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| Harriet Tubman (William Henry Johnson, 1945) |
Researching African American "firsts" in the law, we came upon the story of William Henry Johnson, in at least one scholar's assessment the first black attorney in the United States. And an amazing story it is, as wide of breadth and full of incident as a nineteenth-century novel, from his youth as a jockey on a plantation, acquaintance with presidents, escape from slavery, a shipwreck, and eluding of slave catchers with the assistance of John Jacob Astor, through to the dogged pursuit of learning that culminated in a long legal career and the abiding respect of his community in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Looking for more on this remarkable yet little-known individual, we discovered another remarkable, little-known person by the same name - a "ghost of history," in one writer's phrase, who served as the Albany correspondent for Frederick Douglass's North Star. This William Henry Johnson was instrumental in the passage of legislation in New York State prohibiting discrimination against African Americans in life insurance and in public education. His autobiography is available as a free e-book for those who may wish to read more about him. You can also find online a speech he delivered in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1859, whose theme Rochesterians will no doubt recognize as similar to Douglass's "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech of seven years earlier, Independence Day having long been recognized by abolitionists as a powerful rhetorical opportunity.
Imagine our surprise when we then learned that President Lincoln's personal valet was named ...... William Henry Johnson. Johnson accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg for the delivery of the Gettysburg Address. On their return, Lincoln fell ill with smallpox and Johnson nursed him back to health. Poignantly, Johnson also contracted the disease and succombed shortly thereafter.
At this point the rabbit hole beckoned and we jumped in: we weren't going to stop until we'd found as many African Americans of historical note with that name as we could. There were three more. One was a World War I soldier, more commonly known by his middle name, who fought off a German raiding party of as many as twenty-four men in hand-to-hand combat. Another was a painter who experimented with a diverse range of styles and subjects, from impressionistic still-lifes and landscapes to the work for which he is best known, African American themes in the tradition of American folk art. A substantial collection of his work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Last is the figure known as Zip the Pinhead, a performer with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey sideshows and at Coney Island. Exhibited as a "missing link" in the overtly racist context of such entertainment and long thought to be microcephalic, Zip may well have had far more agency in his life than previously credited. For one thing, he saved a girl from drowning at Coney Island. For another, he managed to die a wealthy man. His final words to his sister were reputed to be, "Well, we fooled ‘em for a long time."
A shared name is a thin thread to tie any thoughts together and it's certainly not the intention here to sum up with any grand conclusions. It has been gratifying, though, to follow the serendipitous turns this research took. It's reminded us once again of the astounding determination, struggle, and creativity that mark black history in the United States. And it has offered an opportunity to discover and contemplate the life stories of people who deserve to be better known.
