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

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

Johnson's distinguished and extraordinarily productive career as a sociologist began when he organized the Department of Research and Investigation of the Chicago Urban League in 1917. He was a member of the Committee on Race Relations, which reported on the Chicago race riot of 1919 in The Negro in Chicago (1922). In 1920, as...