Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Johnson's approval by the Senate is a near certainty. The appointment not only delighted liberals but also drew surprising praise from some segregationists, who were forced to acknowledge Johnson's fairness and integrity. Johnson, 58, has probably handed down more important and innovative rulings than any trial judge in U.S. history. Almost immediately after his appointment to the federal bench in 1955, he began issuing orders that broke down segregation in Dixie. His role as point man for social change brought him and his family ostracism, vituperation, cross burnings and death threats. With Johnson obviously in mind...
...careers of Wallace and Johnson have been intertwined since their years together at the University of Alabama law school, where Wallace was considered liberal and Johnson an aristocratic conservative. Wallace grabbed headlines in 1959, when, as a lameduck state judge he made a public show of defying a Johnson order to turn over voting lists to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Johnson later found that Wallace had cooperated with the authorities, and dropped contempt charges against him. But the false show of bravado helped propel Wallace into the governorship in 1962. As the years passed, Johnson's intervention...
...Johnson is a product of northern Alabama's Winston County. In that rocky hill country, few 19th century landowners had slaves, and Winston attempted to withdraw from Alabama when the state seceded from the Union. Much of the county became Republican; at one point. Johnson's father was the only Republican in the Alabama legislature...
After winning a Bronze Star as an infantry lieutenant in combat during World War II, Johnson returned to become active in Republican politics. He helped manage Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 Alabama campaign and was named U.S. Attorney in 1953. Two years later, a week before his 37th birthday, he was appointed the youngest federal judge in the country. In June of 1956, Johnson and another federal judge ordered desegregation of the Montgomery transit system, extending the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision beyond the schools for the first time. In the years that followed...
...Johnson's activism has made for a turbulent personal life. In Montgomery, Johnson and his family were unwelcome at their neighborhood Baptist church and subjected to threatening letters and telephone calls. Two years ago, Johnson's son Johnny, 27, killed himself with a shotgun. Some friends thought the adopted Johnny's longstanding emotional problems could be traced to harassment by his Montgomery schoolmates...