June E. Johnson

December 31, 1947 – April 13, 2007

Posthumous recipient of ROAR’S Inaugural
H.A.D. Humanitarian Service Award
in honor of Fannie Lou Hamer Victoria Gray
Adams and Annie Devine

October 7, 2007
Jobe Hall Auditorium
Delta State University
Cleveland, MS

June E. Johnson was born in Greenwood, Mississippi to the late Theoda and Lula Bell Johnson, Sr. on December 31, 1947. Her parents hosted visiting SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) workers for many years. June was raised by her maternal grandmother Emily Johnson Holt who also preceded her in death.

June began attending SNCC meetings in her early teens after seeing a flyer about a mass meeting at one of the local churches. Robert (Bob) Moses convinced her parents to allow June to attend the meeting and subsequent voter registration workshops.

In June 1963, after attending a voter registration workshop, June was arrested and beaten in jail in Winona, Mississippi along with Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Euvester Simpson, Annelle Ponder, James West and others.

June worked as a paralegal for North Mississippi Rural Legal Services (1972-73). Throughout 1970’s she was actively involved in lawsuits aimed at stopping racist practices of Greenwood city and Leflore county governments as named plaintiff and as paralegal investigator.

With Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund, June drew attention to failures of Mississippi anti-poverty agencies and investigated Mississippi prison conditions. In 1978, she was the first African-American woman candidate for Leflore County Board of Supervisors.

June moved to Washington, D.C., in 1982, worked in city government for the Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement (1983-86), and as a home hospital teacher. From 1995 until September 2006 (after health began to fail her) June was the program monitor in the Office of Early Childhood Development and served as first Vice-President of the Washington, D.C., Ward 6 Democrats.

She was a research consultant for the film Freedom Song (2000), about Mississippi SNCC workers and lead consultant for the documentary Standing on My Sisters Shoulders, a film documenting her civil rights activism, along with fellow activists Dorie Ladner, Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Gray Adams, Annie Devine, Lawrence Guyot and others. Additionally, she is featured in a documentary produced by American Public Radio entitled Mississippi Becomes A Democracy.

Continuing her consultations to various organizations and institutions right up to her death, June provided information that few spoke of or cared to share. She never stopped planning on how to get accurate information out about the civil rights movement. She often recalled “Mrs. Hamer called me to her bedside when she was dying and told me all about her unfinished business”. “I gave Blood with this lady, do you understand me?!”

June E. Johnson became a Consultant to ROAR in 2003 and continued right up to her dying days with plans for joint projects in the summer of 2007.

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