Stone Johnson (September 9, 1918 – January 19, 2012) was an African-American activist in the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. A railway worker and union representative by trade, he got involved in the civil rights movement in

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

in the mid 1950s, working with Fred Shuttlesworth. He started a civil rights organization called the Civil Rights Guards that protected homes and business involved in the movement, usually while armed. Johnson was born in

Lowndes County, Alabama Lowndes County is in the central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 10,311. Its county seat is Hayneville. The county is named in honor of William Lowndes, a member of the United States Con ...

to Fannie and Colonel Johnson. His family moved to Birmingham when he was 4. Graduating from Lincoln High School in 1939, he was hired at Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company, where he worked for nearly 40 years. He claimed to be the first black union representative for the company in Birmingham. Johnson may be best known for having helped to carry a Ku Klux Klan bomb away from Bethel Baptist Church in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, AL. He also provided armed protection to nonviolent activists in

Anniston, Alabama Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acc ...

during the 1961

Freedom Rides Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions '' Morgan v. Virginia ...

, rescuing them from a segregationist mob. He also served for a time as vice-president of the Birmingham chapter of the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...

. An oft-repeated remark of Johnson, when asked how he'd managed to protect civil rights leaders given his commitment to nonviolence, Johnson replied, "With my nonviolent .38 special." In 2011, the city of Birmingham dedicated a street in his honor.Jeremy Gray "Birmingham civil rights activist Colonel Stone Johnson has died" Alabama.com, January 19, 2012
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Colonel Stone 1918 births 2012 deaths American civil rights activists