Buckeyes give: top Arts and Sciences stories from 2022-23

Looking back, it all seems audacious. It was 1954. A bus dropped off a young Black man in the rain in Columbus, a city where he had never been. Howard M. Johnson was more than 400 miles from his rural Maryland home, which had lacked running water and central heat until his teenage years. There, his father, a laborer at the U.S. Naval Academy, and mother, who worked in the home of a wealthy family, had saved money for the education they stressed as important.

Accustomed to segregation, Johnson had never had a white teacher or classmate. His elementary school had been a two-room building on cinder blocks. He knew no one in Ohio other than a nearby uncle’s family.

Now, he walked wide-eyed across the campus of The Ohio State University, where he’d be a freshman.

“It was a leap of faith,” says Johnson ’58, ’59 MS, ’62 PhD.

Read more about Johnson's story on the Ohio State Alumni Magazine website.

Support students like Howard Johnson by making a gift to the Biological Sciences Dean's Excellence Fund​​​​.