Leroy Reginald Johnson (July 28, 1928 – October 24, 2019) was an American politician who served in the

Georgia State Senate The Georgia State Senate is the upper house of the Georgia General Assembly, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Legal provisions The Georgia State Senate is the upper house of the Georgia General Assembly, with the lower house being the Georgia ...

from 1963 to 1975 after winning a seat in the 1962

Georgia General Assembly The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly ...

election. He was the first black state senator to be elected to the legislature in more than fifty years, since William H. Rogers in 1907, and the first to be elected to the Senate since 1874. He served District 38 in

Fulton County Fulton County is the name of eight counties in the United States of America. Most are named for Robert Fulton, inventor of the first practical steamboat: *Fulton County, Arkansas, named after Governor William Savin Fulton *Fulton County, Georgia *F ...

and

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, a predominantly black senate district created after the elimination of the

county-unit system The county unit system was a voting system used by the U.S. state of Georgia to determine a victor in statewide primary elections from 1917 until 1962. History Though the county unit system had informally been used since 1898, it was formally enac ...

that same year. Before his term as senator, Johnson was an attorney where he played a role in Atlanta's civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was later a candidate in the 1973 Atlanta mayoral election but received few votes, despite being familiar to voters and having an endorsement from ''The Atlanta Constitution''. The position went instead to

Maynard Jackson Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. (March 23, 1938 – June 23, 2003) was an American politician and attorney from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected in 1973 at the age of 35 as the first black mayor of Atlanta, Georgia and of ...

who in turn became Atlanta's first African American mayor. In 2017, the State Bar of Georgia awarded its highest recognition, The Lifetime Achievement Award, to Johnson during a special ceremony held in February. Johnson died on October 24, 2019 at the age of 91.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Leroy Georgia (U.S. state) state senators African-American state legislators in Georgia (U.S. state) 1928 births 2019 deaths Politicians from Atlanta Morehouse College alumni Clark Atlanta University alumni Georgia (U.S. state) lawyers African-American lawyers 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people