Johnson, Frank, Jr.

Johnson, Frank (Minis), Jr.

(born Oct. 30, 1918, Halyeville, Ala.—died July 23, 1999, Montgomery, Ala.) U.S. judge. After graduating at the top of his law-school class at the University of Alabama in 1943, he joined the army, becoming an infantry lieutenant. After the war he returned to Alabama to practice law. Appointed to the federal district court for middle Alabama in 1955, he became widely known for his decisions in support of the civil rights movement. In 1955 he voted with the majority to strike down the bus-segregation law challenged by Rosa Parks, and in 1965 he issued the order that allowed Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead a historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. He also ordered the desegregation of various public facilities in Alabama, and he was the first federal judge to dictate legislative reapportionment. He served on the U.S. District Court of Appeals from 1979 to 1992. In 1995 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Johnson, Frank (Minis), Jr. (1918–  ) judge; born in Winston County, Ala. After taking his law degree at the University of Alabama (1943), he served in World War II as an infantry captain (1943–45). He went into private practice (1946–55) before becoming a U.S. district judge in Alabama (1955–79), the youngest sitting federal judge at that point. In his first opinion from that bench (1956), he declared segregation on Alabama city buses unconstitutional, and from then on he found himself at the center of the civil rights storm centered in Alabama. Drawing always on the Constitution and the true spirit of laws, he effectively desegregated Alabama's schools, bus terminals, and public facilities of all kinds; in 1960 he became the first federal judge to draw up a court-ordered legislative reapportionment; in 1962 he put an end to discriminatory voter registration; in 1965 he ordered that Martin Luther King Jr. be allowed to lead the march from Selma to Montgomery. He soon found himself ostracized by many in Alabama; his mother's house was bombed; a cross was burned on his front yard; Governor George Wallace, a law school classmate, called him an "integrating, carpetbagging, scalawagging bold-faced liar." In 1977, President Carter nominated him to head the FBI, but health problems prevented him from accepting. He did accept appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals—5th Circuit (1979–81), then 11th circuit (1981–91)—and he came to be honored, even in the South, as a major force in breaking down the old forms of discrimination and injustice in the U.S.A.