to Embree to Alexander, July 1, 1942, Rosenwald Papers. A copy of the notes on the memorandum was kindly supplied to Patrick J. Gilpin by Richard M. Dalfiume of the State University of New York at Binghamton. 4. Charles to Marie Johnson, Sunday, n.d. [June, 1942], Private Letters. 5. “Memorandum of Alexander, Johnson, and Embree , June 27, 1942. 6. Charles to Marie Johnson, Wednesday, n.d. [June, 1942], Private Letters. 7. See for example Johnson to Bertsch Doan, May 5, 1945, Johnson Papers. 8. Embree to Odum, October 14, 1952, Odum Papers. 9. The following discussion is based on “Memorandum on a Possible Program under the Service Committee of the AMA Divisional Committee in a Practical Collaboration with Existing Institutions,” [1943?], Johnson Papers. Although the catalogues for the Johnson Papers dates this document 1951, internal evidence suggests that it was written sometime before November, 1943. For example, the memorandum talks of the Rosenwald Fund ending in three to five years; it ended in 1948. The AMA was looking for a race relations director—a position to which Charles S. Johnson was appointed on January 1, 1943. See also Embree to Johnson, November 16, 1942, Johnson Papers. 10. See Fred L. Brownlee, “Anniversary Observations, 17th Annual Festival of Music and Art,” Fisk University, April 25–27, 1949, Johnson Papers. 11. Embree to Johnson, April 14, 1942, Rosenwald Papers. 12. See “Memorandum on a Possible Program under the Service Committee of the AMA Divisional Committee” [1943?], and Embree to Johnson, November 16, 1942, Johnson Papers.

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13. Thomas E. Jones to Embree, n.d., Johnson Papers. The letter was written sometime between November 14, 1942, and January 1, 1943. These are the dates between the conference that Embree refers to in his November 16, 1942, letter to Johnson and the time that Johnson was named director of the AMA Department. 14. Johnson to Claude A. Barnett, December 17, 1942, and Barnett to Johnson, December 22, 1942, Johnson Papers. 15. “Notes on an Exploratory Discussion of the Role of the Social Science Institute in the University’s Human Relations Program,” December 30, 1942, Johnson Papers. 16. Herman H. Long, “Ten Years Perspective on Our Work in Race Relations,” report to the Joint Meeting of the American Missionary Association Divisional Committee and the Policy and Planning Committee of the Board of Home Missions of the Congregational Churches, June 16–17, 1953, Johnson Papers. 17. See “Notes on an Exploratory Discussion of the Role of the Social Science Institute,” December 30, 1942, Johnson Papers. 18. See “Announcement,” Association Division of the Board of Home Missions of the Congregational and Christian Churches, January 1, 1943, Johnson Papers. 19. See Preston Valien, with the assistance of Johnnie R. Clarke and Ruth E. Vaughn, “History of the Department of Social Sciences, Fisk University, 1911–1948,” unpublished manuscript (August, 1950); and Long, “Ten Years Perspective on Our Work in Race Relations,” 1953, Johnson Papers. 20. See “Memorandum on the Race Relations Program of the American Missionary Association,” June 23, 1943, Johnson Papers; and Charles S. Johnson, “The Race Relations Program of the American Missionary Association,” Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 2 (spring 1944), 248–52. 21. Charles S. Johnson et al., To Stem This Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1943), ix–x. 22. In a letter to Embree dated August 25, 1942, Johnson attached the “Memorandum on the Reporting Service,” Rosenwald Papers. This suggests that Johnson had been at work on the project even before the Race Relations Department was formed. 23. Apparently at the same time Johnson published To Stem This Tide, he conceived of Into the Main Stream, which was not published until 1947. See chapter 12 for a discussion of the latter work. 24. See the “Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations,” bound typescript in the form of a work manual, Johnson Papers; and Charles R. Lawrence, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 30, 1972; Herman H. Long, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 9, 1971; Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971; and Preston Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27, 1971. Supplementary sources are cited as used. 25. A. A. Liveright to Johnson, October 17, 1944, Rosenwald Papers. In addition to purchasing nearly one thousand copies for circulation to their constituents, the AMA also shared in the funding of the Race Relations Department at Fisk, where the Monthly Summary was produced. 26. Johnson to Philip H. Coombs, secretary-treasurer of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, June 20, 1955; Johnson to Don Shoemaker, June 22, 1955; and Johnson to Virginius Dabney, July 13, 1995, Johnson Papers.

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27. For this point and the following discussion, see “Memorandum: Guide for Monthly Staff,” Johnson to the Monthly Summary staff, n.d., Johnson Papers. 28. Johnson to Dorothy A. Elvidge, February 25, 1944, Rosenwald Papers. 29. Of course, work in the Social Sciences Department was continuing all the while. For instance, Long and Johnson designed a study to measure and document the inconveniences caused by segregation in interstate travel. Their findings were used by the NAACP in hearings held by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Eventually the commission issued a decree forbidding segregation in bus and train travel (Herman H. Long, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 9, 1971). 30. See “The Community Self-Survey in Race Relations in Brief”; Herman H. Long, “Helping Communities to Help Themselves”; and “The Community Self-Survey in Race Relations: Organizational Structure,” an organizational graph, Johnson Papers; and Herman H. Long, “Community Research and Intergroup Adjustment,” in Race Relations, Problems and Theory: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Park, edited by Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 267–82. The last paper was originally read at the dedication of the Robert E. Park Building, Fisk University, March, 1955, and subsequently revised in 1961. 31. The following discussion of the San Francisco study is based on The Negro War Worker in San Francisco: A Local Self-Survey, a project financed by a San Francisco citizen, administered by the YWCA, and carried out in connection with the Race Relations Program of the American Missionary Association, Charles S. Johnson, Director, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, May, 1944. 32. A New Century A New Day, rev. ed. pamphlet (Nashville: Department of Race Relations, American Missionary Association, 1946), Johnson Papers. 33. Ibid.; and Preston Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27, 1971. 34. See “Summary of Chicago Conference,” presented by Edwin R. Embree, chairman of Mayor’s Committee on Race Relations, February 21, 1941, Barnes Papers; and Robert C. Weaver, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 16, 1974. 35. For an example of Johnson’s continual involvement in Mayors’ Committees see Charles to Marie Johnson, June 4, 1946, Private Letters.

Chapter 14. The Race Relations Institute: Confronting de jure Segregation 1. The information in this paragraph is taken from Helen R. Bryan to Edward E. Reuter, March 30, 1933, Johnson Papers; and Alberta Morris to Edwin R. Embree, December 27, 1940, and the announcement of the “Institute of Race Relations and Minority Problems,” Westtown, Pennsylvania, July 6–26, 1941, Rosenwald Papers. 2. Herman H. Long, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, January 18, 1975. 3. Margaret C. McCulloch to Patrick J. Gilpin, July 19, 1971. 4. Press Release, 1945, and “Announcement of the First Institute of Race Relations Held Under the Auspices of the Race Relations Division of the American

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Missionary Association,” at the Social Science Institute, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, July 3–21, 1944, Johnson Papers. 5. “Announcement of the First Institute of Race Relations Held Under the Auspices of the Race Relations Division of the American Missionary Association,” at the Social Science Institute, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, July 3–21, 1944, Johnson Papers. 6. See Press Release, 1945, Johnson Papers; and Katrina Marie Sanders, “Building Racial Tolerance Through Education: The Fisk University Race Relations Institute, 1944–1969” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1997). 7. Johnson to Frank O. Dorsey, August 17, 1944, Johnson Papers. 8. See Charles S. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association Institute of Race Relations,” Journal of Negro Education 13, no. 4 (fall 1944): 568–74. 9. Nashville Banner, July 3, 1944. 10. “Future Peace Depends on Race Equality, Embree Tells Fisk Institute,” Chicago Defender, July 15, 1944. 11. “Race Prejudice Political Tool, Harvard Man Says,” Nashville Tennessean, July 5, 1945. 12. The following discussion is based on interviews with Edmonia Grant Davidson, September 30, 1971, Washington, D.C.; Vivian W. Henderson, November 13, 1971, Atlanta, Georgia; Blyden Jackson, March 22, 1972, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Lewis Wade Jones, September 10, 1971, Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama; Herman H. Long, September 9, 1971, Talladega, Alabama; Hattie M. Perry, November 7, 1971, New Orleans, Louisiana; Bonita H. Valien, September 29, 1971, Washington, D.C.; and Preston Valien, September 27, 1971, Washington, D.C. In later footnotes the citation of these interviews will read Composite Interview 2. 13. “Metamorphosis?” editorial, Nashville Banner, July 5, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 14. “More Than Unfortunate,” editorial, Nashville Tennessean, July 8, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 15. See, for example, Nashville Banner editorials “‘South’ and the FEPC,” July 13, 1945, and “Glorious Reconstruction,” July 19, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 16. Bonita H. Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971. 17. Edgar T. Rouzeau, “White Students Join Negroes in Classes at Fisk,” New York Herald Tribune, July 8, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 18. “Equal Education for Negroes Discussed at Race Conference,” Nashville Banner, July 18, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 19. “Agriculture, ‘Abundant Life,’ Themes of Speakers at Fisk,” Nashville Banner, July 18, 1945, and “‘Castes’ Held Basis for U.S. ‘Fascism,’” Nashville Banner, July 19, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 20. James Pilkington, “Dr. C. S. Johnson Summarizes Results of Fisk Race Meeting,” Nashville Banner, July 20, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers. 21. “The Fisk Institute,” editorial, Nashville Globe–Independent, July 27, 1945, Johnson Scrapbook, Johnson Papers.

