Atlanta University
Which school did Henry Lincoln Johnson go to from 1887 to 1888?
Henry Lincoln Johnson Henry Lincoln Linc Johnson ( July 27 , 1870 – September 10 , 1925 ) was an American attorney and politician from the state of Georgia . He is best remembered as one of the most prominent African-American Republicans of the first two decades of the 20th century and as a leader of the dominant black-and-tan faction of the Republican Party of Georgia . He was appointed by President William Howard Taft as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia , at the time regarded as the premier political patronage position reserved for black Americans , and one of four appointees known as Tafts Black Cabinet . Following the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson , Johnson was again appointed Recorder of the Deeds for the District in June 1921 by Republican President Warren G . Harding , but his appointment was rejected by the United States Senate , meeting in executive session and based largely on the opposition of the two Democratic senators from Georgia , a prerogative of the Senate . His rejection garnered newspaper headlines and marked the finish of Johnsons national political influence . Hardings administration worked with Georgia Republicans to reorganize the party to reduce black-and-tan influence , already declining due to the states disenfranchisement of black voters . Johnson returned to his law practice in the capital . He died on September 10 , 1925 at the Freedmens Hospital after having a stroke at his home in Washington , D.C. . Biography . Early years . Henry Lincoln Johnson , known to family and friends as Linc , was born on July 27 , 1870 in Augusta , Georgia to former slaves Martha Ann and Peter Johnson . His parents strongly encouraged education . Johnson attended Atlanta University , a historically black college , and graduated in 1888 . Excluded from law schools in the South because of segregation , he went north to attend the University of Michigan , obtaining a law degree in 1892 . After passing the Georgia bar exam , Johnson opened a law practice in Atlanta . He eventually became the corporate attorney for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company , a major black-owned business . In 1903 Johnson married Georgia Douglas , who also graduated from what is now Clark Atlanta University . She was 10 years younger than he . She achieved literary fame as a poet associated with the Harlem Renaissance . Together the couple had two sons , Peter Douglas Johnson and Henry Lincoln Johnson , Jr . The latter became a notable attorney in his own right . Political leader . According to his death notice in the New York Age , Johnson was a law partner of Bill Pledger and succeeded him in political office . During the first years of the 20th century , Johnson emerged as a leading boss in Georgia Republican politics . Johnsons role was that of the chief dispenser of political patronage to black Republicans in the state , at a time when their ability to elect representatives of their choice was being limited by voter fraud , suppression and , in 1909 , constitutional amendments and laws passed by white Democrats in the state legislature that disenfranchised most black voters . Blacks continued to be a loyal and important component of the Republican Party coalition in the era . Johnson was described by one journalist of the era as a tall figure with an oratorical turn of phrase and an emphatic style of expression . In 1910 Johnson was appointed by President William Howard Taft as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia . This was regarded as the premier political patronage job , which had been historically earmarked for African Americans since after the Civil War . Also appointed by Taft were James Carroll Napier as Register of the Treasury , Robert Heberton Terrell as District of Columbia Municipal Judge , and William H . Lewis as Assistant United States Attorney General , making up what was known as his Black Cabinet . Johnson and his family moved from Atlanta to Washington , D.C . to undertake this new position . Johnson is believed to have worked behind the scenes for the election of Southern Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 Presidential election , as did other black leaders such as W . E . B . Du Bois of the NAACP , William Monroe Trotter of the National Equal Rights League , and Bishop Alexander Walters and J . Milton Waldron , prominent clergymen , all of whom opposed Booker T . Washingtons politics and were disappointed at the Republican Partys tepid response to their issues . Johnson continued in his federal position until the Wilson administration purged African American and other Republicans from the patronage