The journey began with a visit to Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., the home of Charles Spurgeon Johnson’s presidential papers. I was interested in Johnson because he was one of the first African-American presidents of a historically Black institution and he worked extensively with White philanthropists. I wanted to understand how African-American leaders in the South navigated the murky waters of White philanthropy.
Over the course of writing my dissertation, I visited Fisk nearly ten times, staying about a week for each visit. During my visits, I became acquainted with a lovely man ― Leslie M. “Doc” Collins, an English professor at the historic Nashville institution. Collins began teaching at Fisk in 1945 and was a wealth of knowledge about Fisk’s history. I was honored to interview him for my dissertation; he was one of a few people who worked with Charles S. Johnson and could detail Johnson’s leadership style.
