About George P. Johnson and His Collection
The Collector
George Perry Johnson was the creator and archivist of the George P. Johnson Negro Film Collection. Johnson worked on the collection almost his entire life, until his passing in 1977.
He was born October 29, 1885 in Colorado Springs. After graduating from the Hampton Institute in 1904, he went on to found the Tulsa Guide. First published in 1906, the Tulsa Guide was one of the first nationally distributed Black newspapers in America. Johnson would subsequently become the first African-American postal clerk employed by the Omaha, Nebraska Post Office. Sometime around 1915, Johnson was then asked to work for the Lincoln Motion Picture Company as their general booking manager. His brother, Noble Johnson, was a founder and president of the company and Johnson credited him for his entrance into the motion picture business.
Following Johnson’s involvement in Lincoln, he began to assemble his collection. Kept secret, it became an expansive archive of materials on African-Americans that Johnson felt were being devalued and overlooked.
In the 1960’s UCLA interview of Johnson, he expresses his thoughts on the collection:
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“You see, a few years ago this wouldn't be worth ten cents. But the nation's awakened to the fact that the Negro is going to have to play an important part in the nation, and now they've commenced to pay more attention, put out more money for more education and more schools and more everything. And they find that they have neglected to accumulate anything like this in the last twenty-five or thirty years. They haven't got it. Nobody's got it. They never paid attention to it.” - George P Johnson
George P. Johnson:
Oral Histories
The Negro Film Collection contains material from 1906 to 1977. It spans 71 boxes of artifacts cataloging the progress of African-Americans, not only in the entertainment industry, but in America at large. It includes large race film posters, film stills, newspaper clippings, one hundred year-old headshots of Black actors, and much, much more!​ They are a unique window into the struggle of African-American artists and audiences alike to create stories and views of black society in which black audiences could see themselves reflected.
The Negro Film Collection
George P. Johnson
Photograph, Undated
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There are few materials in his collection that actually depict himself. In his vast collection, the picture above is one of the only likenesses of him that curators could find.
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"Tulsa Guide Subscription"
Paper, Undated
This is a subscription newsletter for Johnson's newspaper, The Tulsa Guide.