Guion Griffis Johnson (12 April 1900 – 12 June 1989) was an American historian.

Life

Born Frances Guion Griffis in

Wolfe City, Texas Wolfe City is a city in Hunt County, Texas, United States, located at the intersection of State Highways 34 and 11. It is north of Greenville in north-central Hunt County, and was settled in the 1860s or 1870s, when J. Pinckney Wolfe built a mi ...

, on April 11, 1900, she was raised in Greenville, Texas. She married

Guy Benton Johnson Guy B. Johnson (February 28, 1901 – March 23, 1991) was an American sociologist and social anthropologist. He was a distinguished student of black culture in the rural South and a pioneer advocate of racial equality. Life Johnson was born in C ...

, a sociologist, and together they had two sons, Guy Benton, Jr. and Edward. She died at the age of 89 on 12 June 1989.

Academic career

She attended Baylor College for Women and began studying journalism. After marriage, her husband and she moved from Texas to take positions at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

. There, she was offered an associate professorship and earned her PhD in history. Because so few women were active historians at the time, Johnson's first mention in the ''American Historical Review'' referred to her as "he". She published several studies of the antebellum South, delving into race relations, religion, freed slaves, women's life, and other aspects that had previously been only lightly treated. Her award-winning book ''Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History'' is still considered an important resource. She became involved in women's organizations and issues after the end of the Second World War, when opportunities for women again became limited. She and her husband and also collaborated on several research projects.

References

External links

* University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty Historians of the United States People from Greenville, Texas 1989 deaths 1900 births 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers People from Wolfe City, Texas Historians from Texas American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub