He has become infamously remembered for denying clemency to George Stinney, a 14 year-old African American boy who was wrongfully sentenced to death in 1944 after a trial that lasted for one single day, a conviction overturned 70 years later.

[1] He entered Wofford College in the fall of 1915, where he worked his way through school by holding a variety of jobs,[1] but his studies were interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War I.

"[1] Among his achievements as governor were the repeal of the state's personal property tax;[1] the initiation in South Carolina of the country's first rural electrification program,[1] a pilot program personally authorized by President Roosevelt;[1] the $3.00 license plate;[1] and the establishment of the Industrial Commission, Labor Department, Planning and Development Board, and Ports Authority.

In what has become the most famous fight between a governor and legislature in South Carolina history, Johnston tried to dismiss a number of members of the powerful State Highway Commission.

After the commissioners refused to leave their posts, Johnston mobilized the National Guard to occupy the offices of the Highway Department.

[3] Where previous governors used the National Guard and martial law to crush strikes,[3] Johnston used both to protect strikers and seal off mill precincts from strikebreakers.

However, it was widely accepted that Smith was highly unpopular in South Carolina[4][5] and that Johnston would have won the primary if Roosevelt had not intervened on his behalf[4][5] or if he had focused on either pleasing the state's influential textile mill owners[4] or preserving racial segregation.

[4] Though Johnston did not defend rights for African Americans,[6] he would largely ignore the issue of preserving racial segregation,[4][7] believing that improving the public welfare was more important.

[7] Meanwhile, Smith had opposed Roosevelt's labor reform and for years campaigned on a two-plank platform to "keep the Negro down and the price of cotton up,"[5] and had recently demonstrated that he intended to maintain his fight to preserve racial segregation after he had walked out of the 1936 Democratic National Convention when he heard that a black minister was going to deliver the invocation.

[8][9] South Carolina US Senator James F. Byrnes, though also an ardent New Dealer, opposed this new push, claiming it would make the state's textile mills uncompetitive.

[9] Following his loss in 1938, Johnston then ran for the Senate in a 1941 special election to replace Byrnes, who had just been appointed to the Supreme Court, but lost to South Carolina Governor Burnet R. Maybank.

During that second term, he focused more on preserving racial segregation and signed laws which attempted to circumvent the Smith v. Allwright decision, which declared racially segregated primaries to be unconstitutional, by allowing political parties in the state to operate as private organizations separate from state control and therefore beyond the reach of the U.S. Supreme Court.

[1] Unlike most Southern Democrats, Johnston opposed the anti-union Taft-Hartley labor law in 1947 and he voted for both the War on Poverty in 1964 and for Medicare shortly before his death in 1965.

Johnston denied clemency to George Stinney, a 14 year-old African American boy who was sentenced to execution by the electric chair in 1944.

Johnston wrote in a response to one appeal for clemency that It may be interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the larger one.

"[1] Johnston was interred in a cemetery at Barkers Creek Baptist Church, where he attended Sunday services during his boyhood years,[13] near Honea Path, South Carolina.