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22. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 2; unless otherwise indicated. 23. Charles to Marie Johnson, June 4, 1946, Private Letters. 24. Thomas Elsa Jones, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 20, 1971. 25. James Pilkington, “Race Relations Meeting Opens at Fisk University,” Nashville Banner, July 2, 1946, and “Economic, Social Changes to Aid Race Problem Urged,” Nashville Tennessean, July 3, 1945. 26. See, for example, the following front-page stories in the Nashville Banner: James Pilkington, “CIO Leader at Fisk Says—Labor and Negro Vote ‘Will Redeem South,’” July 19, 1946; and Danny Bingham, “Negro CIO Official Demands Defeat of McKellar, Stewart,” July 16, 1947. Again in 1948, although this time not on the front page, the Nashville Banner reported a speech by Robert K. Carr, a member of the Dartmouth College faculty and executive secretary of President Harry S Truman’s Civil Rights Commission, with the following headline: “Race Relations Speaker Urges ‘Force Bill,’” Nashville Banner, June 30, 1948. 27. “West Defines City’s Duties in Talk at Fisk Institute,” Nashville Tennessean, July 4, 1949. 28. Wallace Westfeldt, “Industry Told Ban Segregation,” Nashville Tennessean, June 29, 1955; and Robert Churchwell, “Mitchell Says American Conscience Integration Key,” Nashville Banner, June 29, 1955. 29. See Charles S. Johnson, introduction to Race Relations in Human Relations, Summary Report, Third Annual Institute of Race Relations, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, July 1–20, 1946 (Nashville: Race Relations Department, American Missionary Association, 1946), i–vi. 30. Composite Interview 2. 31. “Church Must Choose Caste or Christianity—Gallagher,” Nashville Tennessean, July 2, 1946. 32. James Pilkington, “Some Roots of Race Prejudice Are Discussed at Fisk Meeting,” Nashville Banner, July 4, 1946. 33. “Fisk Hears Brazil Professor Discuss Race Problems,” Nashville Banner, July 2, 1948. 34. “Race Relations Speaker Urges ‘Force Bill,’” Nashville Banner, June 30, 1948; and “Race Problems International, Speaker Says,” Nashville Banner, July 1, 1950. 35. “Fisk Speaker Discusses Race Problems,” Nashville Banner, July 5, 1948; and “Racial Problems in Africa Outlined at Fisk Institute,” Nashville Banner, June 28, 1949. 36. Johnson introduction to Race Relations in Human Relations, vi. 37. Nashville Tennessean, July 6, 1944. 38. “Dr. Reid Says Racial Prejudice Force Lost,” Nashville Tennessean, July 8, 1944. 39. “Race Institute Speaker Warns Against Rise of Totalitarianism,” Nashville Banner, July 6, 1946.

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Notes to Chapter 14 40. “Warns Race Against Anti-Semitic Trap,” Chicago Defender, July 29,

1944. 41. “Race Problem Is National, Time and Life Writer Says,” Nashville Banner, July 19, 1947. 42. “Race Relations ‘Dream’ Isn’t Easy to Achieve, Institute Told,” Nashville Banner, July 3, 1952. 43. See, for example, Johnson to Herman H. Long, March 16, 1954, Johnson Papers. 44. Florence E. Dickerson, administrative officer, John Hay Whitney Foundation, to Patrick J. Gilpin, n.d. [September, 1974]; and “Report to John Hay Whitney Foundation on Use of Grant to Arrow, Inc., 1956,” January 7, 1957, in John Hay Whitney Foundation Files, New York, New York. 45. “Discrimination Tactics Cited at Fisk Institute,” Nashville Banner, July 6, 1948. 46. “Speaker Says Indian Never Given Chance,” Nashville Banner, July 5, 1952. 47. Robert Churchwell, “Whites Stealing Indians’ Water, Fisk Speaker Says,” Nashville Banner, July 9, 1956. 48. “Prejudice Held Cataract of the Spirit,” Nashville Banner, June 29, 1950. 49. Robert Churchwell, “Southwest Has Varied Racial Problem, Fisk Institute Told,” Nashville Banner, June 29, 1954. 50. “‘Negroes Labor Vote Significant’: Houston,” Chicago Defender, July 22, 1944. 51. James Pilkington, “Labor and Negro Vote ‘Will Redeem South,’” Nashville Banner, July 19, 1946. 52. Danny Bingham, “Negro CIO Official Demands Defeat of McKellar, Stewart,” Nashville Banner, July 16, 1947. 53. Virginia Bivin, “CIO ‘Southern Drive’ Cited at Race Relations Institute,” Nashville Banner, July 12, 1947. 54. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 2. 55. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 2; the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Tennessean for June and July, 1944–56; and the Summaries of the Race Relations Institutes, Johnson Papers. 56. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 2. 57. The following discussion is based on Composite Interview 2; the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Tennessean for June and July, 1944–56; and the Summaries of the Race Relations Institutes, Johnson Papers. 58. Danny Bingham, “Race Problem One of Many in South, Institute Is Told,” Nashville Banner, July 18, 1947. 59. Robert Churchwell, “Fisk Speaker Flays South’s Backwardness,” Nashville Banner, July 11, 1951. 60. Wallace Westfeldt, “Integration Seen Within 8 Years,” Nashville Tennessean, July 5, 1955. 61. See “‘Negroes Labor Vote Significant’: Houston,” Chicago Defender, July 22, 1944; “Race Relations Progress Held Hinging on Education,” Nashville Tennessean, July 20, 1946; “Political Status of Negroes Cited,” Nashville Tennessean,

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July 10, 1948; “Education Cited as Means to Better Racial Relations,” Nashville Tennessean, July 1, 1949; and “Race Relations Speaker Cites Minority Issues,” Nashville Banner, July 1, 1949. 62. See “Fisk Speaker Urges Negroes to Enter State Universities,” Nashville Tennessean, July 7, 1950; “Fisk Race Relations Speakers Announced,” July 6, 1952; “N.Y. Attorney to Review Segregation at Institute,” Nashville Tennessean, July 5, 1953; “Court Test Only Beginning of Race Fight, Speaker Says,” Nashville Tennessean, July 7, 1953; “Institute to Focus on Integration,” Nashville Tennessean, July 4, 1954; “Desegregation Hopes Seen on Local Level,” Nashville Tennessean, July 8, 1954; Garry Fullerton, “Negroes Holding Conference on Race Relations Institute Vote Decision,” Nashville Tennessean, July 6, 1956; “Overcrowded Conditions Cause Violence, Fisk Speaker Says,” Nashville Tennessean, July 7, 1952; “Fisk Race Institute Speaker Hits Unlimited Debate Law,” Nashville Banner, July 8, 1952; Robert Churchwell, “Public Must Be Shown Integration Better Than ‘Mob Rule’—Marshall,” Nashville Banner, July 6, 1956; Composite Interview 2; and Ball, A Defiant Life: Thurgood Marshall and the Persistence of Racism in America (New York: Crown Press, 1998). 63. See Johnson, “The American Missionary Association Institute of Race Relations,” 568–74; Betsy Rowlett, “Hays Asks Compromise on Civil Rights Program,” Nashville Tennessean, June 29, 1949; “N. C. Educator Gives Plan to Aid Desegregation,” Nashville Tennessean, July 2, 1955; “Dr. Smiley Blanton Addresses Fisk Race Relations Institute,” Nashville Banner, June 29, 1949; “Negro on Spot in Integration, Says Speaker,” Nashville Banner, July 1, 1955; Robert Churchwell, “Montgomery Bus Boycott Laid to ‘Mistreatment,’” Nashville Banner, July 13, 1956; and Composite Interview 2. 64. Composite Interview 2. 65. See Summaries of the Race Relations Institutes, 1950–56, Johnson Papers; “Institute Speaker Urges ‘Positive Racial Democracy,’” Nashville Tennessean, July 9, 1950; “Fisk Head to Deliver Race Institute Keynote,” Nashville Tennessean, July 2, 1951; “Fisk President Notes Progress,” Nashville Tennessean, July 3, 1951; Jane Carter, “Racial System Held Test of Sincerity,” Nashville Tennessean, July 1, 1952; Wallace Westfeldt, “Integration Foes Held Not Typical,” Nashville Tennessean, June 28, 1955; Garry Fullerton, “Fisk Head Asks Race Leadership,” Nashville Tennessean, July 4, 1956; “Fisk Race Relations Speaker Warns of Boasting of Gains,” Nashville Banner, July 1, 1952; Robert Churchwell, “Prejudice Analyzed at Fisk Racial Parley,” Nashville Banner, June 30, 1953; Robert Churchwell, “Race Institute Founder Summarizes 10th Session,” Nashville Banner, July 11, 1953; “Institute on Race Relations Opens at Fisk,” Nashville Banner, June 28, 1954; “Prompt Desegregation Urged by Fisk President,” Nashville Banner, June 27, 1955; “Tennessee’s Integration Called Glacial,” Nashville Banner, July 4, 1956; Composite Interview 2; and Johnson, “The Speeches of Charles Spurgeon Johnson: Addresses Delivered to Institutes of Race Relations, 1950–1956,” vol. 11, unpublished typescript assembled by Fisk University Library Special Collection, March 1959. 66. Richard Robbins, Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1996), 123.

