Johnson Junior College, located at 1200 N. Beecher St. In

Leesburg, Florida Leesburg is a city in central Florida. The population was 20,117 at the 2010 census. As of 2019, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 23,671. Leesburg is in Lake County, between Lake Harris and Lake Griffin, at the head of the ...

, opened its doors in 1962, for black students, at the same time as Lake–Sumter Junior College (now

Lake–Sumter State College Lake–Sumter State College is a public college with multiple campuses in Central Florida: three campuses in Lake and Sumter Counties; the original campus in Leesburg; the South Lake Campus in Clermont; and the Sumter Campus in Sumterville. It ...

), for white students. It was designed to serve

Lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

and

Sumter Sumter may refer to: People Given name * Sumter S. Arnim (1904–1990), American dentist * Sumter de Leon Lowry Jr. (1893–1985), United States Army general Surname * Rowendy Sumter (born 1988), Curaçaoan footballer * Shavonda E. Sumter ( ...

Counties. It was one of eleven black community colleges which were founded, at the urging of the

Florida Legislature The Florida Legislature is the legislature of the U.S. State of Florida. It is organized as a bicameral body composed of an upper chamber, the Senate, and a lower chamber, the House of Representatives. Article III, Section 1 of the Florida Cons ...

, in the late 1950s and early 1960s to show that a "

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...

" educational system for blacks existed in Florida; the Legislature wished to avoid the integration mandated by the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

's ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregat ...

'' decision of 1954. At the time, there was no nearby college for Negroes, and the distances and lack of funding effectively closed off most local Blacks from college. The college was named for local Negro educator

John Wesley Johnson John Wesley Johnson (born 22 March 1836-September 14, 1898) was a famous figure in the early development of Oregon's higher education. He is probably best known today as the first President of the University of Oregon, serving from 1876 to 1893. __ ...

. Its first president was Perman E. Williams. The founding and only president was Perman E. Williams. The college offered college parallel (transfer) programs, and technical programs in Secretarial Science, Food Services, Laboratory Technology, Technical Secretary, Auto Mechanics, and Cosmetology. Initial enrollment was 250; peak enrollment was 397. In 1965, fifty-seven students graduated at the first and only Commencement ever held for Johnson Junior College, although the College had almost one hundred graduates. Unusual for the new black junior colleges, a common salary schedule was used for both the black and the white colleges. However the college differed from its Florida peers in that no transportation system was set up to bring students to the college, until President Williams purchased a bus out of his personal funds. Like the other new black junior colleges, for the first two years classes used the facilities of the adjacent Black high school, in this case Carver Heights High School, today Carver Middle School. Classes were offered for both those who wanted to transfer to a four-year college and those who wanted to learn a trade. Three new buildings were constructed, which contained science laboratories, a business education suite, a speech arts laboratory, faculty offices, a library, and facilities for vocational technical programs. Three days after the dedication of the new facilities in 1965, the Lake County Board of Public Instruction determined, in view of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

, that the two colleges would be combined, although in practice Johnson Junior College was simply closed. There is no record of any attempt to invite students or employees to join Lake–Sumter, which made "no effort...to properly preserve the official records from Johnson Junior College." The College operated one more year, 1965–66, as the Johnson Center of Lake–Sumter, and Williams was designated the dean. The high school used some of the facilities, and by the beginning of the 1966-67 academic year, the Johnson Center was closed, Williams took a job elsewhere, and all of the facilities built for Johnson Junior College had been turned over to the high school. In 1996, the administration building of what was then Lake–Sumter Community College was named the Williams-Johnson building, in honor of the college and its president,Rick Badie, "Devotion To Education For Blacks Lives On. The Memory Of Two Black Educators Is Being Kept Alive On The Leesburg Campus Of Lake-sumter Community College", ''

Orlando Sentinel The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida, and the Central Florida region. It was founded in 1876 and is currently owned by Tribune Publishing Company. The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is owned by parent company, '' Tribune P ...

'', February 20, 1996, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1996-02-20/news/9602190855_1_lake-sumter-johnson-lake-and-sumter, retrieved May 8, 2016.

References

{{authority control Historically black universities and colleges in the United States Educational institutions established in 1962 Educational institutions disestablished in 1965 Education in Lake County, Florida Education in Sumter County, Florida Leesburg, Florida Two-year colleges in the United States Florida's black junior colleges 1962 establishments in Florida

See also

References