Virginia Johnson (Arkansas)

Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson (January 21, 1928 – June 27, 2007)^[1] was, in 1968, the first woman to seek the office of governor of Arkansas.^[2]

Early years

Johnson was born in Conway in Faulkner County, Arkansas, to Jesse Lyman Morris, Sr., and the former Frances Morgan. Her family later moved to El Paso in White County, Arkansas. Frances Morris died when Virginia was fourteen. The teenager then moved to Bee Branch in Van Buren County to live with her maternal aunt and uncle by-marriage, Mildred Boots French and Thomas Quinn French (1903–1981). Jesse Morris, meanwhile, served in the United States Marine Corps. Virginia Morris graduated as the valedictorian from South Side High School in Bee Branch and procured a scholarship to study at Draughon’s School of Business in Little Rock, the state's largest city and the seat of Pulaski County. After graduation, she was employed as a legal secretary at the law firm of Carter, Pickthorne, and Jones. Later, she worked as an under-insurance secretary in Little Rock.^[2][3]

On December 21, 1947, 19-year-old Virginia Morris married James D. Johnson, a 23-year-old attorney from Crossett in Ashley County in south Arkansas. They later settled permanently at Beaverfork Lake near Conway. Virginia Johnson served as her husband's legal secretary for his entire legal career.^[3]

In 1950, Jim Johnson was elected to the Arkansas State Senate, and his wife served on the Senate staff during the 1951 and 1953 legislative sessions. In 1956, she headed her husband's successful petition drive to place a state constitutional amendment on the ballot calling upon the Arkansas General Assembly to oppose the 9-0 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the United States Supreme Court regarding school desegregation. The measure was repealed in 1990, though Johnson never wavered in her support for it. She wrote the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock in 2005 that Arkansas people "have solid convictions and, if offered the opportunity, they will demonstrate once again that they prefer their own," a reference to segregation. She assisted in her husband's failed bid to oust Orval Eugene Faubus in the 1956 Democratic primary and in his successful 1958 campaign for a spot on the Arkansas Supreme Court.^[2]

Running for governor

At the age of forty, Johnson ran in the 1968 Democratic primary election for the nomination to oppose the Republican incumbent Winthrop Rockefeller, younger brother of then Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York. State Representative and former House Speaker, Marion H. Crank of Foreman in Little River County, led the five-candidate field with 106,092 votes (25.6 percent). Johnson, like her husband a segregationist, finished second with 86,038 votes (20.7 percent). Johnson topped the third-place candidate, Ted Boswell, an attorney from Bryant in Saline County, by only 406 ballots. Boswell hence polled 85,727 votes. Former Arkansas Attorney General Bruce Bennett finished fourth with 65,905 votes (15.7 percent), and Frank L. Whitbeck (1916–2002) of Little Rock followed with 61,758 (14.9 percent). In the runoff election two weeks later, Crank handily defeated Mrs. Johnson, 215,098 (63.3 percent) to her 124,880 ballots (36.7 percent). Crank then narrowly lost the general election to Rockefeller.^[4]

Mrs. Johnson at first said that she would support Crank's bid against Rockefeller but instead withdrew her support from all Arkansas Democratic nominees in 1968. She declined to accept a spot on the Democratic State Executive Committee because the Johnsons supported George C. Wallace, Jr., nominee of the American Independent Party for U.S. President, rather than the Democratic nominee, Vice President of the United States Hubert H. Humphrey.^[2]

Jim Johnson ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate nomination against long-term incumbent J. William Fulbright in the same 1968 election cycle in which his wife ran for governor. Arkansas voters that year split tickets to reelect Rockefeller and Fulbright, in what would be the last elections won by either man, and to cast electoral votes for George Wallace.

Later years

In later years, Jim and Virginia Johnson supported Republican Frank D. White in his three gubernatorial races against the future Democratic President Bill Clinton. Talk had persisted in 1982 that Jim Johnson would formally switch parties and challenge White for renomination and then, if successful in a primary, lead the GOP banner against Clinton. However, while Johnson did not switch parties at the time, he and his wife expressed support for White's reelection. Jim Johnson had long been friendly with U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican who in 1981 had recommended the Arkansan for a vacancy on the U.S. Parole Commission.^[5] Virginia Johnson met with Governor White in Conway in the 1982 fall campaign and told him, "Don't you believe those polls," which repeatedly and correctly showed Clinton with his ultimate 55-45 percent victory margin over White.^[6][7]

Virginia Johnson died of cancer at the age of seventy-eight. Jim Johnson was also stricken with the disease and took his own life by gunshot on February 13, 2010, some two and a half years after his wife's death.^[8] They are interred at Oak Grove Cemetery in Conway.^[3] The Johnsons had three sons, Mark Johnson of Little Rock, John David Johnson of Fayetteville, and Joseph Daniel Johnson of Conway.

References