Joseph L. Johnson

Johnson was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to the position of United States Ambassador to Liberia on August 27, 1918. The presentation of his credentials occurred on October 8, 1919. He remained in this position until February 13, 1922.^[7]

Since the Civil War, United States presidents had frequently appointed African Americans as ambassadors to Liberia and Haiti. Wilson, in his efforts to resegregate the federal government, ended that tradition with Haiti but maintained it with Liberia, making Johnson one of his very few Black high-ranking appointees.^[8]

As the American representative in Liberia at the end of World War I, Johnson was active in promoting Liberia's becoming a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and its membership in the League of Nations. While he was in Liberia, his sister Kathryn Magnolia Johnson was investigating treatment of Black American soldiers on the front lines in France, the result of which would be her co-authored book Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces.^[9]

After his ambassadorship, Johnson lived in Washington, D.C. for several years before returning to Ohio. He was active in Democratic politics, particularly in the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1928, he was elected president of the Al Smith League of Colored Voters of Ohio, which promoted the Democratic nominee.^[10] He also served for several years as president of the board of trustees of Wilberforce University, the historically Black college in Wilberforce, Ohio.^[11][12]

He eventually returned to his medical practice in Columbus, where he died in 1945 of a heart attack, still practicing at age 71.^[3][7][13]