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Created page with "'''Erle Ennis Johnston, Jr.''' (October 10, 1917 – September 26, 1995),<ref name=fagrave>{{cite web|url=http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Johnston&GSfn=E..."
'''Erle Ennis Johnston, Jr.''' (October 10, 1917 – September 26, 1995),<ref name=fagrave>{{cite web|url=http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Johnston&GSfn=Erle&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=27&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=160628375&df=all&
|title=Erle Ennis Johnston, Jr.|publisher=Findagrave.com|accessdate=April 13, 206}}</ref> was a [[Journalism|journalist]] and [[politician]] from [[Mississippi]].
==Background==
Johnston was born in Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish in south [[Louisiana]].<ref name=papers/> His father, Erle Johnston, Sr. (1889-1962) and his mother, the former Grace Buchanan (1888-1970), are interred at Rose Hill Cemetery in Brookhaven in Lincoln County in southwestern Mississippi.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Johnston&GSfn=Erle&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=27&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=51989382&df=all&
|title=Erle Johnston|publisher=Findagrave.com|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref> Erle Johnston, Sr., worked in the lumber industry and moved his wife and two sons, Erle and Bert, to [[Toledo, Ohio|Toledo]], [[Ohio]], and thereafter the capital city of [[Jackson, Mississippi|Jackson]], Mississippi, before they settled in 1928 in Grenada in northern Mississippi. Johnston attended Grenada High School, where he played on the [[baseball]] team and was a member of the band. He launched the school's first [[newspaper]] and while in high school reported part-time for the ''Grenada Daily-Star.'' He graduated in 1935 but was unable to meet the expenses of attending college.<ref name=papers/>
==Journalism and political career==
In 1937, after a short time as a stringer correspondent for several newspapers, including ''The Jackson Daily News'', ''The Jackson Clarion-Ledger'', and the ''Memphis Commercial Appeal'', Johnston became one of eight members of the staff then of ''The Clarion-Ledger'', his state's largest paper. He worked there as state regional editor, political reporter, and editor of petroleum and [[natural gas]] issues. He was also the first staff [[photographer]] for a Mississippi daily newspaper. In 1941, he bought half interest in the weekly paper, ''The Scott County Times'' in Forest, a small city in Scott County in central Mississippi.<ref name=bio/> In 1942, at the age of twenty-four, Johnston bought out his partner's half interest to become sole owner of ''The Scott County Times'', which thereafter won many awards of excellence from the Mississippi Press Association. In 1949, at the age of thirty-one, Johnston was elected the youngest president thus far of the Mississippi Press Association. He was the only journalist who did not attend college inducted into gma Delta Chi]], the national journalism [[fraternity]]. Johnston served in the [[United States Army]] during [[World War II]]. While he was in the military from 1945 to 1946, his wife, the former Fay Martin (1919-1999), operated the paper.<ref name=papers/> He remained with ''The Scott County Times'' until he sold it 1983.<ref name=nyt/>
In 1960, Governor [[Ross Barnett]] appointed Johnston as director of public relations of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an agency established in 1956 to oppose encroachment on state [[sovereignty]] by the [[United States government]]. The commission thereafter sought to publicize what it claimed were the advantages to both races of segregation in Mississippi. [[Civil rights]] activists opposed the commission. In 1963, Johnston became the executive director of the commission, a position which he filled until 1968, when he resigned from the organization. His service as executive director was principally under the administration of Barnett's successor, [[Paul B. Johnson, Jr.]]<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://crdl.usg.edu/people/j/johnston_erle/?Welcome|title=Johnston, Erle (biography)|publisher=crdl.usg.edu|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref> Johnston once told an interviewer that the opponents had exaggerated the role of the commission, which he believed had succeeded in "keeping down tension and confrontation."<ref name=nyt>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/28/obituaries/e-e-johnston-77-segregation-figure.html|title=E. E. Johnston, 77, Segregation Figure|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|date=September 28, 1995|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref>
