Morehouse College’s recent announcement of the retirement of veteran political science professor Dr. Tobe Johnson, Jr. signaled the end of an era for an academic legend.
The announcement came as a surprise to some and a reminder to others of the value of long-time cohorts such as Johnson, an 88-year-old Morehouse graduate who has spent nearly 60 years teaching political science at the institution.
“I’m still hanging in,” Johnson said in a telephone interview this week, noting he is as alert as ever, still drives and has good eyesight – and a sense of politics as solid as the days when he was studying for his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University in New York in the 1960’s.
Johnson was recruited by higher education icon Dr. Benjamin Mays. In the ensuing years, Johnson helped scores of Morehouse men navigate the racial conflict and anti-war protests of the ‘60s and ‘70s in the South. More recently, he has helped students make sense of Black Lives Matter and other current social movements.
Johnson has learned much over the course of his long academic career and has made his mark in higher education, helping bridge generations of predecessors with the future, said Dr. Alvin Thornton, a retired political science professor at Howard University whom Johnson taught at Morehouse.
Johnson “was a primary source of the first cadre of Black political scientists in the academy,” said Thornton, 70. He also noted that most Black political scientists before Johnson’s era were considered more as philosophers, sociologists and historians.
“He helped define the footprint of Black political scientists as scientists,” said Thornton, who taught seven years at Morehouse before spending some 30 years at Howard.