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67. The following analysis drawn from Robert C. Weaver, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, August 16, 1974.

Chapter 15. Internationalism: World War II and the Cold War 1. Telegram, William Benton to Johnson, February 16, 1946, Johnson Scrapbook, vol. 1, Johnson Papers. 2. Johnson Scrapbook, vol. 1, 14, Johnson Papers. 3. “Itinerary,” loose notes in Johnson Papers. 4. Report of the United States Education Mission to Japan: Submitted to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Tokyo, Japan, March 30, 1946 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1946); and Charles S. Johnson, Education and the Cultural Crisis, Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 24–53. In a letter to Elizabeth L. Allen of the Rosenwald office after his return, Johnson reported that “the section of the report on which I worked had to do with materials for the revision of the textbooks in the field of history and geography” (see Johnson to Allen, April 9, 1946, Rosenwald Papers). 5. The following discussion is based on “Democratization of Japan: A Proposal,” (1946?), Johnson Papers. This paper apparently was prepared by Johnson and his staff for the Civilian Information and Education Section before he sailed. A reference to the paper is made in a letter written after his return (see Johnson to Allen, April 9, 1946, Rosenwald Papers). 6. The materials for the following discussion can be found in many places. Johnson conveniently brought them together in “Some Cultural Implications of the Re-orientation of Education in Japan,” March 25, 1949, Johnson Papers. For a detailed treatment of Johnson’s trip to Japan, see Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson: An Intellectual Biography” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1973), 235–249. See also, Johnson, Education and the Cultural Crisis, 24–53. 7. Education Mission to Japan, 57–62. 8. “A World View of Color,” radio talk, Council of Church Women, Columbus, Ohio, October 15, 1944, Johnson Papers. 9. Telegram, Benton to Johnson, September 11, 1946, Johnson Scrapbook vol. 2, 95, Johnson Papers. 10. Benton to Johnson, September 12, 1946, Johnson Scrapbook, vol. 2, 95. 11. Benton to Johnson, October 28, 1946, Johnson Scrapbook, vol. 1, 39, Johnson Papers. 12. Max L. Etheart to Johnson, October 29, 1946, Johnson Papers. 13. “New Fisk President, Back in U.S. Expresses Deep Faith in UNESCO,” Chicago Defender, January 4, 1947, Johnson Scrapbook, vol. 1, 49, Johnson Papers. 14. “The Philosophy and Implementation of UNESCO” (Nashville: Vanderbilt University, November 9, 1948), Johnson Papers. 15. Ibid. 16. See Charles A. Thomson to Harvie Branscomb, October 6, 1949; and Branscomb to Thomson, October 14, 1949, Johnson Papers.

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17. Charles S. Johnson, “The Negro in Post–War Reconstruction: His Hopes, Fears and Possibilities,” Journal of Negro Education 11, no. 4 (October, 1942), 467. 18. See “A World View of Color,” radio talk, Council of Church Women, Columbus, Ohio, October 15, 1944, Johnson Papers. 19. Johnson followed one basic speech, altering it to fit local conditions. See “UNESCO Begins at Home,” presented at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, n.d. (1947?); and “UNESCO Begins at Home,” presented at the University of Illinois, July 6, 1948, Johnson Papers. 20. Here Johnson would have done well to note the long history of antiSemitism in the Soviet Union. 21. “The Defense of Peace: UNESCO’s Third Year,” Women’s City Club, Cleveland, Ohio, March 31, 1949, Johnson Papers. 22. See “What Effect Do Our Race Relations Have on Our Foreign Policy?” Town Meeting: Bulletin of America’s Town Meeting of the Air, vol 15: 51, broadcast by stations of the American Broadcasting Company, April 12, 1950, Johnson Papers. 23. Charles S. Johnson, “American Minorities and Civil Rights in 1950,” Journal of Negro Education 20, no. 3 (summer 1951): 485–93. Both the quotation and the following discussion are taken from this article. 24. Charles S. Johnson, “A Southern Negro’s View of the South,” New York Times Magazine, September 23, 1956, 67.

Chapter 16. Conflict over Fisk Leadership 1. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 347 U.S. 483, 1954. 2. Thomas Elsa Jones quoted in William H. Baldwin, “Fisk Inauguration,” Opportunity (January 1927). 3. Richard Robbins, Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Oxford: University of Mississippi, 1996), 139. 4. Edwin R. Embree to Thomas E. Jones, April 14, 1937, box 198, folder Rosenwald Papers. 5. Thomas E. Jones to Fisk Alumni, January 1945, Jones Papers. 6. James E. Stamps, president of the General Alumni Association to the Fisk Board of Trustees, April 27, 1945, box 20, folder 19, Jones Papers; Ernest R. Alexander to Charles H. Wesley and Carter Wesley “only,” memorandum, reel 58 Du Bois Papers, with special permission from David Graham Du Bois; Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Board, reel 58, Du Bois Papers. 7. James E. Stamps to General Alumni Association and the Fisk Board of Trustees, November 23, 1945, reel 58, Du Bois Papers. 8. St. Elmo Brady to James E. Stamps, May 5, 1946, Du Bois Papers; Ernest R. Alexander to St. Elmo Brady, May 10, 1946, Du Bois Papers; James E. Stamps to President Thomas E. Jones, May 20, 1946, Du Bois Papers. 9. Joe M. Richardson, A History of Fisk University, 1865–1946 (Alabama: University of Alabama, 1980); James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the

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South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Eric Anderson and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., Dangerous Donations: Northern Philanthropy and Southern Black Education, 1902–1930 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999). 10. James D. Anderson, “Philanthropic Control Over Private Black Higher Education,” in Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad, ed. Robert Arnove (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980). 11. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960, ed. H. Aptheker (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 27. 12. Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Fisk University, June 25, 1908, Fisk University Archives. 13. Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South. 14. Fisk Endowment Campaign, memorandum, May 25, 1923, Rockefeller Archives, General Education Board Papers, box 23; Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Fisk University, November 9, 1915, May 2, 1921, Fisk University Archives. 15. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Diuturni Silenti,” in The Education of Black People, 41. 16. For more information on student revolts on black college campuses during the 1920s see Raymond Wolters, The New Negro on Campus: Black College Rebellions of the 1920s (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975). For information on the disparaging difference between the Fisk and Hampton endowments see Stephen J. Peeps, “Northern Philanthropy and the Emergence of Black Higher Education—Do-gooders, Compromisers, and Co-conspirators?” Journal of Negro Education 50, no. 3 (1981): 251–69. 17. Thomas Elsa Jones was a Quaker. 18. Ernest R. Alexander to James E. Stamps, April 11, 1946; reel 58, Du Bois Papers; “Highly Confidential Report to the President of the Alumni Association, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Comptroller and Alumni Representatives on the Trustee Board of Fisk University,” September 30, 1946; Suggestion from James E. Stamps to W. E. B. Du Bois for the fifth paragraph for the Nation article, 18 July 1946, reel 58, Du Bois Papers; Edwin R. Embree to L. Hollingsworth Wood, July 18, 1946, and L. Hollingsworth Wood to Edwin R. Embree, July 29, 1946, both located in box 198, folder 4, Edwin R. Embree Papers, Rosenwald Papers; Charles S. Johnson, The Negro College Graduate (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938). 19. Wesley’s name was submitted for nomination to the Fisk Board although he never officially gave his OK. It is not surprising that James E. Stamps wanted to nominate Wesley for the Fisk presidency. In 1926 he nominated Wesley for the Howard University presidency. Stamps and Wesley had a long lasting friendship that started when the two Fisk graduates roomed together in Divinity Hall at Yale College in 1911. James E. Stamps to General Alumni Association, March 19,1946, Du Bois Papers; Ernest R. Alexander to Carter Wesley, December 14, 1945, Charles H. Wesley Papers; Janette H. Harris, “Charles Harris Wesley, Educator and Historian 1891–1947” (Ph.D. dissertation, Howard University, 1975); Charles H. White to Charles H. Wesley, November 15, 1945; Ernest R. Alexander to James E. Stamps, December 14, 1945, Wesley Papers. Minutes of Spe-

