Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance

John H. Johnson

John h. Johnson (1918–2005) Jamal eric Watson During World War II, African Americans found themselves battling two very different wars as part of what was known as the “Double V” challenge: a war against fascist forces in Europe and a war on the home front against racism in the United States. Even as African Americans enlisted in the U.S. military to defeat the Nazi’s occupation in Europe, they knew that life under a set of regimented Jim Crow laws would prevent them from achieving recognition as full citizens in America. When they returned to America after fighting abroad, these heroic African American soldiers were prohibited from drinking from certain water fountains and eating at various restaurants. The Black Press, which had had a long tradition of advocating for African Americans dating back to 1827 in New York with the publication of Freedom’s Journal, quickly emerged as an important resource in articulating the interests of African Americans in the early 1940s. In major cities like Chicago, where the Chicago Renaissance was well under way, Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender, which was founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott and later passed down to his nephew John H. Sengstacke, boasted an impressive circulation of 82,059. The newspaper challenged the discrimination that had become so pervasive throughout the country. It was in this tradition that John Harold Johnson created what would later become a multimillion dollar enterprise: Johnson Publishing Company. It is no coincidence that Johnson would build his company in the same city where Sengstacke’s firm was headquartered, thus making Chicago a popular destination spot for African American writers looking to begin careers writing for Black-owned publications. Born on January 19, 1918, in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas, to Leroy Johnson and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson, an impoverished Black family, John H. Johnson suffered a series of devastating setbacks as a child. His father was tragically killed in a sawmill accident when he was just eight years old, and Johnson was quickly forced to confront the harsh realities of segregation in the South. He 234 • JaMal eric Watson attended the community’s overcrowded, racially segregated elementary school because Blacks were unable to enroll elsewhere. Following the path that took many African American southerners from the South to the North, young Johnson and his mother set out for Chicago in 1933 in a journey as part of the African American Great Migration. Johnson’s mother decided that the Jim Crow South was not a good place to raise a Black child from whom she expected greatness. There were no Black high schools in the town of Johnson’s birth. In fact, Johnson repeated the eighth grade just to keep learning. To give her only son an opportunity for a better life, Johnson’s mother worked as a camp cook on a levee for two years to save up enough money for the train trip to Chicago, where she and her young son lived with a friend to keep costs down. Johnson’s stepfather joined the family later. Early on, Johnson credited his mother with providing him with self-discipline and motivation that helped him to remain focused despite the racial discrimination he later felt and witnessed as a young boy. “My mother was the influence in my life,” said Johnson in an interview a year before his death from heart failure . “She was a strong woman and believed in justice. She believed that if you worked hard, you would achieve,” he said. “I knew very early on that I stood on the shoulders of many who came before me and I came to understood very quickly that these heroic Black men and women helped to carve out a space for me to grow and succeed.”1 Johnson honed his intellectual skills at DuSable High School in Chicago, eventually emerging as a student leader among his peers. Among his classmates were singer Nat King Cole, actor Redd Foxx, and future entrepreneur William Abernathy. Though he was later offered a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago, he never completed his studies there, focusing his energy instead on working for Chicago’s Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company. One of Johnson’s duties at the insurance company was to collect news and information about African Americans while preparing a weekly digest for Harry Pace, the company’s president. ItwaswhileworkingattheinsurancecompanythatJohnsonbecameconvinced that there was an untapped market for an African American magazine. Over a period of several years, he worked tirelessly to...