Logo image
  • BookDragon
  • About
  • The Blogger
  • Review Policy
  • Smithsonian APAC
 
9133
post-template-default,single,single-post,postid-9133,single-format-standard,stardust-core-1.1,stardust-child-theme-ver-1.0.0,stardust-theme-ver-3.1,ajax_updown_fade,page_not_loaded,smooth_scroll

BookDragon Blog

02 Apr / It Is Well with My Soul: The Extraordinary Life of a 106-Year-Old Woman by Ella Mae Johnson with Patricia Mulcahy [in Christian Science Monitor]

It Is All Well with My Soul“Some of the things in this book happened a hundred years ago…. I never anticipated having to remember all this,” says Ella Mae Cheeks Johnson as she opens her memoir, It Is Well with My Soul: The Extraordinary Life of a 106-Year-Old Woman, written with Patricia Mulcahy. Über-centenarian Johnson recalled more than most people half her age. Sadly, her readers can’t expect a sequel to her delightfully plain-spoken memoir as she passed away on March 22. (The memoir’s original publication date in May was quickly pushed up, making the book available now.)

Born Jan. 13, 1904, in Dallas at a time when “black citizens had no official papers,” Johnson was raised by her next-door neighbors, the Davis family, after the death of her mother. “Everything in the Davis environment left me certain I was loved,” she writes.

Yet despite a nurturing home environment, in many ways Johnson’s early years were harsh ones. Growing up poor but never needy, she couldn’t escape the helpless humiliation faced by “blacks, or Negroes, or colored people, or whatever they called us.” She watched as “some things were out of Papa’s control,” how adults “had to lie in order to survive,” and the “many ways in which we were put in our place in the Jim Crow South.”

Johnson graduated salutatorian to her valedictorian best friend from Dallas Colored High School and, in 1921, entered Fisk University, a historically African- American college in Tennessee. During an art class in her senior year, Johnson painted a copy of a picture based on the biblical story of the “The Good Samaritan”: “My entire life has been driven by my emotional and spiritual response to the picture, and the message of compassion it communicates,” she writes.

Johnson finished Fisk six months later than anticipated because she missed a semester participating in a college-wide boycott orchestrated by legendary Fisk graduate W.E.B. Du Bois who “agitate[d] for the rights of his people, whatever they wanted to call us – Negro, colored, black.” Lest you think Johnson a lemming, even in a clear battle for civil rights, she feistily adds, “I don’t follow just because someone else decides to lead.”

After working briefly for the Congregational Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, Johnson arrived in Ohio – where she would live the rest of her life – as one of only two minority students admitted each year at Western Reserve University’s School of Applied Social Science. Decades later, the school was renamed Case Western Reserve University, and Johnson was recognized (until her recent death) as the oldest living African-American graduate of CWRU. … [click here for more]

Review: Christian Science Monitor, April 2, 2010

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2010

By Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers Tags > BookDragon, Christian Science Monitor, Civil rights, Ella Mae Johnson, Family, Friendship, Historical, It Is Well with My Soul, Parent/child relationship, Patricia Mulcahy, Race/Racism
No Comment

Post a Comment
Cancel Reply

Smithsonian Institution
Asian Pacific American Center

Capital Gallery, Suite 7065
600 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20024

202.633.2691 | APAC@si.edu

Additional contact info

Mailing Address
Capital Gallery
Suite 7065, MRC: 516
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012

Fax: 202.633.2699

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

SmithsonianAPA brings Asian Pacific American history, art, and culture to you through innovative museum experiences and digital initiatives.

About BookDragon

Welcome to BookDragon, filled with titles for the diverse reader. BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature. BookDragon is inhabited by Terry Hong.

Learn More

Contact BookDragon

Please email us at SIBookDragon@gmail.com

Follow BookDragon!
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Looking for Something Else …?

or