Ira Gershwin English-language programs to primarily Hispanic and Chinese Americans. Ira and his younger brother George spent many after-school hours at the Settlement. The George and Ira Gershwin Collection is at the Library of Congress Music Division. The Edward Jablonski and Lawrence D. Stewart Gershwin Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a number of Ira's manuscripts and other material. In 2007, the United States Library of Congress named its Prize for Popular Song after him and his brother George. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of American popular music on the world's
Isabella Jones and Ira Junius Johnson Black, but of mixed White and Cherokee descent. Three Klansmen were brought to court. At first, only one was found guilty and fined $50; when he appealed, the court gave him a three-month sentence. Johnson and Jones married a month after the incident. Ira Junius Johnson's paternal grandfather George Branson Johnson was a free Black man from Maryland who migrated with his family of eleven children (including Ira Junius's father) to the Province of Canada in the 1860s, where they settled in Oakville. They may have used the Underground Railroad to get there. Johnson's maternal grandfather Junius B. Roberts was