Victor Johnson Jr. Honored for Civil Rights Leadership

Office of the Mayor - Feb. 13, 2009
Contact: Linda Jackson-Barnes, 727-2058

Victor Johnson Jr. is being honored with this year’s Civil Rights Movement Resolution for his activism in helping desegregate lunch counters in Winston-Salem in 1960.

Resolutions by Mayor Allen Joines and the City Council honoring Johnson will be read at the City Council meeting Monday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m.

Joines initiated the annual Civil Rights Movement Resolution in 2003 to honor those outstanding individuals who worked to strengthen civil rights and race relations in Winston-Salem.

Johnson was one of 11 African-American students at Winston-Salem Teachers College who joined forces with ten white students at Wake Forest University in a sit-in on Feb. 23, 1960, to use peaceful, passive resistance to integrate the lunch counters in downtown Winston-Salem.

This demonstration was unique in that it brought white and black students together for this common goal. Three months after the sit-ins began, city officials and store managers reached an agreement on May 23, 1960 to desegregate city lunch counters.
Johnson was recognized in 2000 at the “Leadership and Civil Rights” program sponsored by Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State universities, and participated in the documentary, “I’m Not My Brother’s Keeper: Leadership and Civil Rights in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”

He currently serves on the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education.

Printable version of the resolution [pdf/1p]