The Soul of the Bishop
The Remarkable Life of Bishop Joseph A. Johnson, Jr.
by Rev. Cynthia Johnson-Oliver
How did a former groundskeeper at Vanderbilt University become
the first African American to graduate from the university?
In the Fall of 2015, when the #BlackonCampus movement sparked protests and hashtags by African American students at university campuses across the country, many student activists invoked the names and stories of their universities’ first African American students. In doing so, they demonstrated that the campus protests were not new, but were grounded in a decades-long struggle for diversity and inclusion in higher education.
The life story of Bishop Joseph A. Johnson, Jr., the first African American student to attend Vanderbilt University, takes place at the heart of this historical struggle. Indeed, when Johnson enrolled at Vanderbilt in 1953, he also became the first African American to attend a private, white university in the south. Today, the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center honors his legacy on the Vanderbilt campus. While his accomplishments are extraordinary – first black to graduate from Vanderbilt, first to receive a PhD, and the first to serve as a full member of the university’s Board of Trusts – they do little to portray the complex, difficult, and often harrowing journey that led him from being a groundskeeper at the institution to becoming its first African American graduate. His life journeys from his grandfather’s service in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, through anti-lynching activism of the late 1930’s, to his pioneering scholarship in the field of black theology and his civil rights advocacy as a bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Along the way, Johnson confronts the desegregation of higher education in the south and racial divisions in American religious institutions.
While articles have been written about Johnson, there has not yet been a book-length biography or documentary film about his life and legacy. This project fills that void. Through a biography and documentary film, Johnson’s life story will inspire a new generation of students, advocates, people of faith, and others still engaged in the struggle for justice, equality, and inclusion today.
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About the Author
Rev. Cynthia Johnson-Oliver is the granddaughter of Bishop Johnson and is founder and president of the Bishop Joseph Johnson History Project. She is writing his biography and producing a companion documentary film, both works in progress. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School and has studied nonfiction and poetry writing at Johns Hopkins University. She is an ordained Elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church currently on research sabbatical from church ministry. She has served in numerous clergy and social justice advocacy roles and is currently the founder and president of the FaithJustice Foundation. She has been a national speaker at churches and conferences and has written commentaries for Sojourners Magazine and the Virginia Advocate, along with numerous blog posts.
Contact Rev. Johnson-Oliver if you have information or memories to share about Bishop Johnson and would like send a message or be interviewed for the biography. Follow her journey on the History Project Blog.
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The Bishop Joseph Johnson History Project is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and wishes to acknowledge grant support from the Lilly Endowment via the Louisville Institute and from Vanderbilt University.