In 1962, in an address at his alma mater, Grenada High School, Johnston addressed the threat facing school segregation in Mississippi:
<blockquote>
The only way we can retain our segregated school system is through the cooperation of the colored race ([[African Americans]]). We already have many allies among the colored school teachers, bus drivers, and others who want to preserve their jobs. We can earn the cooperation of others with consideration and recognition and an honest attempt to provide colored citizens with facilities to which they are entitled.<br>
Mississippi needs more white people who will publicly speak out for recognition and consideration without being branded as liberal leftists, and more colored people willing to cooperate without being branded as [[Uncle Tom]]s.<br>
We can be practical without being radical: we can be realistic without being ridiculous. I have often thought that if the extremists at both ends of this racial situation would quit wildly wagging their tongues, and suspiciously pointing their fingers, we could restore some racial harmony in Mississippi and make better progress.<ref name=ej>Erle Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years, 1953-1973: An Interpretative Documentary with Personal Experiences'' (Forest, Mississippi: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1990), pp, 137-138.</ref></blockquote>
Johnston criticized the activities of the [[White Citizens Council]] but overcame that opposition when he was named the executive director of the sovereignty commission and continued as public relations director as well.<ref>Erle Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years'', pp. 189, 228.</ref> The commission was abolished in 1977 in the [[Cliff Finch]] administration, four years after Governor [[Bill Waller]] [[veto]]ed its funding.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/badco/missSov.htm Mississippi Commission's Files a Treasure Trove of Innuendo|title=Mississippi Commission's Files a Treasure Trove of Innuendo|publisher=[[Associated Press]]|date=March 18, 1998.|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref>
Johnston worked in numerous [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] political campaigns in Mississippi, beginning in 1942 with [[James Eastland]]'s election to the [[United States Senate]]; Eastland was subsequently the long-term chairman of the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]]. He worked to elect Martin Sennet Conner and [[Fielding Wright]] as governor of Mississippi in 1943 and 1947, respectively; Conner previously served from 1936 to 1940 but lost the gubernatorial race in 1943 to Thomas L. Bailey, who thereafter died in office in 1946. Johnston worked in [[Hugh L. White]]'s gubernatorial race in 1951, and the renomination of Senator Eastland in the 1954 primary against [[Carroll Gartin]] of Laurel, a three-term lieutenant governor who subsequently died in office in 1966. Johnston was Ross Barnett's publicity director in the unsuccessful 1955 race for governor against [[James P. Coleman]] and the successful one in 1959 against Carroll Gartin. He also worked for the unpledged elector slate in 1960, which denied the Mississippi [[electoral vote]] to both [[John F. Kennedy]] and [[Richard M. Nixon]]. He helped to produce telecasts of the inaugurations of Governors Barnett, Johnson, [[conservative]] [[John Bell Williams]] in 1968, and William Waller in 1972.<ref name=papers/>
From 1981 to 1985, Johnston was the [[mayor]] of Forest. In this capacity, he recruited to his city [[Hughes Aircraft Company]] and the [[Sara Lee Corporation]]. These two companies alone brought thousands of jobs to the area.<ref name=bio/> He was sandwiched between the eight non-consecutive mayoral terms of [[poultry]] industrialist Fred L. Gaddis, Sr. (1922-2001).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2002/html/SC/SC0513IN.htm|title=Senate Concurrent Resolution 513|date=2002|publisher=billstatus.ls.state.ms.us|accessdate=April 14, 2016</ref>
In 1980, Johnston published ''I Rolled with Ross, a Political Portrait of Former Governor Ross Barnett.'' In 1990, he released the 430-page ''Mississippi's Defiant Years, 1953-1973: An Interpretative Documentary with Personal Experiences'', with the foreword by former Governor [[William Winter]].<ref name=ej/> Another book, ''Politics: Mississippi Style'', was released in 1993.<ref name=papers/> .
