SOURCE: Pearson, Ralph L. “Combatting Racism with Art: Charles S. Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance.” American Studies 18, no. 1 (spring 1977): 123-34.

In the following essay, Pearson focuses on Johnson's role in the Harlem Renaissance movement—especially his writings for Opportunity and other periodicals that emphasized an emerging identity for African Americans—and his belief that art is a means of defeating racism.

Until the appearance of Patrick Gilpin's essay, “Charles S. Johnson: Entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance,”¹ the important role of Johnson as a cultivator of the Harlem Renaissance was described in a paragraph or two by historians and literary critics. In his recent analysis of the Renaissance as a cultural movement encompassing all the arts, Nathan Irvin Huggins merely cites Johnson as editor of Opportunity and then comments on the role of Opportunity in the Renaissance, “… even more than the others [Crisis; The Messenger], Opportunity believed its motto...