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William Saunders Scarborough, born a slave on February 16, 1852 in Macon, Georgia, had the opportunity to receive a wonderful education as well as freedom. He started school at age six, could read and write at age ten, became interested in music at age twelve, and entered Lewis High School at age fifteen. Two years later he went to Atlanta University and then to Oberlin College, where he earned in B.A. in 1875. He then returned to Lewis hogh School to teach Latin, Greek, and Mathematics; he was extremely proficient with languages. In 1878 he obtained his M.A. from Oberlin. Scarborough even managed to attend Liberia College in Africa, where he completed his studies with the LL. D. degree in 1882.
In 1882 Scarcorough was elected to the American Philological Association, to the American Spelling Reform Association in 1883, to the Modern Language Association in 1884, and to the American Social Science Association in 1885. Scarborough authored a Greek textbook as well as Birds of Aristophanes (1886). In 1908 he became president of Wilburforce University in Ohio and contributed his services there until his retirement in 1920.
Alain LeRoy Locke, a Philadelphia native, was the first of only three Negroes to have been selected as a Rhodes Scholar. Locke attended a prestogious list of universities, including Oxford, the University of Berlin and Harvard University, the latter being where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1918. Locke became a full professor of philosophy at Howard University in 1917. His philosophical writing contributions included The Problem of Classsification in the Theory of Value and Values and Imperatives in American Philosophy: Today and Tomorrow.
Locke also became the leading intellectual spokesman during the Negro Renaissance, or Harlem Renaissance, and was responsible in part for the tremendous boost of creativity among Negroes in literature, art and drama. He was the first Negro to be president of the National Council of Adult Education, and he was an exchange professor in Haiti in 1943, as well as a visiting professor to several universities. Some of his published works include The Negro in America (1933), The Negro and His Music (1936), Negro Art: Past and Present (1937) and The Negro in Art (1941). After Locke's death in 1954, Margarget Just Butcher completed his unfinished masterpiece, The Negro in American Culture.
Carter G. Woddson, known as the father of Negro history, was born in Canton, Virginia, in 1875. Although Woodson did not graduate from high school untili age twenty-two and then worked as a coal miner, he was able to continue his education at Berea College in Kentucky and at the University of Chicago. In 1912 he obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard, and in 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
Woodson's works include The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, A Century of Negro Migration, The Negro in Our History, Negro Makers of History, The Story of the Negro Retold, The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis of 1800-1861, Negro Orators and Their Orations and The History of the Negro Church. Also, in 1916, he began the Journal of Negro History, and ten years later, he initiated the observance of Negro History Week.
Born in Bristol, Virginia, in 1893, Charles Spurgeon Johnson obtained his formal education from Virginia Union University and the University of Chicago. As a social scientist, Johnson disclosed to the world the status and strivings of the Negro in the cities and on the farms. Following his witnessing of the Chicago race riot of 1919, he was selected by the Chicago Urban League to head an investigation of the social forces that caused the riot. He was later the associate Executive Director of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations for six years. In 1928 he was appointed to Fisk University's faculty, and in 1946 he was the first Negro to head this institution since its founding in 1865.
Johnson's works include: The Negro in Chicago (1922), The Negro in American Civilization (1930), Negro Housing (1932), Economic Status of the Negro (1933), Shadow of the Plantation (1934), Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (1934), Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941) and Into the Mainstream (1947).
A void in the field of race relations was left after his death in 1956.
Mordecai Johnson, an only child, was born in Columbus, Tenessee, 1890. He was a gifted orator, and after obtaining his A.B. from Morehouse College, his Master of Sacred Theology from Harvard and his Doctor of Divinity from Gammon Theological Seminary, he became a Baptist minister in Charleston, West Virginia. In 1926 Dr. Johnson assumed the presidency of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he remained for over thirty years. He was the great president of Howard, as well as one of the most renowned university presidents in America. Under his direction, Howard University's school of law in the area of civil rights bacame nationally-approved.
Dr. Johnson was a member of the Advisory Council of the National Youth Administration and of the National Advisory Council of Education. He was also one of the few Negroesto have won the Spingarn Medal (1929), which is given to the person who has done the most to contribute to the progress of the Negro during the previous year.
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