You Were Right and We Were Wrong

For 37 years, Frank Minis Johnson, Jr. served his country as a United States Attorney, Federal District Judge, and Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Judge. At the time, Johnson was the youngest man in history (at age 37) to be appointed as Federal District Judge, and subsequently played a pivotal role in facilitating desegregation. From his courtroom in Alabama's capitol city, Judge Johnson helped transform Montgomery from the "Cradle of the Confederacy" to the "Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement." Johnson's judicial edicts, intensely unpopular with the majority of white Alabamians, who embraced the delusional doctrine of "separate but equal," facilitated the end of blatant segregation in Alabama's school systems and other public facilities. Bill Moyers, journalist and one-time aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, proclaimed that Johnson "altered forever the face of the South." Martin Luther King characterized Johnson as "the man who gave the true meaning to the word justice." Among the multitude of cases argued in Johnson's courtroom included the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the violent, racially motivated attacks against the Freedom Riders, disenfranchisement of black voters, the Selma to Montgomery March, school desegregation, neglect and mistreatment of the hospitalized mentally ill, and violations of the constitutional rights of prison inmates. Stoic and unencumbered by second guessing, Frank Johnson, Jr. left an edible mark on history.