==Death and legacy==
Johnston was active in the [[Chamber of Commerce]], [[Rotary International]], and the Forest Country Club. He was a deacon and [[Sunday school]] teacher at the Forest [[Presbyterian]] Church and volunteered to assist the [[Boy Scouts of America]] and [[Little League]] baseball.<ref name=papers/>
Johnston and his wife, Fay, had two daughters, Carol J. Lindley and husband, Robert C. Lindley, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Lynn J. Catalina and husband, Ben Herman Catalina, of [[San Antonio]],f [[Texas]]; a son, Erle "Bubby" Johnston, III, formerly the public information officer at East Central Community College in Decatur, Mississippi, and five grandchildren. Johnston died early in the fall of 1995 at the age of seventy-seven of a heart ailment at St. Dominic's Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.<ref name=nyt/>
In 1992, Johnston was co-chairman of historically black Tougaloo College's Committee on the Preservation of Civil Rights Activities in Madison County, Mississippi. Not long before his death three years later, he organized the fortieth anniversary reunion of the players in the Pasadena Junior Rose Bowl, now the Pasadena Bowl, which was played in 1955 between Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi, and Compton Community College in Compton, [[California]]. This was the first time that a white [[American football|football]] team from Mississippi played against a racially-integrated team.<ref name=papers/>
In ''The Scott County Times'', Johnston had covered issues important to black readers both in print and photographs. He once recalled that the civil rights figure [[Charles Evers]] of Fayette, Mississippi, was speaking on stage in Forest and pointed to Johnston: "There's Johnston out there. Once he was my enemy, and now he is my friend!"<ref>Erle, Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years'', p. 407</ref>
Johnston's papers were deposited by his family in 1997 at the [[University of Southern Mississippi]] at Hattiesburg. At the time of his death, Johnston had been writing a book with the tentative title, ''The Thunder of Elephants in Mississippi: From Bayonets to Ballots,'' a study of the opposition [[Republican Party]], which after Johnston's death became the majority party in the state.<ref name=papers>{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/archives/m319.htm?m319text.htm~mainFrame|title=Erle E. Johnston, Jr., Papers|publisher=lib.usm.edu|accessdate=April 11, 2016}}</ref>
Erle and Fay Johnston are interred at the Eastern Cemetery in Forest, Mississippi.<ref name=fagrave/> A street in Forest is named for Johnston.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnston, Erle}}
[[Category:Mississippi]]
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Journalists]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
|title=Erle Ennis Johnston, Jr.|publisher=Findagrave.com|accessdate=April 13, 206}}</ref> was a [[Journalism|journalist]] and [[politician]] from [[Mississippi]].
==Background==
Johnston was born in Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish in south [[Louisiana]].<ref name=papers/> His father, Erle Johnston, Sr. (1889-1962) and his mother, the former Grace Buchanan (1888-1970), are interred at Rose Hill Cemetery in Brookhaven in Lincoln County in southwestern Mississippi.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Johnston&GSfn=Erle&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSst=27&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=51989382&df=all&
|title=Erle Johnston|publisher=Findagrave.com|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref> Erle Johnston, Sr., worked in the lumber industry and moved his wife and two sons, Erle and Bert, to [[Toledo, Ohio|Toledo]], [[Ohio]], and thereafter the capital city of [[Jackson, Mississippi|Jackson]], Mississippi, before they settled in 1928 in Grenada in northern Mississippi. Johnston attended Grenada High School, where he played on the [[baseball]] team and was a member of the band. He launched the school's first [[newspaper]] and while in high school reported part-time for the ''Grenada Daily-Star.'' He graduated in 1935 but was unable to meet the expenses of attending college.<ref name=papers/>
==Journalism and political career==
