Lyman Tefft Johnson (June 12, 1906 – October 3, 1997) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

and influential role model for

racial desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

. He is best known as the

plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of t ...

whose successful legal challenge opened the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

students in 1949.

Early life and education

Born in

Columbia, Tennessee Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee. The population was 41,690 as of the 2020 United States census. Columbia is included in the Nashville metropolitan area. The self-proclaimed "mule capital of the world," Colum ...

in 1906, Johnson was the eighth of nine children. His grandparents had been enslaved. His father was educated in part by Edmund KellyHall 2015, p28 and Lyman Beecher Tefft, for whom Johnson was named. His father was a graduate of Roger Williams University in Nashville and principal College Hill School in Columbia. In 1926, he received his

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

diploma A diploma is a document awarded by an educational institution (such as a college or university) testifying the recipient has graduated by successfully completing their courses of studies. Historically, it has also referred to a charter or offici ...

from the preparatory division of

Knoxville College Knoxville College is a historically black liberal arts college in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, which was founded in 1875 by the United Presbyterian Church of North America. It is a United Negro College Fund member school. A slow peri ...

. After earning his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

from

Virginia Union University Virginia Union University is a private historically black Baptist university in Richmond, Virginia. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. History The American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) founded the school as Rich ...

in 1930, he went on to receive a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1931. Johnson was a member of

Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved in ...

fraternity.

Military service

Johnson served in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

; he commented on the high point of his Naval career:

Toward the end of the war, long about the middle of '44, or maybe the beginning of '44, they made twelve ensigns, and they announced then to all the rest of us that, "We're making twelve ensigns. We won't make any more, and they won't be promoted." In other words, don't aspire for anything. So what they did in my group, they had 47 of us so-called educated Negroes stationed up there at
Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...
. They didn't know what to do with us. I remember Commander Caufield who ran Great Lakes. He was the commander of the center. He told me, 'Well, my God, sailor,' that's what he called me, 'You fellows, some of you got more education than these officers that are appointed to serve over you. We don't know what to do with you. We don't have the nerve to be trying to tell you, when you outrank us in education. So you find something to do on your own.' I think there were about twenty of us who decided that the best service we could render would be to run a school for illiterates, and many a time, 5,000 black sailors would be dumped on Great Lakes from down in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, right out of the cotton field, hadn't been to school one day in their lives. We'd take them in little batches for seven weeks. We said, 'Give them to us for seven weeks, and we'll have them passing what the public school called third grade tests.' We must have had something on the ball ... that was the biggest contribution that I rendered. ...

Career

Johnson taught history,

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

, and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

for 16 years at

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

's Central High School before engaging the University of Kentucky in a legal test case intended to permit him to pursue further graduate study there. Johnson filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Kentucky in 1948, challenging the state's Day Law, the state law that prohibited blacks and whites from attending the same schools. His challenge was successful, which allowed him to enter UK in 1949 as a 43-year-old

graduate student Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and s ...

. Although he left UK before earning a degree, he received an honorary

Doctor of Letters Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Docto ...

degree in 1979. Johnson continued teaching at Central until 1966, before spending another five years in the Jefferson County Public Schools as an assistant principal at two junior high schools (one of the schools was Parkland Jr. High). After retirement from the public school system, he then spent three years in a similar administrative capacity at a Catholic high school. He was also a member of the Jefferson County Board of Education from 1978 to 1982. Johnson was an eloquent speaker. Once while defending underprivileged youth in public schools, Johnson quoted from memory lines from "Thomas Gray's "

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742 ...

." He said that these forgotten students were like desert flowers:"Full many a flower has been born to bloom and blush unseen and waste the sweetness of its fragrance on the desert air." In addition to opening the door for thousands of minority students, he also led struggles to integrate neighborhoods, swimming pools, schools, and restaurants. He also headed the Louisville chapter of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.& ...

for six years. Johnson died in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

in 1997 at the age of 91.

Legacy

The University of Kentucky Graduate School currently oversees a competitive fellowship program in his honor, for students who meet the academic requirements and who directly contribute to the University of Kentucky's compelling interest in diversity. There is also a postdoctoral fellowship program named in his honor. Recipients are known as Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellows. In 2015 in his honor the University of Kentucky renamed a dormitory to Lyman T. Johnson Hall. Within the University of Kentucky Alumni Association the African American constituent group is named the Lyman T. Johnson African American Alumni. Lyman T. Johnson Middle School—commonly known as Johnson Traditional Middle SchoolJohnson Traditional Middle School
from the website of Jefferson County Public Schools—was named in his honor in 1980. Wade Hall, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the English Department of

Bellarmine University Bellarmine University (BU; ) is a private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. It opened on October 3, 1950, as Bellarmine College, established by Archbishop John A. Floersh of the Archdiocese of Louisville and named after Saint Ro ...

, wrote a biography of Johnson titled

References

* Hall, Wade. The rest of the dream: The Black odyssey of Lyman Johnson. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

External links

Oral History Interview with Lyman Johnson
fro
Oral Histories of the American South
at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...

Oral History Interviews with Lyman Johnson, 1976 and 1982
from the

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one ...

Archives & Special Collections
Lyman T. Johnson Papers
at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Lyman T. African-American schoolteachers School desegregation pioneers NAACP activists University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni University of Kentucky alumni Knoxville College alumni Virginia Union University alumni 1906 births 1997 deaths People from Columbia, Tennessee People from Louisville, Kentucky 20th-century American educators Schoolteachers from Tennessee Schoolteachers from Kentucky 20th-century African-American educators United States Navy personnel of World War II