Ronald Angelo Johnson

Ronald Angelo Johnson, the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History at Baylor University,  is the 2026-27 Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence.  During his year at AAS, Johnson will do research for two new book projects: We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti (under contract with Princeton University Press), a diplomatic history of race and revolution; and Shades of Color: Haitian Immigration and Black Identity in Early America, which examines successive generations of Haitian immigrants to the United States from the Haitian Revolution throughout the nineteenth century.

As a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellow in 2024, Johnson conducted research for his recent book, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution (2025), which received the Texas Institute of Letters Honor Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award.  A reinterpretation of the American Revolution through the lens of diplomacy in the emerging United States, Entangled Alliances highlights the fascinating story of American patriots and rebels from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) allying against European tyranny. 

Johnson serves as steward of Baylor University’s Ella Wall Prichard Fund for Early Black Baptist History (EBBH), whose mission is to support the study of the origins and evolution of Black Baptist history in North America to 1866.  He is also a former co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.