William Johnson

Johnson, William (1809–1851), diarist. William Johnson's thirteen-volume, sixteen-year journal of life in Natchez, Mississippi, is the lengthiest and most detailed personal narrative authored by an African American during the antebellum era in the United States. Out of ordinary account books in which he tallied the daily expenditures and income of his early business ventures, Johnson's diary evolved into an extraordinary record of social, economic, and political life in his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, as seen through the eyes of a free man of color.

Johnson was born a slave in Natchez, the son of his white master, William Johnson, and his slave, Amy. Johnson's father manumitted him in 1820. He was soon apprenticed to his free brother-in-law, Natchez barbershop proprietor James Miller. At the age of twenty-one, Johnson purchased Miller's barbershop, the first step in the young businessman's rise in the 1830s to a position of affluence as a property-holder, moneylender, land speculator, and slaveowner in the town of his birth. In 1835, Johnson married, completed a three-story brick home for his new family, and began on 12 October the diary he was to keep until the day of his death in 1851, the victim of a shooting over a land-boundary dispute.

In his diary Johnson writes most of the time as a self-appointed unofficial local historian. But on the occasions when he speaks of his own situation he provides a unique personal perspective on what it was like to negotiate daily the social margins of a slaveholding society.

Bibliography

• Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan, The Barber of Natchez, 1954.
• William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis, eds., William Johnson's Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro, 1993

William L. Andrews

(b. near Charleston in St. James Goose Creek Parish, S.C., 27 Dec. 1771; d. Brooklyn, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1834, interred St. Philips churchyard, Charleston, S.C.), associate justice, 1805–1833. The son of blacksmith William Johnson and Sarah (Nightingale) Johnson, William Johnson attended grammar school in Charleston, graduated from Princeton in 1790, read law with Charles C. Pinckney, and was admitted to the bar in 1793. At age twenty‐two, he was elected to the state house of representatives; in March 1794, he married the well‐born Sarah Bennett. During Johnson's three terms in the assembly, he joined the Jeffersonian Republican camp, served as cashier of the House, and, in 1798, became speaker of the House. In December 1799, the assembly elevated Johnson to the Constitutional Court; three years later, President Thomas Jefferson appointed him to the United States Supreme Court.

The thirty‐three‐year‐old Johnson attracted controversy. In 1807, he enraged Republicans by relying on Chief Justice John Marshall's anti‐Jeffersonian Marbury v. Madison opinion to protest the Supreme Court's grant of mandamus in the treason trial of two accomplices of Aaron Burr. A year later, in Johnson's first major circuit court opinion, he denied presidential authority to remove the collector of the Port of Charleston for refusing to implement the administration's embargo policies. Shortly afterward, Attorney General Caesar Rodney told Jefferson that the Carolinian had been infected with “leprosy of the Bench.”

But Rodney's diagnosis was premature. After 1812, Johnson grappled constantly with Joseph Story. In U.S. v. Hudson and Goodwin (1812). Johnson refused to extend federal jurisdiction to criminal cases; Story wrote a stinging dissent and pointedly disregarded Hudson on circuit. (See Judicial Power and Jurisdiction; Federal Common Law.) In Ramsay v. Allegre (1827) and elsewhere, Johnson challenged attempts to expand admiralty jurisdiction to inland waterways without constitutional amendment. He also took a dim view of corporate power. On circuit in Bank of the United States v. Deveaux (1809), Johnson denied the Bank's right to sue in federal court. In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Osborn v. Bank of the United States (1824), he agreed that the elastic clause permitted creation of a federal bank; but, he also blasted Marshall's grant of privileges and immunities to artificial persons.

Although Johnson resisted the aggressive use of executive discretion, he encouraged broad readings of congressional power when it constructively supplemented state legislative authority. He therefore concurred in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816) and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831; see Cherokee Cases); repudiated President James Monroe's veto of the Cumberland Road Act in 1822; and sketched his cautiously nationalist, freetrading philosophy in a separate concurring Gibbons v. Ogden opinion (1824).

The slaveholding Johnson opposed abolitionism as well as inhumane treatment of Africans (see Slavery). Between 1822 and 1824, he jeopardized his reputation at home by denouncing both antifederal sentiment in South Carolina and state denial of due process to slave rebel Denmark Vesey. In his circuit court opinion in Elkison v. Deliesseline (1823), he invalidated South Carolina's Negro Seamen Act, which excluded free African‐American traders from state ports; later, he opposed state nullification of the Tariff of Abominations.

In contract disputes, Johnson walked a fine line between antifederalism and prounionism. Because Marshall initially had altered contract opinions to reflect dissent, Johnson endorsed the majority view in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) and Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819); but in 1823, he broke silence over the Court's decision to wield the Contracts Clause against state exercise of ordinary remedial powers. Johnson reluctantly endorsed Bushrod Washington's invalidation of Kentucky's occupying claimant laws in Green v. Biddle (1823); yet his concurring opinion pointed not to the federal clause but to abridgments of property rights protected by the Kentucky constitution and to denial of the right to trial by jury in federal courts. He also denounced the Court's use of the federal clause to support speculators and restrain legislatures. Johnson's fear of excessive deference to “money men” underlay his seriatim opinion in Ogden v. Saunders (1827) in which he supported state prohibition of unremitting creditors' claims (see Bankruptcy and Insolvency Legislation); yet, in the same case, he promoted economic union by drawing the line at state discharge of debtors from obligations to out‐of‐state creditors.

