An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 7/31/2023
Prelude | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | Email |
|---|
"June sprinkled with uncommon courage." --Washington, D.C. delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton
Perhaps one of the SNCC's lesser-known (but certainly one of its bravest) heroes, civil rights activist June Elizabeth Johnson was born in 1947 Greenwood, Mississippi, at a time when that region was seeing an alarming rise in white supremacy. Inspired by her church --and over her parents' objections-- Johnson attended her first voter registration workshop at the age of fifteen. By 1962 she had made the acquaintance of Bob Moses (see Lesson #112 in this series), and eventually her commitment to cause of Black voter rights was so infectious that even her reluctant parents ultimately began opening their home to SNCC activists and workers.
On June 9, 1963, Johnson was returning from SCLC Citizenship School training in South Carolina and ran afoul of the driver of a Trailways bus driver over approved seating locations at a rest stop lunch counter. Predictably the driver made a phone call ahead, and when the bus reached Winona, June and her colleagues Annell Ponder (see Lesson #120) and Fannie Lou Hamer (see Lesson #51), among others, were arrested and severely beaten --in particular June was punched in the face and stomach by police, and hit in the back of the head with a studded leather strap until her dress was soaked with blood. Horrifyingly while these assaults were happening, at almost the very same time in nearby Jackson, Medgar Evers was murdered. The attackers were belatedly brought up on Federal charges but were acquitted. Such bleakness might have crushed lesser spirits but June's resolve was only strengthened. Johnson went on to organize the Greenwood Voters' League, and took a job as a paralegal, eventually leveraging that experience into actually suing Greenwood and Leflore Counties for racist hiring practices. She also devoted a great deal of time and commitment to Hamer's and Moses's Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).
Later in life Johnson became vice president of the Office Of Early Childhood Development in Jackson, Miss. and remained a fierce voice for equality, frequently travelling to Washington, D.C. to speak and advocate. Her story was given new attention in 1994 in the publication of John Dittmer's book Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. She eventually settled in the D.C. area worked for that city's child support enforcement office, also serving as a consultant for several television documentaries about the civil rights movement. Johnson died in 2007 at the relatively young age of 59.
Next page - Lesson 134: David Walker