Charles Spurgeon Johnson, literary entrepreneur, sociologist, and president of Fisk University for a decade, "single-handedly propelled" the Harlem Renaissance into being, according to Langston Hughes. Hughes's evaluation of the man who founded and edited the National Urban League's Opportunity magazine and sponsored literary contests and celebratory dinners for the young writers and artists of the early 1920s attests to Johnson's role in shaping one of the most impressive cultural movements in American history. As the chief black American sociologist of his period, Johnson also wrote the scholarly books that documented the causes of race riots, the effects of racism on the personalities of black youth, and the need for blacks to become a part of the mainstream of American life. As president of Fisk University from 1947 to 1956, Johnson joined in the administrative effort to make Fisk "the Harvard of Negro colleges," thereby sculpting the school into such a...