During his twenty‐nine years on the federal bench, Johnson wrote 112 majority opinions, twenty‐one concurrences, thirty‐four dissents, and five seriatim opinions; only Marshall and Story produced more opinions. He was regularly vilified—by Federalists for his devotion to legislative energy, and by Jeffersonians for attacks on executive power and radical states' rights theory. Johnson was indeed a loose cannon. He viewed written opinions as occasions for experimentation. He freely admitted that he was impetuous and easily distracted by nonjudicial activities—among them, land speculation and a two‐volume biography of Nathaniel Greene.

Still, Johnson's legacy was substantial. After 1819, he experienced a principled sea change, away from abstract decisions rooted in political theory and natural law toward a community‐centered, systematic jurisprudence capable of accommodating disparate conceptions of fairness without devolving into mere relativism. He therefore was an unwitting harbinger of Chief Justice Roger Taney's “dual federalism” and economic pragmatism. Johnson's death was unexpected. In July 1834, he traveled to New York for jaw surgery; shortly after the painful procedure, he died, apparently of “exhaustion.”

Bibliography

• Donald G. Morgan, Justice William Johnson, the First Dissenter: The Career and Constitutional Philosophy of a Jeffersonian Judge (1954)

— Sandra F. Van Burkleo

Johnson, William (c. 1715-74) born in Ireland, British colonial leader in America whose long experience with the Iroquois led to his becoming superintendent of Indian affairs north of the Ohio in 1756, during the French and Indian War (1754-63).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

(b Florence, SC, 18 March 1901; d Long Island, NY, 13 April 1970). American painter. His early education was intermittent, but his drawing skills were developed through cartoon work for local newspapers. At 17 he moved to New York, where he found work as a stevedore, cook and hotel porter. From 1923 to 1926 he attended the National Academy of Design in New York and Hawthorne's Cape Cod School of Art at Provincetown. On his graduation funds were raised by supporters to enable further study in Paris, where he stayed for three years, absorbing the impact of such European Expressionists as Cha?m Soutine and simplifying his paintings to bold rhythmic compositions. In Paris he met Holcha Krake (1885-1944), a Danish textile designer, whom he married. The couple travelled through Europe, returning to the USA in 1930. Endorsed by the artist George Luks, Johnson received an award from the Harmon Foundation for 'Distinguished Achievement among Negroes'. He subsequently developed a broader technique with richness of texture and colour. With his wife he settled in Denmark, travelling to Tunisia in 1932 to study art and crafts. A visit to Scandinavia inspired dynamic landscapes that found an interested critical response. This period marked the height of the artist's expressionist phase. After returning to New York (1938), Johnson changed his style to produce flat designs with patterns of brilliant colour, emulating stained glass, depicting religious subjects and scenes from Black American history, for example Going to Church (c. 1940-44; see AFRICAN-AMERICAN ART, fig. 2). His wife's death was destabilizing and to maintain a precarious existence he took work in the Navy Yard, but he left in 1946 to stay with his wife's family in Denmark. However, he returned to New York to be hospitalized in Islip, Long Island, where he remained until his death. His estate of 1100 works was accommodated by the Harmon Foundation until its closure, when it was dispersed among interested organizations.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

William Johnson (1771-1834) served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1804 until his death in 1834. He melded federalists and states' rights views in his opinions. His most important contribution was his insistence on freedom of judicial expression in the form of dissenting opinions.

Family Life

William Johnson was born on December 27, 1771, near Charleston, South Carolina in St. James Goose Creek Parish, one of two sons born to William and Sarah (Nightingale) Johnson. His father had relocated to South Carolina from New York in the early 1760s and became a hero of the Revolutionary War. When the British captured Charleston, Johnson's father was placed in detention in Florida and the family was evicted from their home. Several months later Johnson's father was released, and the family was reunited in Philadelphia and returned to Charleston together.

Johnson attended grammar school in Charleston, and in 1790 he graduated first in his class from Princeton University. He returned to Charleston to study law under Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a close adviser to President George Washington. Johnson was admitted to the bar in 1793. On March 20, 1794, he married Sarah Bennett, the sister of Thomas Bennett, who would later become governor of South Carolina. The couple had eight children but only two lived to adulthood. They later adopted two children from St. Domingue who had fled the island during a slave revolt.

Became State Legislator, Judge

Under the laws of the time, Johnson was eligible to run for political office due to his property holdings, which included several slaves. In 1794 Johnson was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives as a member of Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party. He served three two-year terms, and in 1798, the last year of his tenure in the lower assembly, he was elected as Speaker of the House.

In 1798 he chose not to seek re-election to the House of Representatives so that he could accept an appointment to the Court of Common Pleas, the state's highest court. For the next six years Johnson gained valuable experience addressing many important issues of the time, most notably the relationship between the states and the infant federal government.

