During a funeral of more than three hours, a line of political and spiritual leaders, one after another, briefly took the spotlight at Dallas’ Concord Church to memorialize former Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, the Waco native and onetime nurse who over 89 years of uphill struggle surmounted entrenched Jim Crow barriers set up to stymie those of her race and sex. Yet all the platitudes paled alongside the tribute issued by Republican Congressman Frank Lucas.
“I’m deeply saddened by the passing of Eddie Bernice Johnson,” the 64-year-old Oklahoma lawmaker said in a New Year’s Eve statement hours after her death. “We worked side by side for years and I was proud to call her a friend in addition to a colleague. She was a trailblazer in every sense of the word and I was continually impressed by her dedication to public service. EBJ, as I affectionately called her, was an old-school legislator who sincerely cared about the cause of advancing American science. It was a privilege to serve as the ranking member during her chairmanship of the House Science Committee. Together, we passed generational legislation that will set the course for science and technology development for decades to come.”
Lucas added that such legislation "wouldn’t have been possible without her leadership and commitment to working in a bipartisan fashion.”
Let’s face it. Partisan lawmakers these days seldom issue such tributes to colleagues of the political opposition. During this same period former President Trump recklessly claimed “Democrats want to burn America to the ground” – an astounding statement for a man forever linked to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, undertaken to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and subvert the U.S. Constitution. Rolling up one’s sleeves, stowing incendiary talk and working toward genuine consensus rather than engaging in flamethrowing theatrics may well have been the key to Johnson’s legislative success.
Granted, any book on great African-American lawmakers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries will devote thick chapters to John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, Bennie Thompson and James Clyburn while “EBJ” is likely to be relegated to the index and footnotes. Yet those who knew her say she wasn’t out to get the credit and wasn’t interested in rhetorical swordfights, notwithstanding her background as a Texas civil rights activist in the turbulent 1960s. As an enduring member of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education, she steadily pressed for widespread science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education – understandable for a woman who only went into nursing after a high school guidance counselor in Waco in the 1950s advised that her dream of one day becoming a doctor was impossible because of her gender.
“Eddie Bernice Johnson was a quiet hero,” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, 53, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said at her Jan. 9 funeral. “She taught us that you don’t have to be the loudest voice in the room to get the most done, and that’s what she did. Don’t confuse the presence of dignity with the absence of determination. Eddie Bernice Johnson was both dignified and determined and one of the most accomplished legislators of the United States Congress.”
The richly informative biography in Johnson’s funeral program acknowledged as much: “Hers is a congressional career that is measured not just by the legislative results she attained but how she did it. For most of her time in Congress, she was in the minority party. To get anything done, she had to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans. She had to cultivate relationships, command respect, negotiate and remain persistent.” Consequently, over three decades on Capitol Hill she authored or co-authored more than 300 bills displaying an unusually wide range of interests and concerns including health care, veterans, voting rights, education, trade, economic development and combating sexual harassment. To quote great-granddaughters Kennedy Lee Winter-Johnson and Lily Rose Johnson during the funeral, her admonitions to the youngsters were: “Work hard every day and never give up when things get tough. Be strong in mind and heart. Always do the right thing even if it’s not fun.”
Or, to quote former U.S. Trade Representative and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, 69, also at the funeral, “And I want to say to those of you here who are not elected officials: Don’t ask us one more time what we got to do to make our country better, what we have to do to get rid of all the noise and discord. If you were paying attention to the life of this remarkable woman, she’s already given us the answer: Do the work.”
During a 2022 C-SPAN interview, Johnson recalled forming congressional alliances with other women such as Republican Congresswoman Connie Morella to pursue legislation that encouraged young women and persons of color to pursue rewarding careers in science and technology. All this culminated in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 that boosted semiconductor research, development and production, ensuring U.S. leadership in technology that is the foundation of everything from automobiles to household appliances to defense systems. The legislation also expanded investments in "institutional diversity of research institutions and the students and researchers they serve, including new initiatives to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions.”
In a bipartisan piece in The Hill – published the day Johnson’s funeral procession from Dallas to Texas State Cemetery in Austin turned off I-35 into her old hometown of Waco to pass slowly by the Doris Miller Memorial along the Brazos – Lucas and Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, both white, wrote how Johnson in her leadership posts on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology "knew that if we fell behind in expanding human knowledge and ensuring the workforce behind it was diverse, our nation’s future would suffer. She beamed with pride as President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law. We now take the responsibility of ensuring the goals we set out to achieve with this law are realized."
“We needed the talent in this country,” Congresswoman Johnson told C-SPAN on the eve of her House
Johnson wasn’t the most eloquent member of the Black Congressional Caucus alongside such powerful orators as Lewis, Clyburn and Cummings. Nor could she rival the soaring rhetoric of, say, entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk when it came to talking of making mankind a multi-planet species. I recall her once fumbling about trying to use the solar eclipse of 2017 to spur in the young an interest in science and technology. But she had the right idea. And the sort of mankind she talked of launching into the heavens strikes one as far more hopeful, more unified and more humane than the universe Musk seems to idealize if his controversial overhaul of Twitter or X is any indication with its nutty conspiracy theorists, propaganda ministers and hatemongers.