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cial Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Howard University, June 30, 1926; Charles H. Wesley to St. Elmo Brady, November 6, 1945, Wesley Papers. 20. Robbins, Sidelines Activist; Charles H. Wesley to Ernest R. Alexander, July 17, 1946; Ernest R. Alexander to Charles H. Wesley and Carter Wesley “only” June 14, 1946, both on reel 58, Du Bois Papers; and address by Charles S. Johnson, February 1947, Rosenwald Papers 21. Harris, “Charles Harris Wesley,” 168; Ernest R. Alexander’s notes from a Fisk Board meeting, September 30, 1946, reel 58, Du Bois Papers; and L. Hollingsworth Wood to Edwin R. Embree, July 29, 1946, box 198, folder 4, Rosenwald Papers. 22. W. E. B. Du Bois to Ernest R. Alexander, July 11, 1946, reel 58, Du Bois Papers; W. E. B. Du Bois to Ernest R. Alexander, June 19, 1946, reel 58, Du Bois Papers. 23. Robbins, Sidelines Activist; W. E. B. Du Bois to Fred L. Brownlee, 23 September 1946, Du Bois Papers. 24. W. E. B. Du Bois to Fred L. Brownlee, September 23, 1946. It is interesting to note that neither Du Bois nor Brownlee mention Johnson by name in their correspondence. Fred L. Brownlee to W. E. B. Du Bois, October 15, 1946, Du Bois Papers. 25. W. E. B. Du Bois to Ernest R. Alexander July 11, 1946; Carter Wesley to Ernest R. Alexander, July 15, 1946; James E. Stamps to Ernest R. Alexander, July 18, 1946; James E. Stamps to Ernest R. Alexander, June 26, 1946; confidential memo to the president of the alumni association and alumni representatives on the Fisk Board of Trustees, July 12, 1946; Ernest R. Alexander to W. E. B. Du Bois, July 20, 1946; Sadie St. Clair Daniels to Ernest R. Alexander, July 23, 1946; W. E. B. Du Bois to Ms. Freda Kirchway, editor of Nation Magazine, July 26, 1946, all located on reel 58, Du Bois Papers. 26. Robbins, Sidelines Activist; Katrina Sanders, “Building Racial Tolerance Through Education: The Fisk University Race Relations Institute, 1944–1969” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1997), 120. 27. Louis R. Harlan, The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901, vol. 1 of Booker T. Washington (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). 28. David Levering Lewis. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 270; Crisis (February 1925). 29. W. E. B. Du Bois, Education of Black People, 146. 30. Carter Wesley was the editor of the black newspaper, the Houston Informer, until the end of 1932, when he became the publisher. 31. Charles H. Wesley to Ernest R. Alexander, November 15, 1946, Wesley Papers; Harris, “Charles Harris Wesley.” Information pertaining to Johnson’s challenge to match the General Education Board’s endowment campaign mandate is located in boxes 13, 14, 15, 51, 52, 53 54, 56, 57, and 125, Johnson Papers; John Hope Franklin to Marybeth Gasman, June 5, 1999. 32. W. E. B. Du Bois to Ernest R. Alexander, November 9, 1946, reel 58, Du Bois Papers. 33. Herbert Aptheker, ed., Selections, 1944–1963, vol. 3 of The correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976).

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34. “Charles S. Johnson made first Negro President of Fisk University,” New York Times, November 9, 1947; philanthropist and board member correspondence is located in boxes 13, 14, 15, 51, 52, 53 54, 56, 57, and 125, Johnson Papers. 35. Edwin R. Embree to L. Hollingsworth Wood, November 21, 1947, Edwin R. Embree Papers, Bonita H. Valien to Johnson’s personal assistant, October 3, 1947, box 47, folder 13, Johnson Papers; Charles S. Johnson to George St. John, October 28, 1948, Johnson Papers. 36. Telegram from Harry S Truman to Charles S. Johnson, Johnson Papers. 37. For more information on these programs, see Johnson Papers, 1955–56 clipping file, specifically, Charles S. Johnson to Marie Johnson, July 25, 1956, box 144, folder 8. In this letter, Johnson notes the growth of the university. 38. Victor Grant Backus, “New Program at Fisk University,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1956. 39. Charles S. Johnson, “Four Pillars of Faith,” November 7, 1947, box 47, folder 9, Johnson Papers; Robbins, Sidelines Activist.

Chapter 17. The Basic College: Nurturing Scholars and Leaders 1. Peggy Alsup, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 31, 1999. 2. Jane G. Fort to Marybeth Gasman, March 19, 1999. 3. Peggy Alsup, with Marybeth Gasman, March 31, 1999; Jane G. Fort to Marybeth Gasman, March 19, 1999; Prince Rivers, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 25, 1999. Johnson’s goals as defined by the students are corroborated by both faculty (Oswald Schrag to Marybeth Gasman, April 30, 1999; Mary Thompson to Marybeth Gasman, March 28, 1999; Marian Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, February, 24 1998; Marian Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, March 5, 1998; Nelson Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, March 5, 1998; Nelson Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, February 20, 1998; and Gladys Forde, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 27, 1999) and conversations between President Johnson and the General Education Board administration (internal report by Fred McCuistion to GEB officers, January 18, 1952; internal report by Robert Calkins, March 6, 1952; internal report by Robert Calkins, March 12, 1952; General Education Board Papers, box 419, folder 4398, Rockefeller Archives). 4. Fisk Board of Trustee minutes, January 23, 1951, Johnson Papers. 5. Fisk Board of Trustee minutes, January 23, 1951, Johnson Papers. 6. These cases included Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948), Sweatt v. Painter et al., 339 U.S. 639 (1950), and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education et al., 339 U.S. 637 (1950). 7. Charles S. Johnson to Robert Calkins, November 28, 1951; internal report by Robert Calkins to GEB officers, December 27, 1951; General Education Board Papers, box 419, folder 4392, Rockefeller Archives. 8. Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948); Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

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9. Charles S. Johnson to Fisk Board of Trustees, Annual President’s Report, 1950, box 40, folder 5; Fisk Board of Trustee minutes, October 16, 1951, box 16, folder 10, Johnson Papers. 10. Jane G. Fort to Marybeth Gasman, March 19, 1999. 11. Progress Report for the Basic College, March 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 140, folder 1294, Rockefeller Archives; Vivian Norton to Marybeth Gasman, May 11, 1999. 12. Given the context and time period of Johnson’s relationships with philanthropists, there were few if any female foundation leaders. 13. Charles S. Johnson in Fisk University Board of Trustee minutes, October 17, 1952, box 13, folder 3; Fisk University Board of Trustee minutes, October 16, 1951, box 16, folder 10, Johnson Papers. Richard Robbins, Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Oxford: University of Mississippi), 4; and Charles S. Johnson to Fisk Board of Trustees, Annual President’s Report, 1950, box 40, folder 5; Charles S. Johnson to William Baldwin, June 6, 1951, box 13, folder 1; and Charles S. Johnson to Marie Johnson, August 22, 1952, box 144, folder 4, Johnson Papers. 14. The Ford Foundation also sponsored early entrants programs at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of Wisconsin. Fisk was the only black college chosen to participate in the program. 15. Quote in Charles S. Johnson to Fisk Board of Trustees, Annual President’s Report, 1950, box 40, folder 5, Johnson Papers. 16. Charles S. Johnson to Fisk Board of Trustees, Annual President’s Report, 1950, box 40, folder 5, Johnson Papers. 17. Peggy Alsup, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 31, 1999. 18. Charles S. Johnson to Fisk Board of Trustees, Annual President’s Report, 1950, box 40, folder 5, Johnson Papers; Progress Report for the Basic College, March 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 140, folder 1294, Rockefeller Archives. 19. Internal report by Fred McCuistion to GEB officers, January 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 419, folder 4398; Progress Report for the Basic College, March 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 140, folder 1294, Rockefeller Archives. 20. Progress Report for the Basic College, March 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 140, folder 1294, Rockefeller Archives. Prince Rivers, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 25, 1999. 21. Vivian Norton to Marybeth Gasman, May 11, 1999; Prince Rivers, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 25, 1999; Progress Report for the Basic College, March 18, 1952, General Education Board Papers, box 140, folder 1294, Rockefeller Archives. 22. Prince Rivers, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 25, 1999. 23. Richard Thornell, interview with Marybeth Gasman, August 23, 2001. 24. David Levering Lewis, interview with Marybeth Gasman, August 1, 2001. 25. Peggy Alsup, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 31, 1999. David Levering Lewis also recalls these dinners (interview with Marybeth Gasman, August 1, 2001).