Named to Supreme Court

In 1804 Johnson was tapped as President Jefferson's first Supreme Court nominee. At issue for Jefferson was Republican control of the judiciary. His predecessor, President John Adams, had appointed John Marshall, a staunch Federalist, as chief justice. Marshall took strong control of the court, insisting on unanimous decisions. Prior to Marshall's appointment, nearly twenty percent of the court's decisions contained dissenting opinions; after his appointment, no dissenting opinions had been rendered. Jefferson saw Johnson's independent nature and strong personality as a means to exert a brake on Marshall's dominance. Jefferson nominated Johnson on March 22, 1804. Two days later Johnson received Senate confirmation by a voice vote. On May 7, 1804, at 33 years of age, he took the oath of office.

As Jefferson hoped, Johnson provided an independent voice on the court. Although it was several years before he ventured to issue a dissenting opinion, from early on he struggled to overcome Marshall's insistence that the court present a unified front to the public. Although Johnson was successful in easing the iron grip Marshall held over the court, his opinions were often in line with Marshall's, which sometimes earned him the wrath of the president.

Judicial Impact

Johnson's first judiciary controversy of note occurred in 1808 in the case Gilchrist v. Collector of Charleston. Under the executive orders of President Jefferson's Embargo Act, the collector of the Port of Charleston refused sailing clearance to vessels in port. Jefferson had issued the orders to withhold trade to France and Great Britain, which were at war with each other and regularly raiding U.S. ships. When Adam Gilchrist, owner of a grounded ship, petitioned Johnson in circuit court, Johnson reportedly boarded the ship himself and issued sailing orders. His opinion upon granting the mandamus stated that the executive instructions had no legal basis, namely, Congress had not authorized the detention of ships, and the president held no executive right to enforce such acts that infringed on personal liberties.

Jefferson was dismayed at this apparent betrayal by his appointee. The Federalists, on the other hand, were overjoyed with Johnson's reproach of the president and made sure the incident was highly publicized. The president turned the matter over to the U.S. Attorney General, Caesar A. Rodney, who rebuffed Johnson's actions, stating that Johnson acted outside the Constitution when he ordered the ship to sail. Although Johnson initially defended his actions, in a separate Supreme Court decision in 1813 he conceded that he had acted outside his jurisdiction. Nonetheless, Johnson's actions were instrumental in cementing the Supreme Court's role as a protector of individual rights and establishing the connection between legislative action and presidential powers. As a result, Congress passed legislation that clearly delineated the president's right to order such detentions.

Another important decision came in 1812 when Johnson issued the court's opinion rejecting common law federal crimes. Up to that time, federal courts had ruled on criminal cases over which they had not been given legislative authority, which was limited by Congress to such offenses as treason and counterfeiting. The matter became political when a federal grand jury indicted several newspaper editors in Connecticut for seditious libel against President Jefferson. Whereas the Federalists believed that the federal government held inherent powers of self-defense that allowed it to prosecute cases without explicit criminal statutes, Jeffersonians viewed the practice of trying common law crimes in federal courts as an abuse of power. When the seditious libel case came before the Supreme Court as U.S. v. Hudson and Goodwin, Johnson issued the court's majority opinion, which refused to extend federal jurisdiction to include criminal cases. According to James W. Ely, Jr. in Historic U.S. Court Cases, "Although the case before the Court concerned prosecution of seditious libel, Johnson addressed the broader issue of whether the federal courts could exercise any non-statutory criminal jurisdictions. … [His] opinion was grounded on federalism and strict construction of legislation. Stressing the limited nature of the federal government, Johnson declared that federal power was 'made up of concessions from the several States' and that the states reserved all powers not expressly delegated." As he often did in opinions, Johnson relied on both Federalist and Republican principles, pleasing and displeasing each party.

Justice Joseph Story, the most prominent figure on the bench next to Marshall, vehemently disagreed with Johnson's common law opinion. He wrote a sharply worded dissent and disregarded Johnson's majority decision in his own rulings. Johnson butted heads with Story again over extending the jurisdiction of the admiralty into inland waterways. Johnson, who believed in limiting the powers of the government at sea, was also unsympathetic to extending corporate power. Although he concurred with the constitutionality of maintaining a federal bank, he denied the bank's right to sue in federal court.

Johnson, a firm believer in states' rights, was opposed to the federal government superseding its power; however, at the same time, he was a staunch defender of the union, especially in matters of trade and commerce. Because he did not fit easily into any camp, he incurred the wrath of both parties. The Federalists bemoaned Johnson's close reading of legislative authority, and the Jeffersonians, with whom he aligned himself politically, complained of his restrictive interpretation of executive power and his commitment to states' rights.

Resentment in the South

Johnson was viewed with growing ambivalence in his home state. His pro-union sentiment did not play well in South Carolina at a time when anti-federalism was strong. Resentment grew in 1823 after Johnson invalidated the South Carolina Negro Seaman Act in circuit court in the case Elkison v. Deliesseline. According to the act, all free black seamen who docked in a South Carolina port were required to be jailed during the time their ships were in port. Johnson ruled that such an ordinance violated the federal government's power over commerce and greatly weakened the state of the union. Despite the ruling, South Carolina continued the practice of incarcerating black sailors, and Johnson defended his opinion in a series of letters, written under the pen name Philonimus, which were printed in the Charleston newspapers. Though Johnson was against the abolition of slavery, he did abhor the inhumane treatment of slaves and further alienated his home state by denouncing South Carolina for withholding the rights of due process to slave rebel Denmark Vesey.

