Frank Johnson Profile

At the height of the civil rights struggle, there was one place in the Deep South where African Americans fighting the region's oppressive system of racial segregation could count on sure, impartial justice: Frank M. Johnson's courtroom. With unblinking moral courage, Judge Frank M. Johnson upheld the Constitution and the law, insisting that all Americans be treated equally, regardless of color.

Judge Johnson's fidelity to the Constitution did not endear him to his neighbors. The judge was denounced and threatened. His neighbors burned a cross on his lawn, his wife and children were ostracized and harassed, but Frank Johnson would not back down, even after the Ku Klux Klan bombed his mother's house.

A native Alabaman, Frank M. Johnson served as a federal judge for 44 years and lived to see centuries of oppressive customs overturned, and the state and the region he loved transformed. Segregation is now an almost unbelievable chapter of America's past, thanks to the efforts of thousands of brave men and women who fought for civil rights, and a handful of courageous public servants like Frank M. Johnson.