Mattiedna Johnson

[1] In the 1940s, she played a pertinent role in the cure for the fatal scarlet fever epidemic and other diseases that soldiers in World War II were getting.

[1] Johnson was the only African American, nurse, and laboratory technician that worked on the U.S. Army Medical Corp penicillin project at the University of Minnesota.

[1][2] With concern about his daughter's low birth weight, Johnson's father pleaded to God to provide her a healthy life in exchange for her living to serve.

[1] In 1959, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio after visiting there as a part of a missionary to save troubled churches around the United States.

She stated that she was denied registration for the Private Duty Registry at the 1961 Ohio Nurses Association convention.

[1] Johnson also served as a medical missionary in Liberia, Africa where she advocated the Liberian National Nursing Association.

[3][5] Not long after completing the medical technology program, Johnson joined the University of Minnesota's Plant Pathology Department as a lab technician working on penicillin research.

[3][7] Johnson's childhood provided her with a peculiar advantage in this field of work, as the research she performed often entailed isolating molds from various foods, especially vegetables.

[1][2][4][7] Johnson worked with a variety of vegetables during her time on this project, but it was a bowl of tomato soup provided by an employee of the department that finally yielded results.

[3] She told him of the mold's effectiveness against Scarlet fever and even suggested that the medicine should be mixed with peppermint syrup to be more tasty for children.

[2] Mattiedna Johnson and some of her fellow nurses did a 575-person blood pressure screening after noticing the number of funerals their church was having.