bio notes:
born: 4/23/1948
born as: Charles Richard Johnson

African-American novelist, known for his National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage. He was at the center of a literary firestorm in 1995 when some felt he criticized Alice Walker's The Color Purple for its negative portrayal of black men. Johnson began his career as a political cartoonist, and he is not to be confused with the Harlem Renaissance anthologist and scholar Charles S. Johnson.