Yvonne Johnson was a groundbreaking leader in Greensboro, but beyond that, she was an advocate for change and racial justice for generations.
A giant in North Carolina just died.
Multiple outlets have reported the death of former Greensboro Mayor Yvonne Johnson, who in 2007, became the first Black person to lead the historic Triad city. That’s just one of a lifetime of accomplishments though.
Johnson grew up in the segregated South. Her time at Bennett College, a historically Black college in Greensboro, inspired her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, including the historic 1963 march on Washington.
Johnson once said that she “wouldn’t take anything for the experience I had at Bennett, especially during the civil rights movement. The president when I was at Bennett was Dr. Willa B. Player, and I’ll never forget her saying to those of us who were protesting that if she had to give out diplomas in jail she would. That was her way of supporting what we were doing.”
She also studied at NC A&T, another Greensboro HBCU with a deep history in the civil rights movement.
Johnson was a longtime member of Greensboro’s City Council too, and she once led a nonprofit that focused on court alternatives for local youth. Anyone who works in community service understands the way that getting entangled with the court system at a young age tends to follow people throughout their life.
North Carolina leaders like Congresswoman Alma Adams paid homage to Johnson this week.
Greensboro has lost a giant.
Like me, Yvonne Johnson lived by the old Shirley Chisholm quote, “Service is the rent we pay for living on God’s Earth.” She was more than the first Black Mayor of Greensboro. My friend led a life of change and justice-making,https://t.co/EyBjbn1uxV
— Rep. Alma S. Adams, Ph.D. (@RepAdams) December 5, 2024
North Carolina has a finite number of people remaining like Johnson, people who lived through segregation, saw its fundamental wrongness, did the work, and helped make our world better.
For more information on Johnson’s life, go here.
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