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Seasons in Hell: Charles S. Johnson and the 1930 Liberian Labor Crisis Phillip James Johnson Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College

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Seasons in Hell: Charles S. Johnson and the 1930 Liberian Labor Crisis Phillip James Johnson Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2004 Seasons in hell: Charles S. Johnson and the 1930 Liberian Labor Crisis Phillip James Johnson Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Johnson, Phillip James, "Seasons in hell: Charles S. Johnson and the 1930 Liberian Labor Crisis" (2004). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3905. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3905 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. SEASONS IN HELL: CHARLES S. JOHNSON AND THE 1930 LIBERIAN LABOR CRISIS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Phillip James Johnson B. A., University of New Orleans, 1993 M. A., University of New Orleans, 1995 May 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first debt of gratitude goes to my wife, Ava Daniel-Johnson, who gave me encouragement through the most difficult of times. The same can be said of my mother, Donna M. Johnson, whose support and understanding over the years no amount of thanks could compensate. The patience, wisdom, and good humor of David H. Culbert, my dissertation adviser, helped enormously during the completion of this project; any student would be wise to follow his example of professionalism. Thanks also to the many friends, scholars, and archivists who have helped me over the years. Deeply missed are two friends who lost their battles with cancer: University of New Orleans history professor Joseph Logsdon and Louisiana State University history department secretary Mrs. Peggy Seale. Their uplifting spirit and good advice will be valued always. Warmest thanks, finally, to Charles J. Lang, educator and veteran of two wars. Although illness has prevented him from sharing in the satisfaction of seeing this project through to the end, he remains in my thoughts always. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..ii Abstract….………………………………………………………………………………..iv Introduction…….………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1. The Education of Charles S. Johnson, 1893-1929……………………………5 Chapter 2. The Gentlemen of Akron………………………………………………...…..54 Chapter 3. “The Persistent Weaknesses Within”: Liberia, the U. S. Department of State, and the Road to Investigation………………….……………….…109 Chapter 4. “To See Clearly and Sift Wisely”: Charles S. Johnson in Liberia…...……171 Chapter 5. “Johnsey Come to Set Us Free”…………………………………………....222 Conclusion…….………………………………………………………………………..275 Bibliography…….……………………………………………………………………...288 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………..307 iii ABSTRACT In 1930, African American sociologist Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University traveled to the Republic of Liberia as the American member of a League of Nations commission to investigate allegations of slavery and forced labor in that West African nation. In the previous five years, the face of Liberia had changed after the large-scale development of rubber plantations on land leased by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, with headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Political turmoil greeted Johnson in Liberia, an underdeveloped nation teetering on the brink of economic collapse. This dissertation focuses on Johnson’s role as the key member of the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, and examines events leading up to the investigation. Also touched upon are the life and career of Harvey S. Firestone, the history of the rubber and automobile industries, and Liberia’s relationship with the U. S. Department of State. Central to this dissertation, however, is Charles Johnson, an important and underappreciated figure in African American history. Johnson’s diplomatic approach to race relations in the United States earned him respect from philanthropic foundations that funded his research projects, but also led to criticism and jealousy from his black colleagues and peers. Because Johnson guarded his privacy so closely and left behind little in the way of personal information, the journal that he kept for six months in Liberia becomes all the more important as a clue to his inner thoughts and feelings, as well as a guide to his personality and character. Furthermore, Liberia shaped Johnson’s thinking as a scholar in important ways, particularly in regard to the economic foundations of exploitation, caste and class, and political disfranchisement. iv Johnson’s mission to Liberia and his spirited defense of that nation’s tribal citizens, as this study shows, suggests a more complicated and assertive individual that contrasts with the largely one dimensional image of him that has metastasized over the years. Indeed, Johnson was one of the few African Americans who showed any interest in the welfare of Liberia’s indigenous tribes. In that regard, he was a maverick, overlooked and underestimated. v INTRODUCTION Several years after Harvey S. Firestone, president of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, announced plans to establish the largest rubber plantations in the world in the Republic of Liberia, Harvard political scientist Raymond Leslie Buell leveled charges of “economic imperialism” against the tire magnate and the U. S. Department of State, and warned of the probability of wholesale exploitation of native labor.1 In 1929, the international community focused its attention on Liberia after allegations that high officials in the black republic used forced labor for private purposes, and that others profited from coerced shipments of native workers to the Spanish-owned island of Fernando Po, a condition analogous to slavery. An international commission under the aegis of the League of Nations in 1930 investigated the allegations of impropriety, and produced a report that led to changes at the highest levels of government in the black republic as well as a protracted battle for Liberian sovereignty in the years that followed. While numerous studies have analyzed the activities of Firestone and the State Department in Liberia, the role of Charles S. Johnson, the black sociologist from Fisk University and key member of the League of Nations commission of inquiry, has never been explained in any detail even as some scholars have cast doubt on his qualifications, character, and motives.2 Nor has the 1930 League investigation itself been treated 1 Raymond Leslie Buell, “Mr. Firestone’s Liberia,” The Nation, 126, 3278 (May 1928), 521-24. 2 R. Earle Anderson wrote in 1952: “The inquiry lasted only about four months . It is hard to believe that these inexperienced investigators, under the conditions that actually existed, could have been able even to approximate the careful obtaining and weighing of testimony without which their findings would at best be of questionable validity.” Anderson continued: “Surely this was a situation calling for the utmost skill of experienced investigators. Yet there appears to have been no formal examination of witnesses, no competent questioning, no cross-examination.” R. Earle Anderson, Liberia: America’s African Friend 1 comprehensively. In addition to serving as a firsthand, critical analysis of the behind-the- scenes work of the commission, the journal that Johnson kept of his experiences during six months in Liberia provides an unexpurgated view of the very private sociologist, and contradicts uninformed portrayals of him by others as timid and manipulative. Yet, Johnson’s African diary has been left all but untouched by historians. Furthermore, important sources pertaining to Firestone and the U. S. State Department have been overlooked or neglected. As a consequence, Johnson’s participation in the inquiry has been understated to the point of obscurity; Harvey Firestone reduced to little more than a symbol of corporate greed; and the State Department equally credited and blamed for formulating and carrying out an elaborate plan of action that was, in reality, jerrybuilt and sure to either fail entirely or produce unintended consequences. From a professional standpoint, Johnson’s odyssey in West Africa is essential to understanding the intellectual growth of the author of such classic sociological studies as Shadow of the Plantation (1934), and Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941). In Liberia, Johnson developed more completely a distinctly humanistic approach to sociology that sought to understand the world through the eyes of its subjects, hallmarks of his best- known works in later years. His crash course in international diplomacy, and immersion in a severely underdeveloped society that had only begun to modernize with the coming (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 104 (first quotation), 105 (second quotation). Following Anderson’s lead, Charles Morrow Wilson wrote in 1971: “The requested commission was chosen with appalling ineptness. Its American member, Dr. Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University, then one of the better-known Negro colleges, accepted with forthright protest, explaining that he had no firsthand acquaintance with Africa, knew extremely little about Liberia, and nothing about the Fernando Po controversy. Dr. Johnson
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