June Johnson (1947-2007): the teenager jailed with Hamer in Winona

How did June Johnson join the movement?

She saw a SNCC flyer at her church in Greenwood in 1962 and began going secretly to voter registration workshops in the evenings, while her parents were at work. She was fifteen and in high school. Bob Moses persuaded her parents to let her stay involved, and Lula Belle and Theodore Johnson opened their home to SNCC workers. Greenwood, the Leflore County seat, became the center of SNCC's Delta work in 1962 and 1963.

What happened to her in Winona?

On June 9, 1963, returning by bus from SCLC citizenship training in South Carolina, she and others sat at the white lunch counter in the Winona bus station and were arrested, and in the jail she was beaten with a leather strap studded with metal. The SNCC Digital Gateway says the group had argued with the bus driver during the trip. Fannie Lou Hamer, Annell Ponder and Euvester Simpson were in the group, and Lawrence Guyot was beaten when he came to help. Medgar Evers was murdered while they were still in custody. Johnson later said she no longer cared what happened to her and stayed in the movement. The Civil Rights Movement Archive publishes her sworn affidavit about the beating. The full account is on our Winona page.

What did she do later?

She organized the Greenwood Voters' League and worked with the Freedom Democratic Party and COFO. After leaving SNCC's staff she worked as a paralegal on lawsuits challenging racist practices in Greenwood and Leflore County, and she became the first vice president of the Office of Early Childhood Development in Jackson. She also lived for several years in Washington, D.C. She died on April 13, 2007.