Johnson provoked the anger of South Carolinians again when he rebuked the state's efforts to nullify the Tariff of 1828. According to vice president John C. Calhoun, who vehemently opposed the tariff in an anonymous letter, the Constitution was not supreme law, but rather a contractual agreement among sovereign states. States therefore had the right to nullify or reject any federal requirements they believed to be unconstitutional. Johnson, who saw nullification as a serious threat to the stability of the union, once again voiced his opinions in the South Carolina newspapers, first under the pseudonym Hamilton and later in a signed eight-point statement that rejected nullification. Johnson became so unpopular in his home state that he moved to Pennsylvania in 1834.

The First Great Dissenter

Johnson's opinions were sometimes very sound and forthright; however, other times he tended to lack clarity, often basing his opinions on abstract political or natural law theories. He was in many ways overshadowed by Marshall. Johnson did play an important role in reinstating the standard practice of submitting dissenting opinions. Prior to Marshall's reign, each Supreme Court Justice offered a separate, or seriatim, opinion. Over the course of his 29 years as a Supreme Court Justice, Johnson wrote 112 majority opinions, 21 concurrences, 34 dissents, and five seriatim opinions for a total of 172. Only Justices Marshall and Story rendered more opinions.

In his 1953 article on Johnson in The William and Mary Quarterly, Donald Morgan noted that Johnson "set up a record of separate utterance unparalleled in the early Court. … As elsewhere, Johnson's approach to opinion procedure was experimental. Besides expressing his views alone and agitating for seriatim opinions, he even introduced views held privately in an opinion rendered for the majority. The outcome of his ventures in strategy is clear: it was the establishment of that procedure for rendering the decrees of the Supreme Court which most harmoniously reconciled authoritativeness with intellectual freedom - the single statement for the majority combined with separate utterances by independents." Thus, Johnson is often referred to as "the first great Dissenter."

Not always completely comfortable with his roll as instigator on the court, Johnson found himself distracted by outside interests, including land speculation and writing. He published a two-volume biography of Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene in 1822 and the Eulogy of Thomas Jefferson in 1826. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, and he contributed frequently to its meetings and publications. Although Johnson's independent temperament made him prickly with those who did not share his opinions, Johnson was also known as a man of sincerity, modesty, and warm-heartedness. He died unexpectedly on August 4, 1834, in New York City, due to post-surgical complications after jaw surgery.

Books

Biskupic, Joan, and Elder Witt, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 3rd edition, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1997.

Chase, Harold, Samuel Krislov, Keith O. Boyum, and Jerry N. Clark, Biographical Dictionary of the Federal Judiciary, Gale, 1976.

Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hall, Kermit L., ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Johnson, John W., Historic U.S. Court Cases, 1690-1990: An Encyclopedia, Garland Publishing, 1992.

Mauro, Tony, Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court, CQ Press, 2000.

Roller, David C., and Robert W. Twyman, The Encyclopedia of Southern History, Louisiana State University Press, 1979.

Witt, Elder, Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 2nd ed., Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1990.

Periodicals

The William and Mary Quarterly, January 1953.

painter

Personal Information

Born March 18, 1901, in Florence, SC; died April 13, 1970 on Long Island, NY; son of Henry and Alice Johnson; married Holcha Krake (a Danish ceramicist and weaver), 1930 (died, 1943).
Education: Attended National Academy of Design, studying under Charles L. Hinton, beginning 1921; studied at Cape Cod School of Art, summers, 1923-1926.

Career

Hotel porter, cook, and stevedore in New York City, c. 1918-25; began formal art study, 1921; performed maintenance work and studied art in Paris, 1926; first one-person show, Paris, 1927; returned to New York, 1929; settled in Kerteminde, Denmark, 1930; painted in Norway and Sweden, 1935-38, and in New York, 1938-45; left the United States for Denmark, 1946; diagnosed with paresis in Oslo, Norway, 1947; confined to Islip State Hospital, New York, until his death in 1970. Works acquired by the Harmon Foundation, 1956; foundation ceased operations, 1967, donating 1,154 of Johnson's works to the Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Fine Arts (now part of the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC); Smithsonian Institution originated a major retrospective of Johnson's work, 1971, and an exhibition focusing on the artist's Scandinavian years, 1982; works included in "Harlem Renaissance: Art in Black America" exhibition originated by the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1987; major retrospective, fall 1991.

Life's Work

Born in rural South Carolina at the beginning of the twentieth century, William Henry Johnson spent an itinerant life devoted to art. He proved himself an outstanding academic painter during his years of study at the National Academy of Design in the 1920s; then, he went to Europe to learn the techniques of European modernists such as Chaim Soutine and Paul Cezanne in Paris. While living in Denmark and Norway in the 1930s, he created many portraits and landscapes reflecting the northern European influence of expressionism--an artistic style that aims to depict the subjective emotions and experiences of the artist. In his most mature period though, Johnson turned his back on academic painting and European styles to develop his own brand of primitivism in depicting African-American themes.