In recent weeks, Musk, 52, has embarked on a puzzling social-media campaign to belittle the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace – a Republican talking point of late but anathema to Johnson, who certainly wasn’t proposing that women and persons of color be tapped for key jobs without sufficient preparation and qualifications. As an African-American nurse hired sight-unseen by the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dallas, she was preceded on her hospital rounds by a white employee who reassured patients that Johnson would be acceptable in managing their care – "really the most blatant, overt racism that I ever experienced in my life," Johnson recalled. No wonder Johnson referred to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology as “the Committee of the Future.” To quote former colleagues Lofgren and Lucas, “she was always so focused on building a better future for everyone – a future where all can pursue STEM, regardless of race, gender, background or ZIP code.”
Like the starry-eyed, paradigm-bashing billionaire, Johnson talked about travel to Mars and beyond but with a decidedly more inclusive vision. “She always thought about what we might gain and glean from the space program, the STEM program, to help not only the United States but the world, and what impact it might be to study those particular areas,” her second cousin, Army veteran and Waco Housing Authority official Gerald Bridgewater, 63, told me as he and others waited for her funeral procession to pass by the Doris Miller Memorial. “She saw science as more than something we just think about in terms of its just being science and space. That was a passion she had because she felt that, through those technologies, people could change and interact with medical and technical advances and all that.”
I didn’t know Johnson personally, though I worked with her staff in shaping several columns by her for the Tribune-Herald. She long worked (but without success) to gain a posthumous Medal of Honor for Doris Miller, the 23-year-old black sharecroppers’ son from Waco who during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941 abandoned his menial duties aboard the USS West Virginia in a segregated U.S. Navy to man an anti-aircraft gun to return fire. Awarded the Navy Cross, Miller briefly toured the nation (including his hometown of Waco) on a war-bond drive before returning to battle duty. He perished with his shipmates on the USS Liscome Bay in November 1943.
Considering the racial and sexual discrimination she faced in Waco, Johnson’s optimism rates respect, even by those who might disagree with her politics. During the gathering of some 60 well-wishers near the Doris Miller Memorial, former Democratic Congressman Chet Edwards, 72, who began his 20 years in the U.S. House representing Waco two years before Johnson arrived from Dallas, expressed admiration for all she attained. He singled out her traveling alone as a young black woman to Indiana in summer 1952 to begin nursing studies at St. Mary’s College because Texas segregation precluded her from such an education at nearby Baylor University, despite graduating at the top of her class at A.J. Moore High School in Waco.
“Rather than letting that horrible injustice make her bitter, she used the spirit of Doris Miller to spend her life in public service with dignity, with grace,” Edwards told those assembled, noting the series of firsts she accomplished throughout her career in medicine and politics. “She taught me the power of faith and love overcoming the power of hate and discrimination. She taught me that each of us can make a difference.” He later added that her parents in Waco "taught her the values of faith, hard work, determination and grace. And Toliver Chapel Missionary Baptist Church shaped her faith and values."
Edwards considered Johnson an especially close friend. “My two sons were born 25 and 27 years ago,” he said. “Eddie Bernice gave them each their first piggy bank. My wife and I matched their savings and, over the years, it built up and built up, and they invested their earnings from Eddie Bernice’s piggy banks in the stock market. And two years ago, my 27-year-old son and his wife used Eddie Bernice’s piggybank money to make the down payment on their first home as a couple in Fort Worth. She just had that personal dignity and kindness.”
There’s a wonderful story about Johnson, near the end of her congressional tenure an engaging, rotund little woman of 86, quietly returning to her Capitol office on Jan. 6, 2021, only to encounter someone in the hallway who seemed lost and disoriented – someone she later deduced was among the first wave of Trump supporters to breach the Capitol, then under lockdown but for lawmakers and their staffs. Unwittingly, she asked if she could help him. He explained that he had secured an "all-expense-paid trip to Washington and he wanted to see what it looked like,” she told The Grio months later. “So I told him to have a nice trip. But I went in my office and locked the door."
Simple story? Sure. But considering the violent siege of the Capitol that she and her staff witnessed from their barricaded office later that day, mounted by a mob yelling “1776!” and “Our House!” and vowing to hang the vice president, the anecdote illustrates the clash of ideologies we now witness in America: one embraced by a person who quietly and through consensus-building worked within the American constitutional system to eliminate barriers set up to impede those of her race and sex and to provide equal opportunity to all, the other embraced by a person who likely didn’t know anything more of constitutional order and the founding framework than his idol did and was set that day on invalidating through brute force the votes of millions of fellow Americans, white, black and brown, in the election of 2020.
Who in that Capitol hallway was the real patriot?
Bill Whitaker spent nearly 45 years as a daily Texas journalist, including nearly a dozen years as opinion editor at the Waco Tribune-Herald. He now serves on the Trib Board of Contributors.
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