[1] Johnson also served in the Texas House of Representatives, where she was elected in 1972 in a landslide, the first black woman to win electoral office from Dallas.

Johnson had aspired to a career in medicine since childhood, and wished to become a doctor, but was told by a high school guidance counselor that this would not be possible because she was female.

Moore High School at age 16, and moved to Indiana to attend Saint Mary's College of Notre Dame, where she graduated in 1955 with her nursing certificate.

[2] Johnson was the first African American to serve as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital.

Johnson left the State House in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter appointed her as the regional director for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the first African-American woman to hold this position.

Her concerns included health care, education, public housing, racial equity, economic development, and job expansion.

That same year, she held hearings to examine discrimination charges about unfair contracting bids for the government's Superconducting Super Collider.

"I am frightened to see young people who believe that a racist power structure is responsible for every negative thing that happens to them," she told the New York Times.

"[13] Midway through her second term in the state senate, Johnson ran in the Democratic primary for the newly created 30th congressional district.

[15] In 1996, after her district was significantly redrawn as a result of Bush v. Vera, she was reelected to a third term with 55% of the vote, the worst election performance of her congressional career.

During debate on the House floor, she stated: I am not convinced that giving the President the authority to launch a unilateral, first-strike attack on Iraq is the appropriate course of action at this time.

I also believe that actions alone, without exhausting peaceful options, could seriously harm global support for our war on terrorism and distract our own resources from this cause.

[citation needed] Johnson and Representative Donna Edwards proposed a publicly funded park on the moon to mark where the Apollo missions landed between 1969 and 1972.

2617, calls for the park to be run jointly by the Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

[33] In August 2010, Amy Goldson, counsel for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said that Johnson violated organizational rules by awarding at least 15 scholarships to relatives of her own or to children of her district director, Rod Givens.

[34] Opponent Stephen Broden released letters bearing Johnson's signature in which she requested that the scholarship check be made out to and sent directly to her relatives, instead of to the destination university as would normally be done.

[35] The Dallas Morning News ran an editorial questioning her changing story on the matter, saying that it was overshadowing her service in the House.

[36] In December 2010, Johnson became the first African American and the first female Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

[46][47][48] Three days later, her family announced plans to file a lawsuit against her health-care providers, claiming medical negligence was responsible for her death.