Johnson moved to New York City from Florence, South Carolina, in 1918, at the age of 17. The illegitimate son of a white man and a black woman, he was obliged to provide financial help to his mother and four younger siblings. Johnson had endured years of irregular school attendance and was used to working odd jobs. He supported himself in New York with any available means of employment, including work as a stevedore on the city's docks. Johnson settled in New York at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of literary and artistic activity among blacks centered in New York City's Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance lasted for about a decade before the stock market crash of 1929 marked its end. Throughout the 1920s, though, there was a flourishing of African-American writers, artists, musicians, and others who sought to create new works of art and literature based on their own African-American culture. Johnson was an integral part of that movement.

Introduced to art through cartoons he saw in a local newspaper, Johnson became a skilled painter at New York's National Academy of Design. He was accepted to the Academy in 1921 and studied there for five years under Charles L. Hinton. At the same time, he continued working odd jobs as a hotel porter, cook, and stevedore to support himself and his family. During his time at the Academy, Johnson distinguished himself as one of the institution's most outstanding students, winning the prestigious Cannon Prize from the Academy's Life School for figure painting, first place from the Hallgarten Prize Fund for painting, and the School Prize for his work in still life.

Johnson had the privilege of working with a number of esteemed artists early in his career. He studied with American realist painter George Luks in the mid-1920s in exchange for maintenance work at Luks's studio. And during the summers from 1923 to 1926 he received instruction from Charles W. Hawthorne at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1926, with Hawthorne's monetary support, Johnson was able to go to Paris and study under modern European painters. That winter, Johnson maintained a studio in Montparnasse, a Parisian arts center. His still life and portrait paintings from this period reflect the influence of Cezanne, a nineteenth-century French painter whose later works played a key role in the development of abstract art, and of Soutine, a modernist known for his textured brushstrokes and for the overall boldness and irregularity of his works. While in Paris, Johnson also met Henry Ossawa Tanner, who was considered the leading black painter of the time.

Johnson's first one-person show was held at the Students and Artists Club in Paris in 1927. Soon after, he moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France and stayed there for about a year and a half. He had a one-person show in Nice in 1928 and the following year met the Danish ceramicist and weaver Holcha Krake, whom he would marry in 1930. They traveled throughout Europe to Corsica, Belgium, Germany, and finally to Odense, Denmark, to visit her family.

By this time Johnson had dabbled in a variety of artistic methods, seeking to define his own style. He enlarged upon his own academic training to include the contemporary painting techniques he discovered in Europe. He borrowed from realism and impressionism alike, vacillating between objective, accurate representations of reality and evocations of sensory impressions. His style of painting changed as he came under the influence of Cezanne, French expressionist painter Georges Roualt, and especially Soutine. He also admired the rugged and direct style of nineteenth-century Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. For the next several years, Johnson would continue to embrace one style after another as he sought to develop his own individual technique of painting.

Toward the end of 1929, Johnson returned to New York and rented a loft. He entered a self-portrait and five other paintings in a juried competition sponsored by the Harmon Foundation. Through its annual juried competition, the foundation provided much needed backing to black artists. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated Howard University professor, author, and major Harlem Renaissance figure, had persuaded white philanthropist William E. Harmon to sponsor such a competition in 1926. "At a time when very few individuals or organizations gave consistent support to black artists and their institutions, the Harmon Foundation provided money, advice, advocacy, and information," explained Richard J. Powell in Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation.

With the support of fellow artist and Harmon Foundation juror George Luks, Johnson's entry was accepted for the competition, even though it was submitted after the foundation's deadline. Johnson won the William E. Harmon first prize and gold medal for "distinguished achievement among Negroes." His success in the 1929 event marked the beginning of a longstanding relationship with the foundation.

Johnson's landscapes and portraits from the late 1920s sparked a critical debate among the New York art critics over his reliance on European and Euro-American art standards. Unlike black artists Palmer Hayden and Laura Wheeler Waring--his award-winning predecessors--Johnson clearly represented a new generation of blacks in the art field. Commenting on the artist's flair, Powell noted: "Youthful, artistically inclined toward the experimental, and bohemian in demeanor, Johnson embodied the era's fantasy of the dreamy, European-based, American painter.... His exploration of a modern art vocabulary set him apart from many of his fellow black artists."

In 1930 Johnson returned briefly to his hometown of Florence, South Carolina. His paintings of the Jacobia Hotel, an old inn that had been converted into a bordello, caused him to be censured by the local establishment. He ultimately left the town, vowing never to return, but before his departure some 135 of his paintings were exhibited there. His works from this time demonstrate an evolution in his style. Johnson had become a virtuoso expressionist painter.