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26. A Report of the Basic College Curriculum Committee, May 17, 1952, box 15, folder 3; Bill Zeigler to alumni, February 2, 1954, box 15, folder 4, Johnson Papers. 27. Prince Rivers, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 25, 1999.

Chapter 18. The Red Scare Hits Home 1. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 2. Charles S. Johnson, “Famous Sociologist Asks, Answers Some Key Questions for Negroes,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1942, 32–33. 3. Richard Hofstadter and Walter Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). 4. Richard King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1980); Charles S. Johnson, Into the Mainstream: A Survey of Best Practices in Race Relations in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947); Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); Willis Weatherford and Charles S. Johnson, Race Relations: Adjustment of Whites and Negroes in the United States (Boston: D.C. Health, 1934); Richard Robbins, Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1996). 5. Warren Taylor and Frank Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Fisk University,” American Association of University Professors Bulletin 45, no. 1 (March 1959): 33. 6. The National Sharecroppers Fund was labeled as a communist front by HUAC (Charles S. Johnson quoted in Robbins, Sidelines Activist, 149). 7. Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 8. W. E. B. Du Bois was never formally engaged in activities on behalf of a foreign country. This charge was obviously brought in order to suppress Du Bois’s political activities. 9. A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century: The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. H. Aptheker (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 391; Herbert Aptheker, ed. The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 3 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978) 306–7. 10. Lee Lorch was recommended to the university by Judge Hubert T. Delany, who was one of the first African American judges in New York City and a close friend of Charles Johnson. For more information on Lee Lorch’s political activities prior to his position at Fisk see Cedric Belfrage, The American Inquisition, 1945–1960 (Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill, 1973); David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978); Griffen Fariello, Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition, An Oral History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995); Robbins, Sidelines Activist; and Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, 289.

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307

11. For evidence of Johnson’s instrumental role in bringing prominent scholars to Fisk see box 41, folder 14, Johnson Papers. 12. Several of Lorch’s former colleagues have commented on his stature on the Fisk campus: Nelson Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, February 20, 1998; Marian Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, February 24, 1998; and Gladys Forde, interview with Marybeth Gasman, March 27, 1998. In a letter to Marybeth Gasman dated February 15, 1998, Lee Lorch noted the high percentage of Ph.D.’s earned by former Fisk graduates. For more information on the Fisk math department under Lorch’s direction see Vivienne Mayes, American Mathematical Monthly (November 1976). 13. The discussion of the relationship between Lorch and the Fisk faculty is based on Blyden Jackson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, March 22, 1972. 14. Lee Lorch, “Discriminatory Practices,” Science 114 (1951): 161; Fariello, Red Scare. 15. Lorch initially asked the principal of Pearl Elementary if his daughter could enroll. The principal, who had known Lorch’s daughter for many years, said that he would welcome her. 16. Lee Lorch, interview with Marybeth Gasman, February 15, 1998; Lee Lorch quoted in Fariello, Red Scare, 493; “Fisk May Ask Lorch to Resign. Professor Dodges Queries on Links With Communism,” Nashville Tennessean, September 16, 1954. 17. Lee Lorch, interview with Marybeth Gasman, February 15, 1998; Lee Lorch quoted in Fariello, Red Scare, 493. 18. Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure,”44; “Lorch says Committee Broke Rules Calling Him,” Nashville Banner, September 16, 1954; Fariello, Red Scare, 493; Robbins, Sidelines Activist. 19. “Lorch says Committee Broke Rules Calling Him,” Nashville Banner, September 16, 1954; “Fisk May Ask Lorch to Resign. Professor Dodges Queries on Links With Communism,” Nashville Tennessean, September 16, 1954. 20. Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” 21. The hearing was held to investigate Communist infiltration in Dayton, Ohio. Lorch, who had only resided in Cincinnati, was not told this until he arrived before the committee (Fariello, Red Scare); Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” 22. Lee Lorch quoted in Fariello, Red Scare, 493. The other dissenting member of the board was Wendall Phillips, the vice president of a major Nashville bank at the time. The one black trustee was L. Howard Bennett, who went on to become assistant secretary of defense for the United States government and chair of the Fisk Board of Trustees. According to John Hope Franklin, “Charles Johnson assumed that Howard Bennett was his friend and would support him—when it came to Lee Lorch he did not.” John Hope Franklin, interview with Marybeth Gasman, June 5, 1998. Detailed information regarding the April 29, 1955, board meeting is located in the Fisk Board of Trustee Minutes and Johnson Papers. For more information on the specific voting patterns see, Fariello, Red Scare; and Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” 23. Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure,” 35; Schrecker, No Ivory Tower.

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Notes to Chapter 18

24. Supporters included William J. Zeigler, a Fisk alumnus and Chicago dentist; Percy L. Julian, the second black ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences and a leading figure in organic chemistry; Reverend Henry Allen Boyd, president of the Citizens Savings Bank, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Although August Meier states in A White Scholar and the Black Community, 1945–1965 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) that W. E. B. Du Bois was not willing to oppose Lorch’s dismissal, this assertion is inaccurate (see Du Bois’s collected works published by the University of Massachusetts [1973–78] for his unambiguous opposition to Lorch’s dismissal); Lee Lorch, interview with Marybeth Gasman, February 26, 1998; Robbins, Sidelines Activist; Warren and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure,” 41. 25. Lee Lorch, interview with Marybeth Gasman, February 15, 1998. 26. Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure.” Lorch applied for his next post at Philander Smith College in Little Rock even before his trial on charges of contempt of Congress. To its credit, NSF again awarded Lorch a grant. According to Lorch, “the President of PSC happily activated it” (Lee Lorch, interview with Marybeth Gasman, February 15, 1998). 27. Charles S. Johnson, “Famous Sociologist Asks, Answers Some Key Questions for Negroes,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1942. 28. Taylor and Fetter, “Academic Freedom and Tenure;” Robbins, Sidelines Activist. Edwin Embree was the president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund until its closure in 1948. Will Alexander was the head of the American Missionary Association. John Hay Whitney was the founder and chair of the Whitney Foundation. James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Jayne Beilke, “To Render Better Service: The Role of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellowship Program in Graduate and Professional Degrees of African Americans” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1994); and Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era. Du Bois did spend time at Atlanta University (instructor 1897–1910; department chair, 1934–44). 29. John Hope Franklin, interview with Marybeth Gasman, June 5, 1999. 30. Nelson Fuson to Marybeth Gasman, February 20, 1998. 31. Anthony M. Platt, E. Franklin Frazier Reconsidered (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991); Robbins, Sidelines Activist; John Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985). 32. Robbins, Sidelines Activist; Lee Lorch quoted in Fariello, Red Scare, 494. 33. Patrick J. Gilpin, “Charles S. Johnson and the Second Red Scare: An Episode,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1978): 76–88. 34. Charles S. Johnson, Statement on Supreme Court Decision, May 17, 1954, folder 34, box 174, Johnson Papers; Kenneth B. Clark, Prejudice and Your Child (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); Charles S. Johnson, “Famous Sociologist Asks, Answers Some Key Questions for Negroes,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1942. Charles S. Johnson, “The Time is Now,” Remarks for the UNCF Campaign Meeting, Detroit, Michigan, July 18, 1956, Johnson Papers; Ralph Pearson,

Notes to Chapter 19

309

“Reflections on Black Colleges: The Historical Perspective of Charles S. Johnson,” History of Education Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1983): 55–68. 35. Vivian W. Henderson, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, November 13, 1971. 36. Letter to the editor of the Arkansas Gazette, November 9, 1957, Barnett Papers.

