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Thomas J. Calloway
A. N. Johnson
Nashville, Tenn.
MR. JOH 'SO conducts one of the largest undertaking
establishments in the South and one of the most elaborate
owned by any member of his race in the world.
He was born in Marion, Ala., December 22, 1866. His mother
was able to send him only a few months
to school. He wa hired by a white
minister when nine years of ~e and
later by a Jewish merchant for $3 a
month, but was allowed to attend
school, performing any service required
out of school hours. He entered the
State Jormal School at Marion, Ala.,
and spent two years at Talladega College.
He was licen ed to teach at the
age of fourteen years, and was married
I at twenty,
He was employed by the government
A. N. Johnson as internal revenue officer in 1890 and
later as a railway postal clerk. He established the Mobile Press
in 1893, and al ~e same time opened an undertaking establishment.
He wa._ interested in political work and was a member
of the Republican National Conventions at St. Louis, Philadelphia,
and Chicago. He was the last Negro nominated for
Congress from Alabama by the Republican party.
His bu ine enterprises were successful. He established
branches of the paper and of his undertaking establishment in
Memphis. These and two drug stores operated at the same
time under his personal direction made unusual demands upon
his strength and he retired from active work in the fall of 1906.
He opened the Johnson Funeral Directory in Nashville in
1907, purchasing valuable real estate almost under the shadow
of the State Capitol, establi hing a bu ine s that has grown to
be one of the largest of its kind in that section of the country.
Mr. Johnson was recently elected national organizer and
lecturer for the National Jegro Funeral Directors' Association.
He is a large tax payer in Alabama as well as in Tennessee.
He owns three business houses in a leading retail street in
Mobile, and a block almost in the center of ashville.
He was recently elected first vice-president of the People's
Saving and Trust Company of Nashville.
419
Thomas Junius Calloway
W ••hington, D. C.
MR. CALLOWAY i a uccessful lawyer. He was born in
Cleveland, Tenn., August 12, 1866, the fifth in a family of
seven children. All the children attended the Cleveland public
school, but supplemented this by tudy at Knoxville College,
Tuskegee Institute and Fisk niversity,
Thoma being graduated from the latleI'
in 1889. He met his expen es by
a state scholarship, by teaching, and by
work at the University. Obtaining
work in Chicago, he took a business
college course. Later, while studying
law at Howard University, he held a
government po ition as clerk in the
special correspondence divi ion of the
War Department, from which he resigned
to enter business for himself.
In educational work, he tau g h t
English in an Evansville (Ind.) high
school, was principal of the Helena (Ark.) Jormal School,
pre ident of the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College,
Miss., and wa assistant principal to Booker T. Washington at
Tu kegee In titute.
A part of hi work for the Negro has been in connection with
expositions, beginning with the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, of
which he was a state commissioner. In 1900 he was appointed
special commis ioner to the Paris Expo ition, by Pre ident
McKinley, to make an exhibit of Jegro progress in the United
States. This exhibit wa awarded seventeen gold, silver, and
bronze medals and was in part later exhibited at the Buffalo
Exposition and at Charleston.
At the Jamestown E>...position in 1907, the government appointed
Mr. Calloway chairman of the committee in charge of
the administration of the $100,000 Negro department. In a
building, one of the most beautiful of the expo ition, 210 by 129
feet, designed and erected by egro skill and labor, were installed
nearly ten thousand exhibits from fifteen hundred exhibitors.
The e exhibits, showing the progress of the American
Negro in education, agriculture, manufacture, inventions, and
arts, were awarded twenty-five gold, fifty silver, and eighty-five
bronze medal .