positions in the customary change after a new president of a different political party was elected . More significantly , influenced by Southern members of his cabinet , Wilson segregated federal offices , lunchrooms , and restrooms for the first time . In 1914 the Civil Service Commission began to require photos with job applications , a means to screen out blacks . Other forms of racial discrimination were used against African-American federal workers during the Wilson administration . The NAACP and other leading black groups protested but were unsuccessful in changing these policies and many African Americans were affected , both in Washington and nationally . In 1912 , at the beginning of Tafts administration , some 19,000 African Americans were working nationwide for such departments as the Treasury , Post Office ( including railway postal workers ) , Navy , and Bureau of Engraving and Printing Office . Johnson was sharply criticized for hubris by the black socialist magazine , The Messenger . It criticized him as an example of a sleek , fat , potbellied Negro politicians who have been trafficking for half a century in the sweat and blood and tears of toiling Negro washerwomen , cotton pickers , miners , and factory hands . During the 1916 Presidential election , the tensions of the Republican Party of Georgia resulted in two rival factions : a group of African-American-dominated regulars headed by Johnson , commonly known as the black and tans , and an insurgency of European Americans commonly known as the lily whites . Johnson managed to retain control of the party apparatus in the presidential election year of 1916 and again in 1920 . By controlling the Georgia delegation to the Republican National Convention in those years , he retained control over federal patronage appointments in Georgia . In 1920 , Johnson was among black leaders of the Republican Party who met in Chicago to establish the Lincoln League . This intra-party group formed to attempt to force the national Republican Party to take a firm stand against lynching , Jim Crow laws , voter disfranchisement , and other assaults upon the African-American community in the South . From 1890 to 1909 , all states of the South had passed laws to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites . Johnson won promises that the Republican Party would take more determined action on these matters if it won the White House in the fall of 1920 . In 1920 Johnson was elected as Georgias representative to the Republican National Committee . The selection had not been without controversy , and Johnson had concealed his candidacy until the last minute , when he was elected by the loyal Georgia delegation over his white rival , Roscoe Pickett , 12 votes to 3 , with two abstaining . Under the standing rules of the convention , the full convention was required to ratify the selection of each states delegation , which was usually a pro forma voice vote . But when the Georgia delegation reported their selection on the floor and the pro forma voice vote was taken , a chorus of voices were raised in opposition to Johnson . A two-thirds vote of the convention was required to set aside the standing rules and overturn the Georgia delegations selection . The delegates did not gain sufficient votes for such action , and thereby ratified the choice of Johnson . This averted what would have been a potential election-year embarrassment of the Republicans as they were seeking to retain black voters outside the South . Failed nomination of 1920 . Johnsons status was bolstered by the strong showing of Republicans in the Presidential election of 1920 . The party gained its largest vote in the South in four decades . But the brewing factional breach in the Republican Party of Georgia between Johnsons black and tans , and the group of European Americans known as the lily whites erupted in the aftermath of the election . The two groups battled for influence with the new Republican administration of Warren G . Harding to control federal patronage in the state . Harding reacted to the factional split with an attempt to reorganize the Republican Party in Georgia independently of these two feuding groups . In April 1921 five prominent Georgia business leaders were called to the White House by President Harding . He asked lumber mill owner John Louis Philips to conduct an initial survey of Georgia business figures to determine their potential level of support for joining a new , reorganized Georgia Republican Party . Hardings machination was endorsed by the lily whites , who believed it could be a means to establish white hegemony , even if those chosen to head the reorganization were selected from outside factional ranks . Johnson had the most to lose from Hardings