Chapter 19. Solomon on the Cumberland 1. See, for example, “Minority Tactics and Strategy,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1942; and Johnson to Barnett, September 26, 1942; and Johnson to Barnett, June 14, 1956, Johnson Papers. 2. The following discussion is based on interviews with Patrick J. Gilpin: Victor G. Backus, May 20, 1971; Arna Bontemps, March 27, 1971; Edmonia Grant Davidson, September 30, 1971; Vivian W. Henderson, November 13, 1971; Giles A. Hubert, November 4, 1971; Blyden Jackson, March 22, 1972; Lewis Wade Jones, September 10, 1971; Charles R. Lawrence, March 30, 1972; Herman H. Long, September 9, 1971; Hattie M. Perry, November 7, 1971; Bonita H. Valien, September 27 and 29, 1971; Preston Valien, September 27, 1971; and Donald Wyatt, November 4, 1971. 3. Dewey W. Grantham, Jr., “The Regional Imagination: Social Scientists and the American South,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 34, no. 1 (February 1968): 3–32 at 12. Grantham’s article is based on his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 9, 1967. 4. See David Levering Lewis’s two-volume biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), and W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight For Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000). See also E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955). Also crucial to understanding African American leadership of the era is Louis Harlan’s two-volume biography of Booker T. Washington, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1865–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), and Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), and Jervis Anderson’s biography of A. Philip Randolph, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). The pioneering but still classic work on the ideologies of African American leaders from Reconstruction to World War I remains August Meier’s Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Radical Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963). 5. See Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, chap. 8 and vol. 2., especially chapters 12 and 13. 6. See Bonita Valien, interview with Patrick J. Gilpin, September 27 and 29, 1971; and Preston Valien, “The Montgomery Bus Protest as a Social Movement,” in

310

Notes to Epilogue

Race Relations: Problems and Theory: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Park, edited by Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 112–27.

Epilogue 1. Composite Interview 3. 2. Johnson to Claude A. Barnett, June 15, 1956, Johnson Papers. 3. Johnson to Fred L. Brownlee, October 26, 1956, Brownlee Papers. 4. After Johnson’s death, Arna Bontemps recalled that Johnson’s health must have been failing during the last year of his life. For example, he arranged for his sister, Julia Johnson, to be in Nashville with his wife, Marie. The frequency of migraine headaches, which had always plagued Johnson, increased, and in going through his personal belongings after his death, the family found medication, indicating that Johnson was under a physician’s care. However, if Johnson were in poor health, it does not appear to have been common knowledge (Arna Bontemps, March 27, 1971). 5. This quotation and the following discussion are drawn from William J. Faulkner to Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1971; and Rupert B. Vance, October 27, 1971. 6. Quoted in William J. Faulkner to Patrick J. Gilpin, December 10, 1971.

Index Adams, Romanzo, and Shadow of the Plantation, 42 African Diary, and Liberia, 83 Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 109, 113 Alexander, Ernest R., 215, 218–20; and the Fisk presidency, 223 Alexander, Will W., 104, 142, 147, 170, 172, 184, 197, 251, 253, 254; and the Chicago Race Relations Commission, 12; and The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 73, 110, 116; and Farm Security Administration, 113, 120; and the National Interracial Conference, 125; Johnson’s closest friends, 137; and Southern Liberalism, 143, 161; and Southern Regional Council, 152–53 Alsup, Peggy, and the Basic College, 228, 233, 235 American Association of University Professors, and the Lee Lorch incident, 230, 239, 243, 248 American Colonization Society, 88 Americo-Liberians, 82–87, 89 American Missionary Association, 10, 31, 190; Fisk Department of Social Science, 97; Fisk Department of Race Relations, 158, 170, 172; The Monthly Summary, 177; Race Relations Institute, 183–85, 293–94 (notes)

Ames, Jesse Daniel, and the Southern Regional Council 147, 148, 151, 152 Anti-Slavery Convention, and Liberia, 82, 87 Ashmore, Harry S., and Southern Educational Reporting Service, 160–64 Atlanta Compromise, 38, 145 Baker, Josephine, and Harlem Renaissance, 21 Baldwin, William H., and Harlem Renaissance, 20, 222, and Ruth S. Baldwin, 222 Baldwin, Jr., William H., and the Basic College, 231 Bancroft, Edgar Addison, and the Chicago Race Relations Commission, 12, 14 Bankhead-Jones Act, and cotton tenancy, 111–13, 251, 254 Barclay, Arthur, and Liberia, 82–83 Barnett, Claude A., 117, 173; Bitter Canaan, 91; cotton tenancy, 111–12; Durham Statement 150; Southern Regional Council, 153; Southern Educational Reporting Service, 168, 257 Barnes, Albert C., and the Harlem Renaissance, 20, 28 Barrett, Reginald (Fisk faculty), 99 Barthe, Richmond, and Harlem Renaissance, 21

311

312

Index

Basic College, 9, 227–35, 252 Benchley, Robert C., and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Bennett, Gwendolyn B., and Harlem Renaissance, 20, 22 Bennett, L. Howard, and Lee Lorch incident, 307 (notes) Benton, William, and UNESCO, 201, 203, 204 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 98, 104; Johnson’s biography of, 118 Bitter Canaan, and Liberia, 83, 87, 91–92 Black Nationalism, in comparison to Johnson’s perspective, 14, 213 Bond, Horace Mann (Fisk faculty), 99, 114, 123, 127, 149, 151, 175, 241 Bonner, Marietta, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Bontemps, Arna, 13, 123, 241; Harlem Renaissance, 22; Johnson’s protégé, 137–39, 310 (notes) Boyd, Henry Allen, 308 (notes) Branch, Winifred, (Johnson’s mother) 2, 3 Brown v. Board, 67, 158–60, 195, 196, 198, 213, 237, 242, 246 Brown, Sterling, 123; and Harlem Renaissance, 22; Fisk faculty, 241 Browning, Gordon, and Lee Lorch incident, 242 Brownlee, Fred, Into the Mainstream, 157–58; American Missionary Association, 172–74; Race Relations Institute, 184–85; selection of Fisk’s president, 220; 257 Bunche, Ralph, and the Fund for the Advancement of Education, 161, 277 (notes) Burgette, Marie Antoinette (Johnson’s spouse), 7–8 Calkins, Robert, 229 Carnegie, Andrew, and the Negro Encyclopedia Project, 221

Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Opportunity, 15, 27; and Gunnar Myrdal, 71; Fisk Department of Social Sciences, 97, 123 Carver, George Washington, 129 Cayton, Horace C., 123; as Park’s disciple, 32 Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 6, 31, 34; formation of, 11, 12–14 Chicago Riot, 11, 13 Chicago Urban League, 11, 12, 46, 138 Christy, Cuthbert, and Liberia, 82–84 Civic Club and Harlem Renaissance, 20–22 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 158–59 Clark, Kenneth B., 195, 247 Clement, Rufus E., and Southern Regional Council, 151, 153 Cole, Johnnetta, and Basic College, 234 Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 74, 143, 146, 186 Congress of Racial Equality, 65 Coombs, Philip H., and Fund for the Advancement of Education, 160–62, 164–67 Cotter, Joseph S., and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Cox, Oliver, C., and criticism of Robert E. Park, 45–46 Crisis, 19–20, 24, 228 Cullen, Countee, and Harlem Renaissance, 20, 22, 24, and poem from Johnson 83–84 Cuny, Warig, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Curti, Merle E., 223 Cutler, Addition T., 99, 106 Cravath, Erastus M, and history of Fisk, 215, 219 Dabney, Virginius, 143, 152, 163, 167 Dai, Bingham, 99, 122, 133 Davis, Benjamin J., and the Race Relations Institute, 199, 200

Index Davison Fund, and Eugene Kinkle Jones, 28 Delany, Hubert T., 306 (notes) Dent, Albert W., 152 Department of Social Sciences, 34, 77, 93–107 Dewey, John, 66; comparison to Booker T. Washington, 145 Douglas, Aaron, 19, 21, 137, 241 Dover, Cedric, 99, 103 Doyle, Bertram W., Park’s disciple, 32, 42; Fisk Faculty, 98, 123 Drake, St. Clair, Park’s disciple, 32 Dreiser, Theodore, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Du Bois, W. E. B., 1, 8, 10, 111, 141, 199, 246, 250, 253, 258; and Harlem Renaissance, 20, 32, 35, 45; Robert E. Park’s overlooking of his work, 47, 55, 56; disagreement with Chicago School of Sociology, 75; and Pan Africanism, 79, 103; National Interracial Conference, 125; critique of Booker T. Washington, 145; and Bonita Valien, 159, Fisk’s presidency, 215–25, 228, 231; civil liberties, 240; 269 (notes), 306 (notes), 308 (notes) Dunbar, Paul Laurance, and Harlem Renaissance, 21 Durham Conference, 147–50, 154 Eberhardt, Isabelle, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Ebony & Topaz, and Harlem Renaissance, 23–24 Egypt, Ophelia Settle, 31, 97–98, 102, 114, 127, 130; Johnson’s authorship of publications, 137 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 9, 258 Eleazer, Robert B., and Southern liberalism, 143 Ellison, Ralph, 45 Embree, Edwin R., 2, 5, 7, 93, 98, 113, 116–17, 132, 159, 160, 200, 219, 224, 231, 245, 250–52, 254; Harlem Re-

