Whittington B. Johnson|Faculty Highlights | College of Arts and Sciences

Blazing a Trail

Whittington B. Johnson, the University of Miami’s first Black tenured professor, inspired countless students 

By Robert C. Jones, Jr.

Nearly 40 years later, Tim Huebner still remembers the extensive course syllabus that Whittington B. Johnson handed out to students on the first day of his Early National U.S. History class. It was chock-full of reading assignments, exam dates, and deadlines for research papers.

“It definitely had an impact,” Huebner recalled. “There were maybe 20 to 25 students in class. But on the second day of class, it was significantly lower.”

Realizing that the syllabus was not intended to intimidate but to inspire, Huebner stuck with the class. “Dr. Johnson had high expectations for us and cared deeply about the subject matter,” Huebner said. “For that entire semester, he took a personal interest in each of us, and eventually, he became a person I wanted to emulate.” 

Johnson, the University of Miami’s first Black tenured professor, passed away on Nov. 1, 2024, at the age of 93. Over an illustrious 32-year career at the institution, he inspired thousands of students, teaching history courses in the College of Arts & Sciences that ranged from the American Revolution to the African diaspora and conducting research in areas such as race relations in the Bahamas.

“He was a great scholar and leader during difficult times,” said Edmund Abaka, a professor of history. “He exemplified collegiality and community and department citizenship.”

Johnson was born on April 29, 1931, in Miami, Florida, the son of a mattress-maker father and domestic worker mother from the Bahamas.

He graduated from Miami’s historic Booker T. Washington High School in 1949, going on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from West Virginia State College and Indiana University, respectively.

During Johnson’s Ph.D. studies at the University of Georgia, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States was still at its height. It was then that he realized Black scholars were needed “to tell the Black story.”

“I wanted to look at more than just the Black experience in America, but the African diaspora from a wider perspective,” Johnson once said.

His storied teaching and research career at the University of Miami began in 1970. As a faculty member in the Department of History, Johnson flawlessly juggled a daunting schedule—from serving as a role model for Black students to speaking at events of historical importance to being a productive scholar, said Marvin Dawkins, a professor of sociology, noting that Johnson’s research endeavors were especially stellar.

From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., to the British Library in London, to the Bahamas, Johnson traveled the world to conduct his seminal research, always cognizant of history’s immense importance. “It enables us to keep our memory of past events so that they can be interpreted from generation to generation,” Johnson once said. “Not having a  memory is almost as bad as letting someone else write your history.”

A three-time chair of the Department of History, Johnson received numerous awards, including the College’s Outstanding Professor Award. He retired from the University in 2002.

As for Huebner, who is now a professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, he continues to honor Johnson for the profound impact he had on his life.

“Dr. Johnson would walk into the classroom on the first day of class, a tall man wearing a solid green suit,” Huebner said. “He explained that he wore a green suit on the first day of class because green means go. Well, I don’t have a green suit, but on the first day of classes, I  always wear a green tie in his honor.”