Dr. John Johnson Delivers 2023 Philip Roth Lecture

John W. Johnson, Jr., Ph.D., assistant professor of history presented the 2023 Philip Roth Lecture at the Newark Public Library on the evening of Thursday, November 2. With his lecture, Dr. Johnson joins the ranks of prestigious Philip Roth Lecture alumni including international bestseller and Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children, Sir Salman Rushdie; Princeton professor, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Grammy Award-nominee, Sean Wilentz; and New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones.

His talk titled, “History, Memory, and the Weequahic Section of Newark,” offered an erudite and empathic meditation on the entangled physical histories of the Jewish and African American populations which call Weequahic home. Dr. Johnson is currently working on a monograph on the history of the Weequahic Section of Newark; his most recent publication, “In the Way of Progress: How a Federal Highway and Political Fragmentation Blighted Neighborhoods in the Weequahic Section of Newark,” was published in New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal this past summer.