Whittington Johnson, the first Black tenured professor at the University of Miami in Florida, passed away on November 1. He was 93 years old.
Dr. Johnson’s career in academia began in 1957 as an instructor with Edward Waters College, a historically Black institution in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1962, he joined the faculty at Savannah State College, an HBCU in Georgia, where he served as an assistant professor of social science.
In 1970, Dr. Johnson made history as the first Black tenured professor to be hired by the University of Miami. He remained on the faculty of the department of history until his retirement in 2002. Throughout his long tenure, he had three stints as department chair and served as director of the Afro-American Studies Center from 1972 to 1973.
As a scholar of African American history, Dr. Johnson traveled extensively. He participated in research across the globe, including projects at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the British Library in London, and the Bahama Islands. He authored several publications on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African American history, including Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (University of Arkansas press, 1996) and Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784-1834: The Nonviolent Transformation From a Slave to a Free Society (University of Arkansas Press, 2000).
An HBCU graduate, Dr. Johnson received his bachelor’s degree from West Virginia State College. He earned his master’s degree from Indiana University and his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