Johnson married Holcha Krake in May of 1930, and they settled in the Danish fishing village of Kerteminde on the island of Funen. He felt a kinship with the lifestyle of the Danish villagers, comparing his own life in the rural South to life in their fishing village. According to the essay on Johnson that appeared in Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, "It was in Kerteminde and its vicinity that many of the landscapes Johnson praised as his best works were painted." Johnson and Krake held two-person exhibits whenever possible.

Before leaving for Denmark in 1930, however, Johnson had visited Locke in Washington, D.C. As a major spokesperson for black artists during the Harlem Renaissance, Locke had succeeded in gaining financial support for black artists from organizations like the Harmon Foundation. Locke espoused the doctrine that black artists should create works based on their African heritage. Johnson maintained an artist-agent relationship with the Harmon Foundation while in Europe. The foundation aided him by restretching, framing, and photographing his paintings. Assisted by Locke, the Harmon Foundation offered these and other services to some of its award winners and marketed their works in exchange for a small percentage from sales.

However, in Johnson's case, the foundation had difficulty in selling his works, even though they were exhibited in many group shows of African-American artists in the 1930s. He provided them with paintings done primarily from 1928 to 1930, and some observers speculate that these French-inspired American subjects may have been too similar to works by van Gogh and Soutine. Although widely reviewed and critically discussed by Scandinavian art critics and collectors, Johnson's work did not attract much critical commentary in the United States during the 1930s. As a result, Johnson sold his works on his own to Scandinavian collectors, who appreciated his paintings of picturesque villages and desolate northern European landscapes.

Johnson and Krake traveled to Germany, France, and Tunisia in 1932. Johnson painted many watercolors and did woodcuts during this trip. Together with his wife he studied ceramics in Nabeul, where they learned about African pottery and local arts and crafts. The experience fed Johnson's devotion to observing the primitive ways of native people.

Johnson created a large body of portraits and landscape paintings during his Scandinavian years. In 1935 he moved to Norway, where "his Expressionism took on a moodier, more dramatic ambience [under the] influence of the Northern European belief in an evocative, spirit-filled landscape," according to Powell. Norway provided the artist with a more isolated and stark setting, and his expressionistic works from this time bear a newfound richness in color, nature, and spirituality. Powell asserted, "Although the subject of these works was ostensibly just the landscape, Johnson often infused the mountains, fjords and foliage with a lively, almost animated quality."

Johnson also painted in Sweden before returning to his home in Kerteminde in 1938. With the prospect of a German-occupied Denmark and World War II on the horizon, Johnson and Krake left once again for New York in November. Johnson's Scandinavian years had not only put him in touch with the modern northern European painters of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden but had also exposed him to a variety of folk cultures. He witnessed the high regard these cultures received in Europe from artists and intellectuals. Upon his return to New York in late 1938, Johnson altered his style of painting, focusing mainly on flat, non-illusionistic renderings. In addition, his subject matter changed from Scandinavian landscapes to scenes of Harlem and South Carolina.

Back in Harlem, Johnson turned to subjects and themes that celebrated the black experience. Black figures--often set around black Christian themes--became recurring elements in his paintings. Works such as "Nativity," "Descent from the Cross," and "Mount Calvary," all painted around 1939, present an all-black family of Jesus. An earlier work, "Jesus and the Three Marys," shows a crucified black Christ before three black women.

Although earlier artists like Aaron Douglas and Malvin Gray Johnson had brought black religious subjects into their works, Johnson "changed the course of artistic interpretations of Black American themes in Christianity," according to an essay in Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. Johnson reinterpreted the many familiar subjects relating to the life and death of Jesus and also painted literal interpretations of spirituals in such works as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Climbing Jacob's Ladder," both from the late 1930s.

Upon his return to New York, Johnson discovered that the Harmon Foundation had changed its priorities from supporting individual artists to promoting art education in black schools. The foundation provided him with letters of introduction to various New York art galleries, and he gradually made his own contacts among New York artists, gallery owners, and collectors. Around this time he joined the mural section of the WPA Fine Arts Project in New York.

While in New York from 1938 to 1945, Johnson did hundreds of works that expressed various aspects of the black experience in America. As Powell wrote, "Ironically, it was during this phase of estrangement between Johnson and the Foundation that Johnson flowered into an important chronicler of Afro-American life, an aesthetic ideal long championed by the Harmon Foundation." Harlem's lively cabaret scene and nightlife inspired him to capture the spirit of what he was experiencing. He created a number of vastly different paintings on political and social themes, all based on his Harlem experiences and memories of South Carolina. "Cafe" (1939-40), for instance, shows a Harlem couple sharing a drink at a cafe table, while "Chain Gang" (1939-40), which was exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939, depicts two black prisoners in striped clothing working on a road gang.

Johnson's paintings of the South also include slices of family life--church scenes, farmers working, even memories of his own family. In "Mom and Dad" (1944), the artist's aging black mother is seen sitting in a rocking chair in front of a portrait of his white father, which hangs on the wall. The painting serves as Johnson's comment on his illegitimate birth and the father he was never allowed to know.

Johnson's concern with politics is evident in paintings like "Harlem Moon" (1944), in which police and citizens are engaged in a bloody fight that evokes visions of community violence. During this period the artist also painted portraits of black heroes, abolitionists, world leaders, and other prominent black figures, including scientist George Washington Carver in several poses--accepting awards, working in his laboratory, and displaying numerous byproducts he created from peanuts and sweet potatoes.

