CURRENT POSITION Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Outreach, Georgia Institute of Technology Libraries DEGREE PhD, Information Science (2015), MSLIS (2009), both Florida State University FAST FACT Johnson is a world traveler—with a small group or solo—a form of self-care and rebalancing, she says, from giving her all to academia. FOLLOW drarchivist.com; IFLA Interview; bit.ly/BakerDiversityLecture Photo by Charlie Parks, Charlie Parks Media Group

Finding Rosenwald

Dr. Aisha Johnson’s research, publication, and consulting on African American librarianship dates to her undergraduate years at Florida State, where—after growing up in a diverse area of south Florida—she found herself one of the few Black political science students. Throughout her career, Johnson’s scholarship has repeatedly asked, “Where are the librarians of color?” Recently Johnson and Dr. Nicole Cooke, of the University of South Carolina, were awarded an American Library Association (ALA) Carnegie-Whitney Grant for the collaborative project Sustainable Leadership as a Solution for Representation and Inclusion in LIS: A Bibliography and Toolkit.

Johnson lights up when discussing her work to bring attention to the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program. Rosenwald, a white man, created a fund in the early 20th century that built and established collections at more than 10,000 schools, colleges, and public libraries for African Americans; contributed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities; and funded programs to train African American librarians. His contributions have been largely unheralded, notes Johnson, because his Jewish heritage called for the highest form of giving to be anonymous.

In addition to helping spark recognition of Rosenwald’s work, Johnson’s book The African American Struggle for Library Equality: The Untold Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) inspired ALA to endorse the creation of the Julius Rosenwald and Rosenwald Schools National Historic Park to acknowledge his legacy of social justice.

“There are things that come along in life that give you confirmation that you’re on your right path,” says Johnson, “and for me, that was one.”