Background
Johnson was born on November 23, 1860, in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of eleven children of Columbus and Eliza A. (Smith) Johnson. Both parents were slaves.
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(Excerpt from A School History of the Negro Race in Americ...)
Excerpt from A School History of the Negro Race in America: From 1619 to 1890, With a Short Introduction as to the Origin of the Race, Also a Short Sketch of Liberia Their Wonderful regard for own and virtue is surprising, and fixes a great gulf between them and other savage peoples. They learn rapidly, and, un fortunately, it is too often the case that evil teaching is given them by the vile traders who frequent their country with an abundance of rum, mouths full of curses, and the worst of bad English. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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educator attorney lawyer politician
Johnson was born on November 23, 1860, in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of eleven children of Columbus and Eliza A. (Smith) Johnson. Both parents were slaves.
After receiving some early training from Nancy Walton, a free Negro who taught languages, Johnson continued his education at the Washington School in Raleigh, founded in 1866 by Northern philanthropists. He completed high school there and made plans to attend Oberlin College, but was persuaded instead to enroll at the newly established Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated in 1883. He later studied law at Shaw University in Raleigh, and upon being awarded the LL. B. degree in 1891.
Arriving in January 1879 with his savings of seventy-five dollars Johnson earned his expenses by teaching during the summers and by working as a barber. After graduating in 1883, Johnson served as a teacher and principal, first of the Mitchell Street Public School in Atlanta (1883-1885) and then of his alma mater, the Washington School (1885-1891). He later joined the faculty at Shaw University in Raleigh. He became dean of the law school in 1893.
Because opportunities for Negroes to practice law were limited, Johnson became active in Republican politics. During the 1890's he served for two years on the Raleigh board of aldermen and for seven years as assistant to the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Johnson was also chairman of the Republican party in the 4th Congressional District and attended the national conventions of 1892, 1896, and 1900. Although he was now well established economically, the early years of the twentieth century in the South saw the disenfranchisement of the Negro and the passage of "Jim Crow" laws, and in 1907, at the age of forty-seven, Johnson moved to New York City. He settled in the rising black community of Harlem, was soon admitted to the New York bar, and began practicing law. Resuming political activity, he served as a Republican committeeman in the 19th assembly district.
In 1917, running with support from the United Civic League, a nonpartisan black political group, he was the first Negro to win election to the New York state legislature. Failing in his bid for a second term in 1918 Johnson resumed his law practice. He became blind in 1925. Despite this handicap, in 1928 he accepted (after two other black politicians had rejected it) the Republican nomination for Congress in the 21st Congressional District, the majority of whose voters were white Democrats. The popular Alfred E. Smith headed the Democratic ticket, and Johnson ran, as he later wrote, not because he felt he could win but to stir black voters to register.
In the course of his career, Johnson wrote several books dealing with the condition of Negroes in America. A School History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1890 (1891), which closely followed the self-help philosophy of Booker T. Washington, sought to remedy the inadequate treatment of Negroes in schoolbooks, and emphasized the necessity of race pride. In 1904 he published Light Ahead for the Negro, a utopian novel in which his white protagonist, transported to "Phoenix, " Georgia, in the year 2006, discovers a society based on racial harmony and full economic opportunity for blacks. For the near future, however, the novel accurately predicted the mass northward migration of Negroes.
He died at the age of eighty-three at Sydenham Hospital in New York City, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.
(Excerpt from A School History of the Negro Race in Americ...)
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
As a member of the assembly Johnson assisted in the enactment of a bill to create free state employment bureaus, and he introduced legislation to prevent discrimination in publicly supported hospitals. He also helped secure an amendment to the Levy Civil Rights Act of 1913 making it a misdemeanor to discriminate on the basis of race, color, or nationality in public employment or in such public facilities as hotels, common carriers, theaters, and other places of amusement.
In one of his books, Adam vs. Ape-Man in Ethiopia (1931), Johnson claimed that black Ethiopians were the first people to evolve, and that their civilization had flourished while white Europeans had "yet to emerge from the reindeer age and the apeman type. " The culture of the Egyptian empire, he maintained, derived originally from black men and declined only after the invasion of white "injustice and greed"; and he saw in this a warning for white, Christian America.
Johnson was one of the founders (1900) of the National Negro Business League and a member of the Harlem Board of Trade and Commerce.
On February 22, 1894, Johnson had married Lena Allen Kennedy, by whom he had one daughter, Adelaide.