Oral history with Mrs. Sarah H. Johnson

              Oral history with Mrs. Sarah H. Johnson
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of University of Southern Mississippi Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
Funding provided by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute for Museum and Library Services
The transcript is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright. PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Ms. Sarah H. Johnson is a black woman who has been active on behalf of her race and her community. She has achieved much and received numerous honors in her lifetime, foremost of which is the fact that after two successful political campaigns in 1973, she was elected the first black member of the Greenville, [ Mississippi], City Council, a position which she still holds.
Ms. Johnson has held several administrative positions in local government and has been active in local and national politics. She was employed by Mississippi Action for Community Education and was area director for People's Educational Program, a county- wide Headstart program. She is a former member and vice- chairperson of the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a former member of the Continuing Committee of the International Women's Year. She served as a 1972 Fellow of the Mississippi Institute of Politics and during the Carter Administration attended affairs by invitation at the White House several times. In 1979, she ran as a part of a slate for the Public Service Commission in the Central District of Mississippi. This was a campaign that covered approximately twenty- one counties and she received approximately 25,000 votes, but was unsuccessful in unseating the incumbent in that seat. She ran for this position while maintaining her city council seat in Greenville and also holding down a job. Ms. Johnson is currently serving her thirteenth year on the city council, having been frozen in office at the end of her third term due to litigation on a lawsuit concerning changes in the city's form of government.
Aside from her interest in politics and civic affairs, Ms. Johnson has been active in several other spheres of life. In 1974, she earned a radio licensing diploma from Elkins Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. That same year she took three Federal Communications Commission examinations and received her first- class radio operator's license. She has also graduated from the Mississippi Realtor's Institute and is currently in the process of taking exams to acquire a real- estate broker's license from the Mississippi Real Estate Commission. She is a member of Revels Memorial United Methodist Church and a former member of the Board of Church and Society, a national board of the United Methodist Church.
Among her numerous citations and awards, Ms. Johnson was presented the Woman of the Year Award by the Utility Club at the Waldorf- Astoria Hotel in New York City on June 8, 1975. Her biography appears in Who's Who Among Black Americans; and she is listed in the National Roster of Black Elected Officials, Mississippi's Black Women, and the History of Blacks in Greenville, Mississippi, from 1868 to 1975. mus- coh. johnsons. doc Page 1 of 43