Johnson experienced turbulence in his personal life during his later years in New York. His wife died of cancer in 1943, and around the same time, his studio was badly damaged by a major fire. Before returning to Denmark in 1946, he executed "Minde Kerteminde," an unusual depiction of his memories of life in the Danish fishing village. Consisting largely of static, even heraldic portraits of Danish fishermen and relatives along with remembered landmarks and buildings, the work "ushers forth a different Johnson, one whose familiarity with modern art language comes in direct opposition to a 'primitive's' point of view," according to Powell in an article for Black American Literature Forum.

Unfortunately, Johnson's painting career would soon come to an untimely end. Severing all ties with the Harmon Foundation, he returned to Denmark in 1946, only to be diagnosed the next year as having paresis, a type of paralysis. In 1947 he was confined indefinitely to a New York State mental hospital on Long Island. Although details of the last decades of his life remain unclear, it is known that Johnson never painted again. After 23 years in the hospital, the artist died quietly on April 13, 1970.

Awards

Cannon Prize, 1924, School Prize, 1925-26, and Hallgarten Prize, 1925-26, all from National Academy of Design; Harmon Foundation competition, first prize and gold medal, both 1929.

Further Reading

Books

• Breeskin, Adelyn, William H. Johnson, 1901-1970, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.
• Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, The Studio Museum in Harlem/Harry N. Abrams, 1987.
• Powell, Richard J., Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, Rizzoli, 1991.
• Reynolds, Gary A., and Beryl J. Wright, editors, Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, The Newark Museum, 1989.

• Black American Literature Forum, Winter 1986.
• New York, March 16, 1987.
• People Weekly, May 25, 1987.
• Smithsonian, November 1971.
• A twenty-five minute biocritical video titled The Life and Art of William H. Johnson is available from Reading & O'Reilly, 1992.

— David Bianco

Johnson, William Ernest (1858-1931) Cambridge logician. Born and educated in Cambridge, Johnson's main livelihood was teaching mathematics, until he was made a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1902. He had considerable personal and intellectual influence on the younger Cambridge generation that included Broad, Keynes, and the empiricist and philosopher of probability, R. B. Braithwaite. His own major work, Logic, was collected in three volumes in the last decade of his life, but has not achieved a large subsequent impact.

• Born: Dec. 27, 1771, Charleston, S.C.
• Education: College of New Jersey (Princeton), B.A., 1790; studied law with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in Charleston
• Previous government service: South Carolina House of Representatives, 1794–98, Speaker, 1798; judge, South Carolina Constitutional Court, 1799–1804
• Appointed by President Thomas Jefferson Mar. 22, 1804; replaced Alfred Moore, who resigned
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Mar. 24, 1804, by a voice vote; served until Aug. 4, 1834
• Died: Aug. 4, 1834, Brooklyn, N.Y.

William Johnson was President Thomas Jefferson's first appointee to the Supreme Court. Of all the justices of the Court under John Marshall, Johnson was the one most likely to disagree with the dominating chief justice. He has been remembered as the first great dissenter of the Supreme Court.

Justice Johnson was a hardworking member of the Court who wrote 112 majority opinions, 21 concurrences, and 34 dissents during 29 years on the Court. Only John Marshall and Joseph Story produced more opinions during Johnson's tenure on the Court.

Sources

• Donald G. Morgan, Justice William Johnson: The First Dissenter (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1954)

William Johnson served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1794 to 1798 and as speaker of the house in 1798. He was then elected judge of the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas. In 1804 he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served on the U.S. Supreme Court until his death in 1834, earning a reputation as a critic of Chief Justice John Marshall, a writer of dissenting opinions, and a nationalist with regard to federal-state relations.

Johnson was born December 27, 1771, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the son of Sarah Nightingale Johnson and of William Johnson, a blacksmith, legislator, and well-known Revolutionary patriot. During the Revolutionary War, when the British captured Charleston, Johnson's father was sent to detention in Florida, and the family was exiled from its home. The Johnsons returned to South Carolina after being reunited months later.

Johnson graduated first in his class from Princeton in 1790. He then returned to Charleston to study law under Charles C. Pinckney, a prominent adviser to President George Washington. Johnson was admitted to the bar in 1793.

In 1794 Johnson married Sarah Bennett, sister of Thomas Bennett, a future governor of South Carolina. The couple had eight children, six of whom died in childhood. They also later adopted two refugee children from Santo Domingo.

From 1794 to 1798, Johnson served in South Carolina's house of representatives as a member of Thomas Jefferson's new Republican party. Johnson was speaker of the house in 1798. He was then elected judge of the court of common pleas, the state's highest court.

In 1804 President Jefferson appointed Johnson to the U.S. Supreme Court. During his thirty years of service on the Court, Johnson became known as a critic of Chief Justice John Marshall. Johnson has been called the first great Court dissenter because he established a tradition of dissenting opinions. Among his most noteworthy opinions was his dissent in Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. (4 Pet.) 410, 7 L. Ed. 903 (1830). In Craig v. Missouri, Johnson argued in his dissent that states should be able to issue temporary bills of credit or loans.

