On this date 34 years ago, on April 12, 1984, the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center was dedicated at Vanderbilt University to honor Bishop Joseph Andrew Johnson, Jr. the first African American to graduate from the university. Bishop Johnson was also my grandfather, and I remember the day well as family members gathered in large numbers at the Sarratt Student Center a mere five years after my grandfather’s untimely death. In attendance were his widow, Grandmother Grace; his children Joseph III, Charles DeWitt (my father), and Patricia Ann; along with numerous great aunts and uncles, cousins, university dignitaries, church leaders, and many family friends.
Up until that day, I knew him only as “Granddaddy,” but at the age of nine, I was old enough to read the biographical sketch and listen to the program speakers. It was then that I learned about my grandfather’s quadfecta of firsts: that he was the first African-American to attend Vanderbilt University, the first to graduate, receiving the Bachelor of Divinity in 1954, the first to receive a PhD from the university in 1958, and the first African American elected to serve as a full member of the university’s Board of Trusts in 1971. I would later learn that when he enrolled at Vanderbilt, he also became the first African American to attend a private, white university in the south.
He was also the thirty-fourth bishop of the Christian Methodist Church, the first dean and president of Phillips School of Theology, and a New Testament professor at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He was a pioneer in the field of black theology and biblical interpretation, authoring five books, including The Soul of the Black Preacher and Proclamation Theology. As a bishop, he became a civil rights advocate and an international speaker at universities and conferences throughout the world.
At the dedication, the book program contained printed remarks from former Vanderbilt University Chancellors, Harvie Brandscomb and Alexander Heard, as well as William S. Vaughn, former president of the Board of Trusts. Heard described my grandfather as a man who was never self-conscious about being the first black member of the Board and never hesitant to speak on topics that interested him. Vaughn described him as a “skillful advocate on behalf of blacks” who spoke “out of the deep currents of his own racial experience.” The speakers all agreed that the dedication of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center was a worthy tribute to his legacy. Brandscomb, who participated in the decision to admit my grandfather in 1953, noted that it was “especially fitting that it should be a center where young men and women are following in his footsteps.”
Today, thirty-four years after the dedication, the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center is a cultural hub on 
Vanderbilt’s campus, hosting speakers, guest lecturers, student organizations, and academic opportunities focused on African and African American culture. According to its website, the center is “a gathering place, a home away from home for students who study in the BCC, gather there for meetings, and learn about African and African American culture through the center’s programs.” The center’s mission includes cultural and educational programming, student support and development, and community outreach and service. Its roster of renowned speakers includes Angela Davis, Julian Bond, the late Negro Leagues Legend, Buck O’Neil, Afeni Shakur (mother of the late Tupac Shakur); and Dr. Eugene Richardson of the Tuskegee Airmen. In the almost forty years since his death, Bishop Johnson’s legacy continues to live in the generations of Vanderbilt students who attend meetings, cultural events, panel discussions, and seminars at the Black Cultural Center. They do so knowing that the barrier was broken and the door was opened by Johnson’s courageous decision to apply, attend, and persevere at Vanderbilt University.
But Bishop Johnson’s impact extends beyond one campus. In the Fall of 2015, when the #BlackonCampus movement sparked protests 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 equality in higher education. The life story of Bishop Johnson takes place at the heart of this historical struggle and represents generations of freedom fighters who struggled for the right to read, to study, to learn, and eventually to be admitted to the nation’s best institutions. Thus, Bishop Johnson’s life story provides historical context and inspiration for today’s generations of students, advocates, people of faith, and others still engaged in the struggle for justice, equality, and inclusion today.
Rev. Cynthia Johnson-Oliver is writing a biography and filming a documentary about Bishop Joseph A. Johnson, Jr. For more information, visit www.bishopjosephjohnson.org.
Follow on social media: @BishopJJHistory and @CJohnsonOliver.
Rev. Cynthia Johnson-Oliver interviewing Vanderbilt Associate Dean Frank Dobson for documentary film at Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center
