Oakley C. Johnson

Oakley C. Johnson (1890 - 1976?) was an American socialist political activist and writer. A founding member of both the Communist Party of America and the Proletarian Party of America, Johnson is best remembered as a historian of the radical politics of that era.

Oakley Calvin Johnson was born on March 24, 1890 in a log cabin on a farm near the hamlet of Jarvis Centre, Michigan in Arenac County. He was the oldest of five children.

Oakley's mother, the former Elizabeth Jane Gibbon, was herself a native Michigander, born in Bay City in 1867. His father, Calvin Henry Johnson, was born in 1858 near Chateaugay, New York and died of Addison's Disease in 1904 at the age of 46, when Oakley was just 14. Both of his parents were of mixed ethnic stock, hailing from English, Irish, Scottish, and German ancestry.

Johnson read extensively as a boy and was drawn to academic pursuits. Upon graduation from high school, Johnson worked in a series of posts as a school principal in various districts in rural Michigan.

Johnson attended Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, Michigan, from which he graduated in 1917.

After finishing at Michigan State Normal School, Johnson took a position as a principal at Grant High School in Ypsilanti. Midway through the school year, Johnson was pulled right from a classroom by representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice, who took him away to Grand Rapids, Michigan to interrogate him about his nationality and the reason he had contributed money to the legal defense fund established to aid members of the Industrial Workers of the World undergoing prosecution.

Johnson refused to be bullied and the next day he called a school assembly at which he told the whole story, writing up the same for publication in the local newspaper.

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