Eddie Bernice Johnson
Eddie Bernice Johnson was born in Waco, Texas, United States on December 3rd, 1935 and is the American Politician. At the age of 88, Eddie Bernice Johnson biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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After passage of civil rights legislation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enabled African Americans in the South to register and vote, more African Americans began to run for office and be elected.
In 1972, as an underdog candidate running for a seat in the Texas House, Johnson won a landslide victory. She was the first black woman ever elected to public office from Dallas. She soon became the first woman in Texas history to lead a major Texas House committee, the Labor Committee.
Johnson left the State House in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter appointed her as the regional director for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the first African-American woman to hold this position.
Johnson entered electoral politics again in 1986, when she was elected as a Texas state senator. She was the first woman and the first African American from the Dallas area to hold this office since Reconstruction. Her concerns included health care, education, public housing, racial equity, economic development, and job expansion. Johnson served on the Finance Committee, for which she chaired the subcommittee on Health and Human Services, and the Education Committee. She wrote legislation to regulate diagnostic radiology centers, require drug testing in hospitals, prohibit discrimination against AIDS victims, improve access to health care for AIDS patients, and prohibit hospital kickbacks to doctors. A fair housing advocate, she sponsored a bill to empower city governments to repair substandard housing at landlords' expense, and wrote a bill to enforce prohibitions against housing discrimination.
Johnson worked against racism while dealing with discrimination in the legislature. "Being a woman and being black is perhaps a double handicap," she told the Chicago Tribune. "When you see who's in the important huddles, who's making the important decisions, it's men." Johnson sponsored several bills aimed at equity, including a bill to establish goals for Texas to do business with "socially disadvantaged" businesses. She crafted a fair housing act aimed at toughening fair housing laws and establishing a commission to investigate complaints of discriminatory housing practices.
Johnson also held committee hearings and investigated complaints. In 1989, she testified in federal court about racism in Dallas's city government. In 1992, she formally asked the Justice Department to investigate harassment of local black students. That same year, she held hearings to examine discrimination charges about unfair contracting bids for the government's Superconducting Super Collider.
Johnson fears the legacy that discrimination leaves for youth. "I am frightened to see young people who believe that a racist power structure is responsible for every negative thing that happens to them," she told the New York Times. "After a point it does not matter whether these perceptions are true or false; it is the perceptions that matter."