Fenton Johnson Was First | Part I: The Seed in the City

Born in Bronzeville; South Side Scribe

Before the Harlem Renaissance had a name, before "Black literature" became a section in white bookstores, a boy was born into a rising Black middle class on Chicago's South Side. Fenton Johnson was born on May 7, 1888, in Chicago, Illinois, in what would become the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. Pre-Great Migration, Bronzeville spanning roughly 26th to 51st Streets between State Street and Cottage Grove, was already home to self-sustaining Black families, churches, and businesses by the late 1880s. His father, Elijah Johnson, worked as a railroad porter and became a property owner. His father is said to be one of the wealthiest Black persons in Chicago. Fenton lived in a rare space for a Black boy at the time. Business ownership and literacy were the norm. At no point did this fortunate fall from the sky, Fenton's father was among the earliest Black entrepreneurs to successfully navigate real estate in Chicago. To own a home and business as a Black man in post-Reconstruction America can be seen as defiance yet it truly spells out continuity.

The "Real" World

(You can't read his verse without seeing what he lived.)

We will now explore the world that fueled his anger, disenchantment, and clairvoyance. Without context, his work carries weight that sinks. With context, his work carries life into new centuries. With the Compromise of 1877 and introduction of Jim Crow, "blacks in Illinois found themselves in circumstances only marginally better than those they had endured in the antebellum years". Between 1882 and 1968, there were 4,743 documented lynchings in the U.S., majority of them Black victims. Primarily in the Deep South, however the Midwest, including Illinois, saw the execution of Black men in visceral and public ways. In 1909, a Black man by the name of William "Froggie" James was lynched in Cairo, IL with thousands of spectators, even after IL passed anti-lynching laws in 1905. Jim Crow segregation was ratified in every Southern state, influencing Chicago's social and civic life. Chicago's segregation was less overt but still structural, manifesting in restricted housing, segregated schools, and blocked job opportunities. Bronzeville, part of the Chicago's Black Belt, was deliberately underfunded and isolated. In this Northern city, civility masked cruelty: landlords, employers, and schools communicated the same message, "you belong but not fully." Civility in these times had more to do with restraining the victims than it was to impede the persecution. Sanitizing the world that brought him up will only cleanses the world of its own wrongdoings while ripping history from his work, since an artist is like a sponge. Do not take these truths lightly, reader. They live in the DNA of those who have endured it and now the pain dances to the same rhythm that life does. Don't like learning about it? Make sure it doesn't happen again.

Schooling and Early Work

Fenton attended Chicago Public Schools, including Englewood and Wendell Phillips High Schools; two of the few institutions that accepted Black students at the time. He was scribbling at the age of nine; his poems were published in Chicago journals before age 12. Johnson briefly attended Northwestern University, then completed his BA at the University of Chicago. He later studied at Columbia University's Pulitzer School of Journalism.

Fenton Johnson. From the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

An excerpt early into his journey as a poet:

Sympathy is quality of man

When the twilight ushers in the hour

Of the withered limb and faded eye,

And the loss of every kind of power;

Soft the world of nature drinks it all, —

Wonder-world of nature drinks it all.

And the Wound Is Not for Man to See

Johnson, Fenton. When I Reach Manhood. Chicago: Self-published, 1913.