Mordecai, The Man and His Message: The Story of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

Abstract

Mordecai, The Man and His Message: The Story of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, by Richard I. McKinney. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997. 349 pp. $21.95, paper. Reviewed by Joseph T. Durham, Community College of Baltimore and Coppin State College. Dr. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, president of Howard University for 34 years, was a pivotal figure in the history of African American higher education. In Mordecai, The Man and His Message, his biographer, Richard McKinney, presents a lucid, well-written account of the educational leader, minister, and trailblazer, who was frequently regarded as controversial and either intensely loved or intensely hated. At the outset, McKinney notes, he had planned to write a short biographical statement on Johnson, the first African American president of Howard, for use as an introduction to a volume of Johnson's sermons and addresses. However, as he delved deeper into his subject, he reversed his priorities and opted to write what amounts to the first book-length biography of the man's life and contributions. McKinney's purpose was to present a balanced, well-rounded portrait of Mordecai Johnson. He has accomplished this purpose in an admirable manner, even though he was hampered because the papers of Johnson are still closed to scholars. In nine comprehensive chapters, McKinney describes the life of his subject from his birth in Paris, Tennessee, through his Morehouse College days and graduate study at Rochester Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago. He continues with a focus on Johnson's pastorates in Mumford, New York, and Charleston, West Virginia, and his more than three decades at the helm of Howard University. He then follows this dynamic figure through retirement and finally to his demise. McKinney shows a public Johnson, who was frequently embattled as an administrator. He also shows a private Johnson, who consistently summoned his family to Sabbath prayers at home, and who regularly attended worship services on Sundays at a local Washington, D.C., church or at Rankin Chapel on the Howard campus. Under McKinney's keen lenses, however, Johnson emerges as a multidimensional character. On the one hand, he was an erring student who was expelled from Morehouse College because he violated institutional rules by playing cards (although he was later readmitted). On the other hand, he was an undaunted romantic who never forgot his first love, Alice Woodson, whom he did not marry due to an unfortunate incident of deception by a dormitory matron. After the death of the first Mrs. Johnson, fate brought Alice and Mordecai together in a blissful six-year marriage late in their lives. Johnson's life alone is not just chronicled in this book. McKinney weaves a tapestry of the social, political, economic, and cultural events that furnished the background against which his subject prevailed. This tapestry is embroidered with significant vignettes of the famous persons with whom Johnson interacted: Jesse Moorland, YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) executive; philanthropist Julius Rosenwald; Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President; John W. …