This is the first full-length biography of Charles S. Johnson
(1893-1956). Although he called himself a "sidelines activist," his
advocacy for racial equality was never watered-down or
half-hearted. His strategy was to work indirectly, sometimes behind
the scenes, to influence public policy and to mobilize groups with
special concerns, especially black sharecroppers.
Together with W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier he has
been named as a "founding father" among contemporary black
sociologists. In a coalition with an embattled band of southern
white liberals he pressed the federal government to end lynching,
the poll tax, "separate but equal" schooling, and other racial
inequalities of the Jim Crow era.
Throughout his career Johnson played the vital role of building
bridges between the races, specifically in gaining white
philanthropic support in a stimulating activism in the black
community. For a quarter of a century he conducted research on the
South's twin system of economic and racial exploitation. Two of his
books-"Shadow of the Plantation" and "Growing up in the Black Belt"
(a study of black youth and its problems in the 1930s)-are
recognized today as classics.
In the last ten years of his life Johnson served as the first
black president of Fisk University, one of the most important of
the historically black colleges.
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