James Hervey Johnson

After becoming a freethinker early in life, Johnson became prominent in the San Diego area Freethought movement, eventually hosting annual dinners in honor of his heroes Robert Green Ingersoll and Thomas Paine.

He was also a fan of ex-Roman Catholic priest Freethought and Rationalist writer Joseph McCabe, and stocked his large collection of Little Blue Books from Girard, Kansas.

In 1983 after years of acrimony (he liked to call her a foul-mouthed immoral disgrace to the movement), and several unsuccessful attempts to get money from him, she angrily wrote him “You are a dying, defunct, discredited old man who will grow moldy in an unmarked grave.”[4][5] Johnson was also a Naturopathy advocate, which he called "Natural Hygiene",[6] touting the health value of raw milk, vegetarianism, etc., denying the Germ theory of disease, and selling books on the subject, considering all medical doctors quacks and refusing to seek medical help for a large tumor on his face that developed in the 1960s.

It was while crossing the street in front of the ruins of his headquarters to his rented apartment on October 14, 1981 that he was run over, after which he spent several weeks in a Roman Catholic hospital while his property was looted.

[7] After the accident, he never fully recovered his health, and on the advice of friends dropped the white supremacist and antisemitic articles, concentrating on Atheism and Freethought, including a campaign against male circumcision.