Marjorie Evelyn Johnson passed away at age 101.
ST. PETERSBURG — Marjorie Evelyn Johnson passed away on Sept. 5, 2025, at the age of 101. An only child, Mrs. Johnson took her first breath on Jan. 7, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents, William and Kathleen Blackman, immigrated from Barbados and surrounded their daughter with plenty of transplanted folks from the Caribbean islands.
Her father was an enterprising man who took odd jobs but made a steady living during the Great Depression as a cobbler, a profession he learned in Barbados. Her mother was a housewife who made all of Marjorie’s clothes. Therefore, the Blackmans never suffered during the Great Depression. They bought a classic New York Brownstone rowhouse in the 1940s, and as Blackman dabbled in real estate, the couple achieved a middle-class lifestyle.
Ms. Johnson thrived in her youth. The Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, where she grew up, was diverse, including immigrants from Europe, Caribbean countries, and African Americans. She attended integrated schools, graduating from the Brooklyn Girls High School in 1941.
Her world greatly expanded when she attended Hunter College, City College of New York in Manhattan. There, she made friends and held jobs as a secretary and in retail. She graduated from Hunter with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1946.
At Hunter College, Marjorie started going to African American house parties, something girls from immigrant families were insulated from in their upbringing. It was at one of those parties that she met Vernon Johnson, a U.S. Army lieutenant who worked guarding the port of New York City during World War II. He would ship out to fight in North Africa and Italy. In a classic war love story, they corresponded, reconnected after the war, and eloped to Vernon’s hometown of Cincinnati in 1948.
The American Midwest was a cultural shock for a cosmopolitan New Yorker in those post-war years. Cincinnati was a classic “border town.” Jim Crow, though not inscribed in local law, defined the norms of interaction between Blacks and whites and each race’s place in the social hierarchy. As a college-educated Black woman, she found it impossible to gain employment in the private sector like she could in New York City. She recalled being told at one downtown department store, “If I give you a job, who’s going to clean my house?”
Finally, Mrs. Johnson would find work in government. She held a clerical position first at Cincinnati General Hospital. Then, for some four decades, she was a federal civil servant, working successively at the U.S. Department of Agriculture regional office, the Internal Revenue Service, and finally for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where she retired in 1993.
A captain in the U.S. Fifth Army during the war, Vernon became part of the first wave of African-American policemen in Cincinnati after the war. He faced racial discrimination there and moved to the U.S. Postal Service in the early 1960s. He retired in the late 1980s.
The Johnsons raised three children, Vernon (Wesley), Kevin, and Kathleen. Marjorie was very attentive to the children’s education. Though never in leadership, she regularly attended Parent-Teacher Association meetings. While watching the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, she told her children, “The world is changing, and you kids are going to have more opportunities than Black people have had in the past.” She was right, and with her firm nudging, they all attained advanced degrees: Wesley holds a doctorate in political science, Kathleen has a doctorate in geology, and Kevin holds a master’s degree in human services.
After her parents passed, there was no reason to spend summer vacations in New York, so the Johnsons took their children camping. The family traversed the Great Lakes region on numerous trips, where they were typically the only Black family in the campgrounds. The Johnsons introduced their children to the great outdoors in ways that few of their peers growing up in the concrete jungle were.
Mrs. Johnson continued to travel once the nest was empty, traversing the United States to visit her children in Washington, Florida, and Colorado, among other places. She even traveled to England when her daughter was doing post-doctoral studies at the University of Bristol.
A mild-mannered and soft-spoken person who never sought the limelight, Mrs. Johnson’s demeanor belied a steely resolve to make the most of her life and pass along the social capital to enable her children to make the most of theirs. She was always there, reliable and quietly loving.
Mrs. Johnson is preceded in death by her husband of 54 years, Vernon, and her daughter Kathleen. She is survived by her sons, Wesley and Kevin; her grandchildren, Lakita Simmons, Sarah Johnson, Cedric Johnson, Kevin Johnson, and Elizabeth Johnson; her great-grandchildren, Zariayh Durant and Zaniayh Durant; and her great-great-grandchildren, Miracle Johnson and Mahlani Currow.
A graveside funeral was held Monday, Sept. 29, at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. In lieu of flowers, donations in Mrs. Johnson’s name can be made to Friends of the James Weldon Johnson Library, P.O. Box 1061, St. Petersburg, FL 33731-1061.