Charles Spurgeon Johnson, sociologist and college administrator, was born 24 July 1893 in Bristol, Virginia.  He was educated at the Virginia University University, Richmond and University of Chicago, where he earned his PhD in 1917. He worked on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations (1919-1921). In 1923 he founded and edited the intellectual magazine [i]Oppportunit[/i], a major voice in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. He became the first black president of historically black Fisk University (1946-1956), Nashville, Tennessee. He died 27 October 1956 in Louisville, Kentucky.