In general, Johnson leaned toward the nationalist position in judicial issues involving federal-state relations, as illustrated by his concurring opinion in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 6 L. Ed. 23 (1824). Gibbons was a landmark decision that held that the Commerce Clause gave to Congress, to the exclusion of the states, the power to regulate interstate commerce, which included navigation between the states. In his circuit court duties as well, Johnson steadfastly held that the federal government had the right to control interstate commerce, including the commerce of slaves. This position proved so unpopular in his native state that he was forced to move to Pennsylvania in 1833.

In the first part of his career as a Supreme Court justice, Johnson sought a different appointment. He wrote to President Jefferson that he found the Court to be no "bed of roses." Nevertheless, he remained on the Court until his death.

Johnson's other accomplishments included the publication of Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathaniel Greene, in 1822, and Eulogy of Thomas Jefferson, in 1826. Johnson also was a founder of the University of South Carolina. He died following surgery in 1834.

For other persons named William Johnson, see William Johnson (disambiguation).

William Johnson
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office May 7, 1804 – August 4, 1834
Nominated by	Thomas Jefferson
Preceded by	Alfred Moore
Succeeded by	James Moore Wayne
Born	December 17 or 27, 1771 Charleston, South Carolina
Died	August 4, 1834 (aged 62) New York, New York
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Religion	Presbyterian

William Johnson (December 17 or December 27, 1771 - August 4, 1834) was a state legislator and judge in South Carolina, and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1804 to his death in 1834.

Contents 1 Youth and early career 2 Work as a legislator 3 Appointment to the Court 4 Independent judicial mind 5 References 6 External links

Youth and early career

Johnson was born in Charleston. His father, William Johnson, was a revolutionary, and represented Charleston in the general assembly of South Carolina. The elder Johnson was deported by Sir Henry Clinton to St. Augustine with other distinguished patriots of South Carolina. ^[1] His mother, Sarah Johnson, nee Nightingale, was also a revolutionary. "During the siege of Charleston, [she quilted] her petticoats with cartridges, which she thus conveyed to her husband in the trenches." ^[1] The younger Johnson studied law at Princeton and graduated with an A.B. in 1790. He read law in the office of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney before passing the bar in 1793. In 1794, he married Sarah Bennett. They had at least one child, Anna Hayes Johnson, who was the second wife of Romulus Mitchell Saunders and mother of Jane Claudia Saunders Johnson (wife of General Bradley Tyler Johnson, Confederate Civil War General from Maryland.) ^[2]

Work as a legislator

Johnson followed in his father's footsteps, representing the city of Charleston (and the nascent Democratic-Republican Party) in the state's house of representatives from 1794-1798. In 1796, he was selected as the speaker of the state house. In 1798, the formation of the state's highest court created a demand for judges, and Johnson was one of those selected to the position.

Appointment to the Court

Johnson was nominated to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court by Thomas Jefferson on March 22, 1804, as the successor of Alfred Moore. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 24, 1804, and received his commission on March 26, 1804. He was the first of Jefferson's three appointments to the court, and is considered to have been selected for sharing many of Jefferson's beliefs about the Constitution.

Independent judicial mind

In his years on the Court, Johnson proved to be a very independent mind - while the Chief Justice, John Marshall, was able to steer the opinions of most of the justices in most cases, Johnson developed a reputation for dissent. Johnson's independence was further displayed in 1808 when he defied the orders of the collector of the port of Charleston, the United States Attorney General Caesar A. Rodney, and President Thomas Jefferson (the very man who had nominated Johnson to his position), because he felt that the executive branch's control of maritime trade was an overextension of its constitutional powers. Much later in his service on the court, during the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina from 1831-1833, Johnson again displayed his desire for independent thought by moving away from his residence in South Carolina, so as not to be swayed by the intensity of public opinion there.

Johnson died in 1834 in New York after surgery on his jaw.

References

• William Johnson (judge) at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

1. ^ ^{a b} Johnson, Bradley T. "The Memoir of Jane Claudia Johnson." Southern Historical Society Papers, volume XXIX, 1901, pg 34.
2. ^ Hanson, George Adolphus. Old Kent: the Eastern Shore of Maryland , Notes Illustrative of the Most Ancient Records of Kent County, 1876, pg 57

External links

• A very brief online biography
• William Johnson on Find-A-Grave

Legal offices
Preceded by Alfred Moore	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States May 7, 1804 – August 4, 1834	Succeeded by James Moore Wayne

Supreme Court of the United States

The Marshall Court Chief Justice: John Marshall (1801–1835) 1804–1806: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson 1807–1810: Wm. Cushing | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd 1810–1811: S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd 1811–1812: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall 1812–1823: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story 1823–1826: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson 1826–1828: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson | R. Trimble 1828–1829: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson 1830–1834: Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin

Persondata
NAME	Johnson, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
DATE OF BIRTH	December 17 or 27, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH	Charleston, South Carolina
DATE OF DEATH	August 11, 1834
PLACE OF DEATH	New York, New York

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