He made landmark civil rights rulings that helped end segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South.

[1] While a student, he was asked by a staunchly Democratic classmate why he insisted upon being a Republican, to which Johnson replied that there were "so few of us that one day I might be a federal judge."

He was appointed as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 1953 to 1955, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration.

[3] In 1956, Johnson ruled in favor of Rosa Parks, striking down the "blacks in the back of the bus" law of the city of Montgomery Alabama, as unconstitutional.

In 1961 he ordered the Ku Klux Klan and Montgomery police to stop the beating and harassment of Freedom Riders attempting to integrate interstate bus travel.

Johnson received death threats and ostracism for his role in advancing civil rights, and was protected by federal marshals for nearly two decades.

[5][6] Johnson was nominated by President Jimmy Carter on April 2, 1979, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to a new seat established by 92 Stat.

[3] Johnson was reassigned to the newly established United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit by operation of law on October 1, 1981.

[12] Required desegregation of the bus depots of the city of Montgomery, as these served interstate buses operating under federal law.

[15] Ruled that the state of Alabama must permit both male and female Blacks to serve on juries; they were qualified after regaining the ability to register and vote.

Ruled that women had a statutory right to choose, for themselves, whether to work in physically demanding jobs that were historically performed by men.

Required the state of Alabama to continue hiring (as ordered by the court in 1972) to overcome decades of racial discrimination in the Dept.

of Public Safety, wherein the department should hire 50% blacks in state trooper and support positions until racial parity of 25% representation was achieved.