Description
The John J. Johnson Papers contain 6.5 linear feet of materials documenting Johnson's
personal and professional life after his retirement from Stanford in 1977. The collection
includes correspondence, lectures, and research and drafts for his works Latin America in
Caricature (1980) and A Hemisphere Apart: The Foundations of United States Policy toward
Latin America (1990), and Foreign Images of the U.S.: 1860-1992: A Cartoon History
(unpublished). Among the materials for this final text are over 1.5 linear feet of political
cartoons printed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Please see additional Scope and Contents
notes for further information on each series and for content warnings regarding racist
imagery and language use.
Background
John J. Johnson (1912-2004) was a pioneering historian and mentor in the field of Latin
American studies whose career at Stanford spanned several decades. Johnson grew up in White
Swan, Washington on the Yakama Indian Reservation and was the first member of his family to
attend college, graduating from Central Washington College of Education in 1940. After
receiving his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Johnson arrived at
Stanford where he served as a professor of history from 1946 to 1977. At the time of his
entrance into the field, Latin American studies engaged few scholars and produced historical
textbooks which Johnson regarded as "ethnocentric," "weak on analysis," and "distort[ing]
history." Johnson would ultimately contribute significant political, historical, and
interdisciplinary analysis to the base of Latin American scholarship through a number of
texts, particularly his seminal work Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the
Middle Sectors (1958). He also played a key role in the development of Stanford's Center for
Latin American Studies, serving as its first longterm director from 1966 to 1972. Following
his retirement from Stanford, Johnson spent five years as the managing editor of the
Hispanic American Historical Review. He published Latin America in Caricature in 1980, which
featured early academic analysis of the racial, gendered, and social implications of
political cartoons created about Latin America by foreign artists. In 1990, Johnson
published A Hemisphere Apart: The Foundations of United States Policy toward Latin America,
which examined the period of American foreign policy between 1815 and 1830 as a basis for
its future iterations. Finally, Johnson worked for several years on a manuscript entitled
Foreign Images of the U.S.: 1860-1992: A Cartoon History, which explored external depictions
of the United States in political cartoons and was not yet published by the time of his
passing in 2004.
Restrictions
While University Archives is the owner of the physical and/or digital items, permission to
examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made
available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction
beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or
assigns.