reorganization effort and opposed it . Johnson was ultimately induced to quit the factional battle and to exit Georgia politics through a reappointment by Harding to the choice position of Registrar of Deeds for the District of Columbia . After Johnson was appointed in June 1921 and moved again to Washington , a handpicked Republican convention of 230 people , predominantly consisting of white business leaders , reorganized the Georgia party on July 26 , 1921 . Johnsons appointment was taken up by the United States Senate for ratification in November 1921 . There Georgia Democratic Senator Tom Watson , a political foe and supporter of white supremacy , led a fight against Johnsons confirmation in committee and on the floor of the Senate . Watson charged that the appointment of Johnson was personally obnoxious to him , as Johnson had said in an interview with an African-American newspaper from Baltimore that he would rather be in hell without Tom Watson than to be in heaven with him . Watson charged that Johnson had engaged in financial shenanigans in Atlanta which made him unsuitable for government trust . When senators met in executive session , Georgias other Senator , white Democrat Nathaniel Edwin Harris , reportedly joined Watson in pronouncing Johnson personally obnoxious to him , code words invoking an unwritten rule in the Senate granting de facto veto power to senators over appointments relating to their states . The vote against Johnson which followed was virtually unanimous ; only one Senator voted for Johnsons appointment over the objections of the Georgians . Death and legacy . After his 1921 confirmation defeat in the Senate , Johnson returned to legal practice in Washington , D.C. ; his place in national politics was thereafter limited . One of Johnsons most famous cases came in 1922 , when he was called to defend a young black man charged with sexual assault of a white girl below the age of consent . These extremely serious charges carried a potential penalty of 30 years in prison or execution . The young man was also at risk for extrajudicial lynching . Following expert cross-examination in the case , Johnson delivered what was called by one observer one of the most eloquent and forceful closing arguments ever heard in a District of Columbia court . The jury failed to agree in the case after six hours of deliberation , with seven jurors voting for acquittal . The foreman later commented that the defendant owed his life to Johnsons summation . Despite his removal from Georgia politics , Johnson was not entirely forgotten in the corridors of power . In September 1923 Johnson was one of a handful of black political leaders invited to Washington , D.C . for private consultations with President Calvin Coolidge on issues of concern to the African-American community . They continued to seek more national support for alleviating oppression in the South . Henry Lincoln Johnson died on September 10 , 1925 at Freedmens Hospital after having a stroke at his home in Washington , D.C . He was 55 years old at the time of his death . He was buried on September 14 , 1925 , at Columbian Harmony Cemetery . His remains were moved to National Harmony Memorial Park Cemetery in 1959 , when Columbian Harmony closed . Shortly after his death , Johnson was eulogized with an editorial in the Pittsburgh Courier , an important black newspaper , which opined : Works . - The Negro Under Wilson . Washington , D.C. : Republican National Committee , n.d . [ 1916? ] . - Letter to W.E.B . DuBois , July 18 , 1918 , W.E.B . DuBois papers , Special Collections & University Archives , University of Massachusetts Amherst . Further reading . - Donald Lee Grant , The Way it was in the South : The Black Experience in Georgia . Carroll Publishing Co./Birch Lane Press , 1993 ; reissued University of Georgia Press , 2001 . - Robert E . Hauser , The Georgia Experiment : President Warren G . Hardings Attempt to Reorganize the Republican Party in Georgia , Georgia Historical Quarterly , vol . 62 , no . 4 ( Winter 1978 ) , pp . 288–303 . In JSTOR - Herman Mason , Politics , Civil Rights , and Law in Black Atlanta , 1870-1970 . Mount Pleasant , SC : Arcadia Publishing , 2000 . - J.A . Rogers and A.S . Milai , Facts About the Negro , Pittsburgh Courier , vol . 57 , no . 20 ( May 15 , 1965 ) , pg . 11 . - J . Clay Smith , Jr. , Emancipation : The Making of the Black Lawyer , 1844-1944 . Philadelphia , PA : University of Pennsylvania Press , 1999 . - Georgia GOP Boss for Next Four Years , Atlanta Constitution , vol . 52 , no . 364 ( June 12 , 1920 ) , pg . 4 . - Vindication of B.J . Davis : Failure of Case Against the Well Known Odd Fellow : History of the Proceedings , Pittsburgh Courier , vol . 3 , no . 2 ( Dec . 30 , 1911 ) , pg . 1 .