Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was born in Paris, Tennessee in 1890, the son of a former slave. He graduated from what is now Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1911 where he became an accomplished orator and debater.  Johnson was also a student athlete who played football and tennis. Johnson was hired by Morehouse soon after his graduation to teach history, English and economics. Later Johnson served as dean of the college for two years.
Mordecai Johnson later enrolled in the Rochester Divinity School in upstate New York while serving as pastor at a nearby church. In 1922, when he graduated from Harvard Divinity School, Johnson was chosen to give the commencement address which he titled: "The Faith of the American Negro.” Four years later Mordecai Johnson was appointed the thirteenth and first permanent African American president of Howard University, a position he held for the next thirty-four years.  
Under Johnson, Howard became one of the nation’s leading universities and, certainly, the leading African American university. He was responsible for raising substantial sums from both Congress and private donors. The number of faculty tripled, the salaries doubled, academic and admission requirements were toughened, and Johnson insisted on devoting resources to accreditation of Howard’s graduate and professional schools.
Howard University hired excellent, outspoken scholars such as E. Franklin Frazier in sociology, Ralph Bunche in political science, Charles R. Drew in medicine, and John Hope Franklin and Rayford W. Logan in history. Charles Hamilton Houston, the dean of the law school, was the architect of the legal strategy that led to the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Wyatt Mordecai Johnson died in 1976.