Rosa Parks and Judge Frank Johnson: Standing Up for Freedom

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2017

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the fall of 1955, Rosa Parks refused to stand for a white passenger on the bus, Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to lead the boycott that followed, and a lawyer named Frank Johnson was appointed to be the first and only federal judge for the middle district of Alabama (also the youngest federal judge in the nation). These three people didn't know each other, and yet, their paths converged in Montgomery, at the crossroads of history. In this episode, you'll hear rare audio of Ms. Parks describing the day of her arrest, and you'll learn the lesser known story of Judge Johnson, a principled and stubborn Southerner from northern Alabama, who issued many of the court decisions decimating segregation throughout the south. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2017

Transcript

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0:00.0	For some reason, Providence, coincidence, destiny, who knows, these three people's lives converged in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and changed the
0:18.1	arc of history. When I was arrested, I was 42 years old and there was so many needs for us to continue to work for freedom because I didn't think that we should have to be treated in the way we would just for the sake of white supremacy because it was designed to make them feel superior and us feel inferior.
0:49.0	Negroes have been in and humiliated because of the sheer fact
0:59.0	the zero Negro.
1:00.0	The basic concept that a good judge has to have is to do what's right, regardless of who the litigants are,
1:10.0	or regardless of how emotional the issues that are presented are.
1:14.0	If you're not willing to do what's right, then you need to get you another job.
1:19.0	The first voice you heard belonged to Rosa Parks, the second of course to Dr. Martin Luther King
1:25.2	Jr. and the third to Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. whose rulings helped crumble racial barriers across the South.
1:36.0	Today's episode is about that remarkable time and place, but particularly it's about Judge Johnson,
1:42.0	because we're guessing his story is the one you haven't heard before
1:46.7	Though Dr. King once called him the man who gave true meaning to the word justice. This is what it takes a podcast about
1:56.2	passion, vision, and perseverance from the audio archives of the Academy of
2:01.9	Achievement.
2:03.0	I'm Ellis Wintler.
2:05.0	Had a name, this child is gifted.
2:08.0	And I heard that enough that I started to believe it.
2:11.0	If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity,
2:15.0	and you don't take it, you may never have another job.
2:17.6	It all was so clear.
2:19.2	It was just like the picture started to form itself.
2:22.3	There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth,
	...

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