Mr. Thornton is quite a young man, and stands high in the estimation of the journalistic profession as a writer and thinker.
Charles A. Johnson, of The Chicago Appeal, the recording secretary of the Association, was born in St. Louis, Mo., April 4, 1865. His parents moved to Ironton, Ohio, when he was only seven years old, presumably for the benefit of better school facilities. He attended school regularly and graduated in 1882 from the high school of Ironton. After this he taught school in Ironton, It will be interesting to note that the admission of young Johnson into the high school of Ironton was the first opening of that school to Afro-American students.
While teaching school he learned the printer's trade, in the office of a white paper, The Ironton Busy Bee, and during vacation was city editor, and in winter, during the school term, he had control of the educational column of that paper. For two years he was local correspondent of The Columbus (Ohio) Evening Dispatch, and at other times the correspondent of The Sentinel and Afro-American of Cincinnati and of The Globe at Cleveland, Ohio.
In 1886, in company with Calvin W. Reynolds, since engrossing clerk of the House of Representatives of Ohio, he started The Spokesman, an Afro-American journal at Ironton; but like a rose blighted by frost from too early setting out the attempt failed, and The Spokesman became a thing of the past.
Going to Missouri in 1886, he taught school in Webster Groves until 1889, and while there was local correspondent for The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and for The Clayton Watchman, both white papers, his work being devoted not to race news alone but to the public. He is now the correspondent of The Chicago Appeal, from Washington, where he is a clerk in the War Department.