In 1937, after a short time as a stringer correspondent for several newspapers, including ''The Jackson Daily News'', ''The Jackson Clarion-Ledger'', and the ''Memphis Commercial Appeal'', Johnston became one of eight members of the staff then of ''The Clarion-Ledger'', his state's largest paper. He worked there as state regional editor, political reporter, and editor of petroleum and [[natural gas]] issues. He was also the first staff [[photographer]] for a Mississippi daily newspaper. In 1941, he bought half interest in the weekly paper, ''The Scott County Times'' in Forest, a small city in Scott County in central Mississippi.<ref name=bio/> In 1942, at the age of twenty-four, Johnston bought out his partner's half interest to become sole owner of ''The Scott County Times'', which thereafter won many awards of excellence from the Mississippi Press Association. In 1949, at the age of thirty-one, Johnston was elected the youngest president thus far of the Mississippi Press Association. He was the only journalist who did not attend college inducted into gma Delta Chi]], the national journalism [[fraternity]]. Johnston served in the [[United States Army]] during [[World War II]]. While he was in the military from 1945 to 1946, his wife, the former Fay Martin (1919-1999), operated the paper.<ref name=papers/> He remained with ''The Scott County Times'' until he sold it 1983.<ref name=nyt/>
In 1960, Governor [[Ross Barnett]] appointed Johnston as director of public relations of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an agency established in 1956 to oppose encroachment on state [[sovereignty]] by the [[United States government]]. The commission thereafter sought to publicize what it claimed were the advantages to both races of segregation in Mississippi. [[Civil rights]] activists opposed the commission. In 1963, Johnston became the executive director of the commission, a position which he filled until 1968, when he resigned from the organization. His service as executive director was principally under the administration of Barnett's successor, [[Paul B. Johnson, Jr.]]<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://crdl.usg.edu/people/j/johnston_erle/?Welcome|title=Johnston, Erle (biography)|publisher=crdl.usg.edu|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref> Johnston once told an interviewer that the opponents had exaggerated the role of the commission, which he believed had succeeded in "keeping down tension and confrontation."<ref name=nyt>{{cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/28/obituaries/e-e-johnston-77-segregation-figure.html|title=E. E. Johnston, 77, Segregation Figure|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|date=September 28, 1995|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref>
In 1962, in an address at his alma mater, Grenada High School, Johnston addressed the threat facing school segregation in Mississippi:
<blockquote>
The only way we can retain our segregated school system is through the cooperation of the colored race ([[African Americans]]). We already have many allies among the colored school teachers, bus drivers, and others who want to preserve their jobs. We can earn the cooperation of others with consideration and recognition and an honest attempt to provide colored citizens with facilities to which they are entitled.<br>
Mississippi needs more white people who will publicly speak out for recognition and consideration without being branded as liberal leftists, and more colored people willing to cooperate without being branded as [[Uncle Tom]]s.<br>
We can be practical without being radical: we can be realistic without being ridiculous. I have often thought that if the extremists at both ends of this racial situation would quit wildly wagging their tongues, and suspiciously pointing their fingers, we could restore some racial harmony in Mississippi and make better progress.<ref name=ej>Erle Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years, 1953-1973: An Interpretative Documentary with Personal Experiences'' (Forest, Mississippi: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1990), pp, 137-138.</ref></blockquote>
Johnston criticized the activities of the [[White Citizens Council]] but overcame that opposition when he was named the executive director of the sovereignty commission and continued as public relations director as well.<ref>Erle Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years'', pp. 189, 228.</ref> The commission was abolished in 1977 in the [[Cliff Finch]] administration, four years after Governor [[Bill Waller]] [[veto]]ed its funding.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/badco/missSov.htm Mississippi Commission's Files a Treasure Trove of Innuendo|title=Mississippi Commission's Files a Treasure Trove of Innuendo|publisher=[[Associated Press]]|date=March 18, 1998.|accessdate=April 14, 2016}}</ref>
