Howard Eugene Johnson

Howard "Stretch" Eugene Johnson (1915-2000) was a former Communist Party leader, Cotton Club dancer, World War II veteran, and academic. His final years were spent as a professor of Black studies at SUNY New Paltz and as an ongoing activist in Hawai'i, where he helped achieve state recognition of Martin Luther King's birthday as a bank holiday, marching until the age of 80 in Paris, France, and Harlem for causes he believed just.

Howard "Stretch" Eugene Johnson (1915-2000) was a former Communist Party leader, Cotton Club dancer, World War II veteran, and academic. His final years were spent as a professor of Black studies at SUNY New Paltz and as an ongoing activist in Hawai'i, where he helped achieve state recognition of Martin Luther King's birthday as a bank holiday, marching until the age of 80 in Paris, France, and Harlem for causes he believed just. See less