[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 77 (Tuesday, June 4, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E782]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING SARAH H. JOHNSON

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 4, 2013

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a 
remarkable public servant, Mrs. Sarah H. Johnson.
  Mrs. Johnson was born on March 10, 1938 in Charleston, South 
Carolina, to Louisa Hutchinson. She grew up in Anniston, Alabama, and 
attended the public schools of that city. Upon graduation from Cobb 
Avenue High School as valedictorian of her class, she attended Clark 
College in Atlanta, Georgia, for one year, at the end of which she 
married a ministerial student, Ned Howard Johnson. To this marriage 
were born four children: Geneva Louise Johnson, Ned Howard Johnson, 
Jr., Yvonne Elizabeth Johnson and Karen Yvette Johnson. The Johnson 
family moved to Greenville, Mississippi, in 1964. After she and Mr. 
Johnson divorced in 1967, Mrs. Johnson married Cornelius Carter on 
December 24, 1977, but continues to use Sarah H. Johnson as her 
professional name.
  Mrs. 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.
  Mrs. 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.
  Aside from her interest in politics and civic affairs, Mrs. 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, Mrs. 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. She also has a 
street honoring her name, Sarah Johnson, in Greenville, Mississippi.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mrs. Sarah 
H. Johnson for her dedication to serving others and giving back to the 
African American community.

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