Stone Johnson (September 9, 1918 – January 19, 2012) was an African-American activist in the Civil Rights Movement. 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 Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...

in the mid 1950s, working with

Fred Shuttlesworth Freddie Lee Shuttlesworth (born Freddie Lee Robinson, March 18, 1922 – October 5, 2011) was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist who led fights against segregation and other forms of racism, during the civil rights movement. ...

. 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 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 The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...

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, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

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

Anniston, Alabama Anniston is a city and the county seat of Calhoun County, Alabama, Calhoun County in Alabama, United States, and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston–Oxford metropolitan area, Anniston–Oxford Metropo ...

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 Americans, African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., ...

. 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
/ref> He was married to his wife Beatrice for nearly seventy years. She died in May 2011 at the age of 89. Johnson died from illness on Jan 19, 2012 at the age of 93.

References

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