Kathryn Magnolia Johnson
by Armand Anthony Gonzalzles

Kathryn Magnolia Johnson: Fearless warrior and revolutionary in pursuit of education, academic achievement, and social justice for Blacks throughout the nation and the world

Kathryn Magnolia Johnson was born during the “Jim Crow Era,” was a woman of color and one of many unsung heroes of a budding modern civil rights movement. Kathryn was a champion for literacy, education and social justice in colored communities throughout the country and the world. Kathryn’s journey takes us from Darke County, Ohio, where she was born, to New Paris, Ohio where she experienced the “colorline,” and the reality of racism, to Wilberforce University where she was inspired, through the horrors of the Argenta Race Riot, her experience as the first field agent for the NAACP, her service to the colored troops in WWI France and her travels throughout the United States selling her “Two Foot Shelf of Negro Literature.” This narrative is written in the first person as Kathryn tells her story through her unfinished autobiography, diaries, letters, books, pamphlets, newspaper articles and the comments she wrote on the many photographs she took throughout her amazing journey. Many will appreciate a firsthand telling of the grass roots movement that smoldered during the post-reconstruction period. Kathryn was an integral part of that struggle but to date has only gotten a paragraph or two in the history of the civil rights struggle. I believe anyone that reads this narrative will be surprised at the many ‘first’ Kathryn was responsible for and will be inspired to do more for those in need of justice. —Armand A. Gonzalzles