class refused to sit on the platform because I was not there. They picked up their diplomas later, after the 'exercises' were over." Johnson graduated with his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1920 and received his master's degree the following year. In 1928 he was awarded a doctorate degree in English from the same institution. Johnson starting teaching at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in October 1920, as an Instructor in Rhetoric. He remained at that institution until June 1928. Johnson received his doctorate degree in that same year. While at Michigan, Johnson was the faculty advisor to the Negro-Caucasian Club, a student organization which aimed to promote interracial understanding through common activities. The club was organized about 1923 and was granted formal recognition by the administration in March 1926. The Negro-Caucasian sponsored a series of speakers on campus who discussed relevant topics in public lectures and gave black and white students an opportunity to meet and socialize. In the fall of 1928, the new Dr. Johnson left Michigan in favor of a position as an Assistant Professor of English at Long Island University, where he remained until 1930. For the next two years, Johnson taught evenings at College of the City of New York. Political career Johnson joined the Socialist Party of America in 1912. Johnson later recalled that he came to the socialist movement through his participation in school debates — assigned to argue a position of the Democratic Party, Johnson had prepared by reading the perspectives of other organizations, including the Socialists. Soon he was immersed in Marxist literature and subscribing to the major socialist periodicals of the day, including the Appeal to Reason, the National Rip-Saw, and the International Socialist Review. In 1919, Johnson was elected State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Michigan, remaining in that position until October, when he accepted a job as a librarian at the University of Michigan. In June 1919, Johnson was a delegate to the National Left Wing Convention held in New York City by the organized Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, which he attended along with fellow members of the Socialist Party of Michigan John Keracher, Dennis Batt, Al Renner, and A.J. MacGregor . Afterwards, Johnson became a member of the Communist Party Organizing Committee, the group which handled the arrangements for the founding convention of the Communist Party of America,