The New York Times on the life of nurse Eddie Bernice Johnson
In January 2024, the New York Times had a helpful obituary for Johnson, who had died at 89. Johnson was the first nurse elected to Congress, where she served for 30 years. But before entering politics, she overcame racism to become a nurse and spent 16 years as the chief psychiatric nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dallas.
January 3, 2024 – Today the New York Times had a good obituary for Eddie Bernice Johnson, a pioneer for Black women in politics—and in nursing. She had died at 89. Sam Roberts’s piece focused on Johnson’s political career, which included 30 years representing Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives. But it noted that she “broke barriers in nursing” as well. She was apparently the first registered nurse elected to Congress. She was also the first Black nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dallas, where she served 16 years as the chief psychiatric nurse, despite encountering overt racism. Johnson’s story reflects nursing’s difficult history with medicine; she reportedly had wanted to be a physician since childhood, but a high school counselor told her she could not, because of her gender. Not that becoming a nurse was easy. Johnson could not find a nursing school in Texas that would accept Black students and she enrolled initially at St. Mary’s, in Indiana. She did eventually get a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Texas Christian University in 1967, 11 years after getting a certificate from St. Mary’s and starting at the VA hospital. After she left the hospital in 1972, she entered politics and had long stints in the Texas state House and Senate, as well as serving as Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) starting in 1977. Nursing was not the main focus of Johnson’s career, or even her first choice of profession. But her story shows that nurses can overcome adversity, that there are leadership roles in the profession, and that a nurse can succeed in public affairs at a high level. We thank Sam Roberts and the Times.
Qualified
As the obituary made clear, Johnson’s political career was remarkable. She was apparently the first Black woman to win any elected office from Dallas, when she joined the Texas House of Representatives in 1972, and the first Black state senator from the city since the Reconstruction era, when she was elected in 1986. Serving in Congress from 1992 through 2023, the piece noted, she was the first Black woman to lead the House Science Committee. And when she retired, she was the oldest Member of the House. She was seen as a pragmatic and effective legislator who was, as Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said, skilled at bringing “federal infrastructure money home to our city.” The piece reported that in Congress Johnson also focused on legislation related to water resources and education, especially prioritizing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.
The nursing elements of the piece were almost entirely about Johnson’s life before she entered politics. Born in Waco in 1934, she reportedly became interested in becoming a physician because of the illness of her paternal grandfather. As she explained in a 2012 interview, that did not happen: “But when I told my high school counselor, she said, ‘Oh, you can’t be a doctor. You’re a young lady. You have to be a nurse.’” Doing that was a challenge as well. The piece says that Johnson’s father could not find a nursing school in Texas that would admit Black students. So she attended St. Mary’s, a Catholic women’s college in South Bend, Indiana, where she would receive a nursing certificate. The article said that she got a “Bachelor of Science degree” from Texas Christian University in 1967—it should have made clear this degree was in nursing—and a master’s in public administration from Southern Methodist University in 1976. The piece had some detail about her nursing, noting that after she left St. Mary’s she “was enlisted” as the first Black nurse at the Dallas VA Hospital. But the hospital had hired her sight unseen. When they did see that she was Black, they rescinded their offer of a dormitory room and “also had a white hospital employee precede her on rounds as a way to assure patients that she was qualified.” Johnson recalled: “That was really the most blatant, overt racism that I ever experienced in my life.” However, as the obituary noted, she nonetheless “was promoted to become the hospital’s chief psychiatric nurse and served in that role for 16 years.”
It would have been helpful to hear more about Johnson’s years as a nursing manager, as well as about what role nursing played in her later career in government, including as Regional Director at HEW. For example, the piece did not include anything about Johnson’s work for nurses in Congress, apart from the STEM work. However, she did introduce the National Nurse Act of 2011 and later versions of that bill through 2019. The bill would have established the post of National Nurse for Public Health, for a nursing leader who would work with the U.S. Surgeon General. Even so, the obituary included more than enough detail about Johnson’s nursing and her later career to let people know that nurses can be effective leaders at high levels.
See the obituary: “Eddie Bernice Johnson, Trailblazer in Congress and Beyond, Dies at 89” by Sam Roberts, posted on January 3, 2024 on the New York Times website.