313

naissance, 26, 28, 34, 64; and The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 73, 110; Johnson’s close friends, 136–37; Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 144; Southern Regional Conference, 153; Department of Race Relations, 170, 172–73, 176, 181; Race Relations Institute, 184–91, 269 (notes), 294 (notes) Ethridge, Mark, segregationist, 143, 172 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 185, 193, 221, 253 Farming Security Administration, 113, 119, 120, 121, 147 Faulkner, Twe, J. R., and Liberia, 86 Fauset, Jessie, and Harlem Renaissance, 20, 28 Faust, Clarence, Ford Foundation, 231 Fetter, Frank, and the Lee Lorch incident, 243 Field, Marshall, and Southern Regional Council, 153 Firestone Company and involvement in encouraging slavery, 82; treatment of Johnson, 86, 89; investment in Liberia, 90 Fisk International Student Center, 234 Ford Foundation, 97, 231–32 Fort, Jane, and the Basic College, 227, 228 Franklin, John Hope 223, 241, 244, 307 (notes) Frazier, E. Franklin, and Harlem Renaissance, 22; Park’s disciple, 32, 46–47, 55; Fisk faculty, 98, 114, 123, 127, 136, 241; criticism of Johnson, 246; 269 (notes), 277 (notes) Frontier Force, and Liberia, 85, 88, 90 Frost, Robert, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Fund for the Advancement of Education, and The Monthly Summary, 160–63

314

Index

Fuson, Nelson, and Lee Lorch incident, 244, 246 Garvey, Marcus, 14, 213; Garvey Movement, 57–58; opposition to assimilation, 63, 75; and Pan Africanism, 79, 253–54; Johnson’s criticism of, 249 Gelders, Joseph S., and economic integration, 143 General Education Board, 98, 102, 120, 122; financing of the Negro College Graduate, 126; and funding of Southern Regional Council, 153; history of Fisk, 216–17; and W. E. B. Du Bois, 221; Basic College, 229–31 Gilpin, Charles, 21 Graham, Frank P., and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 144, 154, 197 Graham, Virginia Taylor, 16, 17 Granger, Lester B., 184, 191 Grant, Edmonia, 99, 119, 130, 133 Greanleaf, Simon, 88 Green, Paul, 22 Greenwood Foundation (see John Hay Whitney Foundation) Gullah Islanders, 47 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 10 Hancock, Gordon B. 147, 151–52 Harlem Renaissance, 6, 10, 19, 252; critique of Harlem Renaissance, 21–22; 24–25, 27; and Johnson’s appreciation of black cultural contributions, 77; Johnson’s spawning of the Renaissance, 79, 97, 138, 199; effect on Fisk, 228, 230, 235 Haydock, Charlie, and Fisk presidency, 215 Hayden, Robert, 241 Hayes, Roland, 157 Henderson, Vivian W., 13, 163; and Lee Lorch, 242; Fisk faculty, 252 Herskovits, Melville J., 45, 47, 55–56; disagreement with Chicago school of sociology, 75, 103

Hoover, Herbert C., 9, 72; Johnson’s recommendations on black housing, 76; and Johnson’s appointment to the League of Nation’s Commission, 81 Hope, John M., 125, 253 Hope II, John M., 161, 192, 193 Horne, Frank, 22 House Un-American Activities Committee, and Lee Lorch, 240–45 Houston, Charles H., 193–97, 250 Hubert, Giles, 99, 103–6, 120, 137, 252 Hughes, Langston, and Harlem Renaissance, 19–26, 137, 231, 252 Hurst, Fannie, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Hurston, Zora Neale, 19–22, 252 Imes, Elmer S. 93 Jackson, Blyden, 19–20, 242 Jim Crow, 1; during Johnson’s childhood, 2; and the Park-Johnson model, 53; and Gunnar Myrdal, 74–75; and education, 102, 139; and the Southern Regional Council, 144; and Johnson’s building of Trojan horses, 149; and its impact on Johnson, 155; and World War II, 169, 200, 205; and entertainment, 217 Johnson, Charles Henry (Johnson’s father), 1, 2, 3 Johnson, Georgia Douglas, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Johnson, Guy B., 153, 184 Johnson, James W., and Harlem Renaissance, 19–22, 93, 125, 138–39, 241 Johnson, Jeh-Vincent (Johnson’s son), 86 Johnson, Lyndon, B., 221 Johnson, Marie, 27; regarding Liberia, 82–85; and the Roosevelts, 111–16, 188, 223, 258, 310 (notes) Johnson, Minerva, 14, 175 Johnson’s Model of Race Relations, 61–70

Index Johnson, Mordecai W., 12, 152 Jones, Ashby M., and Southern Liberalism, 143 Jones, Eugene Kinkle, 15, 19, 26–28, 93 Jones, Lewis W., 13, 106, 124, 252; in reference to the Ku Klux Klan, 55; and Nashville public housing, 72; Department of Social Science, 98–99; Macon County study, 114–20, 127; Statistical Atlas, 132–38; view of Johnson, 144 Jones, Thomas Elsa, Johnson joining Fisk faculty, 25–27, 169; Fisk Department of Social Science, 93–95, 102, 113, 125; American Missionary Association, 173–74; Race Relations Institute, 185, 188, 239; criticism of Race Relations Institute, 189, background, 213–14; and Fisk alumni, 218; and Johnson’s credibility, 220 Jubilee Singers, 214 Julian, Percy L., 308 (notes) Julius Rosenwald Fund, 9, 11, 27, 64, 93, 109, 116–18, 122, 127, 131, 181, 222, 231, 239; support of Chicago Race Relations Committee, 12; and Urban League, 28; and Fisk, 31; and Chicago Race Relations, 34; Fisk Department of Social Science, 96–98; and funding of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 144; and Southern Regional Council, 153; and Fisk University, 170–78; Race Relations Institute, 186–87, 293 (notes) Keppel, Frederick, 133 King, George Mellen Prentiss, 4 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 10, 31, 141, 197, 200, 213, 228, 231, 239, 250, 252, 254; rise of movement, 65 Knopf, Alfred A., and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Ku Klux Klan, 55, 58, 158

315

Lane, Frayser, T., 138 Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 26, 93, 96–98 Lawrence, Charles R., 252 Lawson, James, and Lee Lorch, 242 Leach, Henry Goddard, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 League of Nations Commission, 81 Lewis, David Levering, and the Basic College, 236 Lindcome, Andrew W., and Fisk Department of Social Science, 99 Lindsay, Rachel, and the Harlem Renaissance, 22 Little, Kenneth L., and Department of Social Science, 99 Locke, Alain L., 19–20; The New Negro, 21–23, 57 Logan, Rayford W., 103, 215 Lomanitz, Giovanni “Ross,” and Lee Lorch incident, 240 Long, Herman H., and Department of Social Science, 98, 106, 118–19, 175, 189, 252, 255; American Missionary Association, 184; Race Relations Institute, 195, 197–98; and Lee Lorch, 242 Looby, Z. Alexander, Fisk faculty, 98; Lee Lorch incident, 184, 242 Lorch, Grace, and Little Rock High School, Arkansas, 247 Lorch, Lee, 237–50, 306–8 (notes) Lowden, Frank O., 11 Lynching, 2, 68 Malcolm X, 65 March on Washington, 171, 251 Marks, Ellis, 99, 106, 117, 130, 132, 136 Marshall, Thurgood, 158, 250, 254; Race Relations Institute, 195–200 Masuoka, Jitsuichi (Fisk faculty), 99, 195 Mathews, John, 22, 91; as Johnson’s assistant in Liberia, 82–86 May, Dan, and Lee Lorch, 244

316

Index

Mays, Benjamin 147, 149; and desegregation, 151–52, 215, 290 (notes) McCarthy Era, 235, 237 McGill, Ralph, 143, 151–52, 161, 168 McKay, Claude, and Harlem Renaissance, 22, 24 McKenzie, Fayette Avery, and the Fisk Presidency, 93, 216–18, 238, 246, 252 McKnight, Colbert A., Southern Educational Reporting Service, 158–66 Meier, August, and Johnson’s authorship of publications, 137, 146 Merrill, James G., and Fisk presidency, 216 Messenger, 19 Mitchell, George S., and Southern Regional Council, 153, 161, 163, 195, 197, 199 Mitchell, Leland, 143 Montgomery Improvement Association, 197, 250 Moton, Robert, R., 18, 130 Myrdal, Gunner, 14, 31–32, 123, 126, 176, 194; criticism of Robert E. Park, 39; description of minorities, 45–47, 65; influence of Park and Johnson, 70–77; and Carnegie Corporation, 133–36; Southern Liberalism, 141, 277 (notes) NAACP, 11, 15, 28, 65, 125, 158, 184, 195–96, 199, 213, 221–22, 242, 251, 258 National Interracial Conference, 26, 28 National Recovery Administration (NRA), 114, 115 National Science Foundation, 245 National Urban League, 6, 14, 20, 25–28, 74, 93, 106, 125, 146, 179, 222 Niagara Movement, 38 Norton, Vivian, and Basic College, 231 Odum, Howard W., 14, 35, 47, 100, 170, 172; and National Interracial Conference, 125, 132, 134, 147, Durham Conference, 152–55

