Hubert W. Johnson

Hubert W. Johnson was born on August 28, 1905. After dropping out of school at an early age, he bounced from one job to the next for many years. In 1939 in Gastonia, North Carolina, the Federal Writers Project (FWP) interviewed him about his life. The interview was conducted by John H. Abner and led to the article entitled “The Photographer” which is what provided the information for this biography.

Early life
Johnson was born to a father who was a horse trader and café owner and a mother who died when he was only seven years old after having been ill. Shortly after his mother’s death, Johnson was brought to live with his grandmother because of all of the traveling his father’s job required. At a young age, Johnson knew he wanted to be able to provide for himself, so he took a job as a paperboy until he dropped out of school two years later. He quit school in order to start working full time at a newspaper stand where he could really start to provide for himself. Unfortunately, he was fired after two years following a two-week long vacation and forgot to return the newsstand’s post office drawer keys. After he lost his job, he bounced from one job to another for the next couple of years.

Adulthood
In 1922, Johnson got into a car accident with a train and ended up in the hospital for nine months. After being awarded several thousand dollars from the train company, a guardian was appointed to him to handle the money. The accident left him unable to work for quite a while, but he tried his hand as a salesman anyways. Four years later, he decided to take a vacation with friends to Miami. Even with his guardian wiring him money, Johnson realized how little money he had and was forced to return home. There, he took jobs at various printing shops until he was promoted to a salesman. Johnson next decided to take a trip with friends to Charlotte, North Carolina for a day. They got into a car accident where the vehicle flipped three times, forcing Johnson to stay in the hospital for several weeks. He tried but was unable to sue the insurance company and soon went back to work at the print shop. The manager there eventually left to open up a photography studio, and Johnson followed him. Five years after becoming a partner, Johnson took over the studio completely and fell in love with his work.

Lack of Education
When Johnson moved to his grandmother’s house, he continued to have an adult figure in his life but not one strong enough to convince him to stay in school. This resulted in him only being able to obtain jobs that required minimal education. However, this lack of education was not uncommon during this time period. Children from disadvantaged homes like Johnson were shown to do worse in school, but little concern was given for the children who did not “pass.” Only eleven percent of children between the ages of fourteen and seventeen were enrolled in high school; this number included the children who were enrolled but may not have attended frequently. Most parents were content with this lack of education as long as their children had some sort of basic reading and number skills.

Johnson never kept a job for more than two years (until later in life). He bounced from one to the next, and none of them were extremely well paying or well respected. It is known that “education gives you access to a higher income and different types of jobs… For example, only high school graduates in the first half of the century had access to white collar jobs.” Because the jobs available to the less educated were not as steady, people were often forced to move from city to city. This made it hard for people, like Johnson, to be involved in committed relationships. People realized around the turn of the century that an education was necessary for all aspects of life including personal goals, economic security, and social well being.

Federal Writers Project
The FWP was created in 1935 as a component of the Works Progress Administration. It was created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. The authors from the FWP wrote various types of pieces including biographies, folklore, and encyclopedias. The article on Johnson was a biography. Because the information known about Johnson was taken from this single source, it is hard to figure out how reliable the information is. Although the entire document is made of a direct quotation, no one knows how much of the article is exactly what Johnson said. The FWP only had one interviewer for each article, so that individual had the power to change his or her article without anyone ever knowing. Johnson was not a highly educated individual, yet the article written about him does not make this apparent at all. The article’s interviewer could have possibly changed Johnson’s wording in order to make it more understandable or to make him appear more educated. Or, Abner may not have changed anything at all and Johnson could have actually spoken in what appears to be an educated manner. There is no way to actually know. Issues like this can be found in numerous articles that come from the FWP.