Johnston worked in numerous [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] political campaigns in Mississippi, beginning in 1942 with [[James Eastland]]'s election to the [[United States Senate]]; Eastland was subsequently the long-term chairman of the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]]. He worked to elect Martin Sennet Conner and [[Fielding Wright]] as governor of Mississippi in 1943 and 1947, respectively; Conner previously served from 1936 to 1940 but lost the gubernatorial race in 1943 to Thomas L. Bailey, who thereafter died in office in 1946. Johnston worked in [[Hugh L. White]]'s gubernatorial race in 1951, and the renomination of Senator Eastland in the 1954 primary against [[Carroll Gartin]] of Laurel, a three-term lieutenant governor who subsequently died in office in 1966. Johnston was Ross Barnett's publicity director in the unsuccessful 1955 race for governor against [[James P. Coleman]] and the successful one in 1959 against Carroll Gartin. He also worked for the unpledged elector slate in 1960, which denied the Mississippi [[electoral vote]] to both [[John F. Kennedy]] and [[Richard M. Nixon]]. He helped to produce telecasts of the inaugurations of Governors Barnett, Johnson, [[conservative]] [[John Bell Williams]] in 1968, and William Waller in 1972.<ref name=papers/>
From 1981 to 1985, Johnston was the [[mayor]] of Forest. In this capacity, he recruited to his city [[Hughes Aircraft Company]] and the [[Sara Lee Corporation]]. These two companies alone brought thousands of jobs to the area.<ref name=bio/> He was sandwiched between the eight non-consecutive mayoral terms of [[poultry]] industrialist Fred L. Gaddis, Sr. (1922-2001).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2002/html/SC/SC0513IN.htm|title=Senate Concurrent Resolution 513|date=2002|publisher=billstatus.ls.state.ms.us|accessdate=April 14, 2016</ref>
In 1980, Johnston published ''I Rolled with Ross, a Political Portrait of Former Governor Ross Barnett.'' In 1990, he released the 430-page ''Mississippi's Defiant Years, 1953-1973: An Interpretative Documentary with Personal Experiences'', with the foreword by former Governor [[William Winter]].<ref name=ej/> Another book, ''Politics: Mississippi Style'', was released in 1993.<ref name=papers/> .
==Death and legacy==
Johnston was active in the [[Chamber of Commerce]], [[Rotary International]], and the Forest Country Club. He was a deacon and [[Sunday school]] teacher at the Forest [[Presbyterian]] Church and volunteered to assist the [[Boy Scouts of America]] and [[Little League]] baseball.<ref name=papers/>
Johnston and his wife, Fay, had two daughters, Carol J. Lindley and husband, Robert C. Lindley, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Lynn J. Catalina and husband, Ben Herman Catalina, of [[San Antonio]],f [[Texas]]; a son, Erle "Bubby" Johnston, III, formerly the public information officer at East Central Community College in Decatur, Mississippi, and five grandchildren. Johnston died early in the fall of 1995 at the age of seventy-seven of a heart ailment at St. Dominic's Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.<ref name=nyt/>
In 1992, Johnston was co-chairman of historically black Tougaloo College's Committee on the Preservation of Civil Rights Activities in Madison County, Mississippi. Not long before his death three years later, he organized the fortieth anniversary reunion of the players in the Pasadena Junior Rose Bowl, now the Pasadena Bowl, which was played in 1955 between Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi, and Compton Community College in Compton, [[California]]. This was the first time that a white [[American football|football]] team from Mississippi played against a racially-integrated team.<ref name=papers/>
In ''The Scott County Times'', Johnston had covered issues important to black readers both in print and photographs. He once recalled that the civil rights figure [[Charles Evers]] of Fayette, Mississippi, was speaking on stage in Forest and pointed to Johnston: "There's Johnston out there. Once he was my enemy, and now he is my friend!"<ref>Erle, Johnston, ''Mississippi's Defiant Years'', p. 407</ref>
Johnston's papers were deposited by his family in 1997 at the [[University of Southern Mississippi]] at Hattiesburg. At the time of his death, Johnston had been writing a book with the tentative title, ''The Thunder of Elephants in Mississippi: From Bayonets to Ballots,'' a study of the opposition [[Republican Party]], which after Johnston's death became the majority party in the state.<ref name=papers>{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/archives/m319.htm?m319text.htm~mainFrame|title=Erle E. Johnston, Jr., Papers|publisher=lib.usm.edu|accessdate=April 11, 2016}}</ref>
Erle and Fay Johnston are interred at the Eastern Cemetery in Forest, Mississippi.<ref name=fagrave/> A street in Forest is named for Johnston.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnston, Erle}}
[[Category:Mississippi]]
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Journalists]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Democrats]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:United States Army]]