O’Leary, Hazel, and Basic College, 234 Opportunity, 6, 13, 157, 228, 249; creation of, 15–16, 18–19, 21–22, 24–25, 27, 50, 54–55, 57, 63; issue devoted to Caribbean, 79; and economic imperialism, 80, 82; criticism of Firestone, 86, 90, 92; and Booker T. Washington, 145; and political rights of blacks, 146 Otis, Joseph R. 120, 121 Ottley, Roi, and criticism of Johnson, 144; and criticism of Durham Statement, 151 Outhwaite, Leonard, and Opportunity, 26, 269 (notes) Park-Johnson Model, 49–59, 61, 63, 144 Park, Robert, E., 6, 12, 15, 70, 92, 99–103, 118, 123, 125, 174, 179, 222, 241, 258; influence on Johnson, 26–38; Park-Johnson Model, 49–59, 61, 63; sociology of conflict, 65; Park’s influence on Johnson and Myrdal, 71–77 Parks, Rosa, 197, 254 Patterson, Frederick D, 151 Phi Beta Kappa, and Fisk University, 225 Pickens, William 28 Pierson, Donald, 32, 99; Shadow of the Plantation, 42 Plessy v. Ferguson, 143 Popenoe, Paul, 16–17 Powell, Jr., Adam Clayton, 141, 172, 199, 250 Purks, J. Harris, and General Education Board, 231–32 Race Relations Information Center, 159 Randolph, A. Phillip, 141, 151, 171, 199–200, 250–51, 253–54 Rogers, Joel A., and Harlem Renaissance, 20 Reid, Ira DeA, 103, 117; Southern Sociological Society, 156; Race Relations Institute, 175; Southern

Index Regional Council, 178; Fisk presidency, 215 Reiss, Winold, and Harlem Renaissance, 21 Rempfer, Gertrude, and Lee Lorch incident, 241, 242 Rempfer, Robert, and Lee Lorch incident, 241–42 Reuter Byron, Edward, 32, 99, 103 Rhodes, Cecil, 90 Rivers, Prince, and Basic College, 228, 233, 235 Robeson, Paul, and Harlem Renaissance, 21–22, 138, 144, 231 Rockefeller Foundation, and Fisk Department of Social Science, 97 Rockefeller, John D., 216 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 110 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9, 147, 152, 154, 159, 176, 221, 249, 253; and The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 110; New Deal, 113–14, 142; support of Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 144 Rosenwald, Julius, 33, 120, 128, 254 Russell Sage Foundation, 125 Sandburg, Carl, 22 Scanlon, John J., 160, 163 Schomburg, Arthur, A., and Harlem Renaissance, 27, 111, 138 Scott, Emmett J., and Robert E. Park, 12, 81, 254 Shepard, James E., 151 Shepardson, Francis, 11–14 Simmel, George, 32, 36; influence on Park, 37 Simpson, Joshua, 4; influence on Johnson 65; 249 Smith, Bessie, and Harlem Renaissance, 21 Smith, Edwin W., 99, 103 Smith, Lillian, and economic integration, 143 Social Science Research Council, 26, 96, 114

317

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 65 Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 143–44, 154, 177, 187, 192 Southern Educational Reporting Service, 155, 158–68, 250, 257 Southern Liberalism, 137, 141–44, 161 Southern Regional Council, 146–48, 152–62, 185, 195 Southern Sociological Society, 155–56 Stahlman, James G., and Fisk Presidency, 200, 239, 252 Stamps, James E., 215, 218, 220, 302 (notes) Stonequist, Everett, V., and Shadow of the Plantation, 32, 42 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 65 Stuyvesant Town, and Lee Lorch incident, 246 Survey Graphic, and Harlem Renaissance, 21 Swathmore College Institute of Race Relations, 183 Taylor, Alrutheus, A. 214 Taylor, Graham Romeyn, 12–15, 42 Taylor, Joseph, 133–34 Taylor, Warren, and Lee Lorch incident, 243 Tenney Committee, and Lee Lorch incident, 239 Thompson, Charles H., 91, 130, 184, 187, 215, 219 Thompson, Edgar T., 32, 101, 184, 195 Thompson, Eloise Bibb, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Thurman, Wallace, and Harlem Renaissance, 22 Tobias, Channing, 125 Toomer, Jean, and Harlem Renaissance, 22, 24 Truman Committee on Civil Rights, 251 Turner, Claudius, 119 Truman, Harry S, 9, 178, 193, 224

318

Index

Valien, Preston, 98, 106, 117, 132; Johnson’s publications, 133, 136–37; Southern Educational Reporting Service, 163, 252, 254; Fisk Race Relations Institutes, 175, 189 Valien, Bonita H., 13, 98–99, 123, 130, 175, 177–78, 188–89, 195; Johnson’s publications, 136–37; and Southern Education Reporting Service, 159–68 Van Doren, Carl, and Harlem Renaissance, 20 Van Kleeck, Mary, and Harlem Renaissance, 26 Van Vechten, Carl, and Harlem Renaissance, 22, and donation of Alfred Steiglitz Collection to Fisk, 231 Vance, Rupert B., 53, 110, 113, 118, 132, 257; and Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 73 Virginia Union University, 3–6

Washington, Booker T., 4, 8, 18–19; 33, 35–36, 38–41, 46, 81, 141; Julius Rosenwald and, 11; and Johnson’s rhetoric and strategy, 145, 147, 149, 151, 154, 157, 171, 216, 221–22, 249–52 Watkins, Mark Hanna, 99, 101, 103–4 Wayland Academy, 3; Wayland Seminary, 4 Weatherford, Willis Duke, 49–51; and Southern Liberalism, 143–44 Weaver, Robert C., 14, 117, 181, 184, 199 Wesley, Carter, 132; and Fisk presidency, 215, 219, 222, 302 (notes) Wesley, Charles H., 81, 91; and Fisk presidency, 215, 218–23, 302 (notes) White Citizen’s Council, 197 White, Walter, 125, 141, 151, 171 Whitney, John Hay, 97, 153; and funding of Southern Regional Council, 154, 192 Williams, Lucy Ariel, 22 Wood, Clement, 22 Wood, L. Hollingsworth, 26; and Fisk presidency, 215, 219 Woodson, Carter G., 45, 47, 55–56, 215; disagreement with Chicago School of Sociology, 75 Woodward, C. Vann, 195 Work, Monroe N., 125, 130 Work Projects Administration, 116–17 Wright, Stephen J., 235, 253 Wyatt, Donald, 104, 106

Walrond, Eric, 20 Waring, Thomas R., 164–65, 168

Young, Plummer B., 148–49, 152, 166, 168

Turner, Henry M., 79; migration to Liberia, 86 Turner, Lorenzo D., 47, 56, 99, 103 Tuskegee Institute, 33, 200, 46, 128, 145; and Robert E. Park, 35; trappings of middle class, 57; and Emmett J. Scott, 81; Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 127 UNESCO, 9, 10, 201–10 United Negro College Fund, 247

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Charles S. Johnson LEADERSHIP BEYOND THE VEIL IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW

Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman Foreword by David Levering Lewis

“It seems almost inexplicable that the national and international prominence enjoyed by Johnson at the time of his death is only now receiving the well-considered appreciation of Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman’s comprehensive biography.” — from the Foreword by David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois “Gilpin and Gasman have captured the essence of this formal, private, enigmatic man’s work and put it in the context of his times—the tumultuous decades leading up to Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement. This is a welcome and long-overdue addition to the canon of American civil rights history.” — John Egerton, author of Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South After a career as a university history professor for many years, Patrick J. Gilpin was admitted to the Texas State Bar and began practicing law in 1980. His practice is primarily in the area of civil rights. Marybeth Gasman is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Charles S. Johnson

The milestones for blacks in twentieth-century America—the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle for equal education, and the civil rights movement—would have been inconceivable without the contributions of one important but often overlooked figure, Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956). This compelling biography demonstrates the scope of his achievements, situates him among other black intellectuals of his time, and casts new light on a pivotal era in the struggle for black equality in America. An impresario of Harlem Renaissance culture, an eminent Chicago-trained sociologist, a pioneering race relations leader, and an educator of the generation that freed itself from legalized segregation, Johnson was a visionary who linked the everyday struggles of blacks with the larger intellectual and political currents of the day. His distinguished career included twenty-eight years at Fisk University, where he established the famed Race Relations Institute and became Fisk’s first black president.

Gilpin and Gasman

BIOGRAPHY / AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu

Charles S. Johnson

SUNY

LEADERSHIP BEYOND THE VEIL IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW

Patrick J. Gilpin and Marybeth Gasman Foreword by David Levering Lewis