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Intentional Leadership: The Rise of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson
Intentional Leadership: The Rise of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson
BY JAMES Z. DANIELS
Long before Baylor University of Waco, Texas clinched the first ever victory in the NCAA Championship this spring (2021), the city had a native daughter, an elected official, who had chalked up a string of “firsts” to make her city proud: U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who recently announced that she would not be seeking reelection to the 118th term of the United States Congress.
This graduate of A. J. Moore High School had made the journey from nursing school graduate to member of the Texas Legislature, to the first woman and the first African American chosen to chair one of the most powerful and nationally relevant committees— the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Five years ago, this magazine featured an interview with Representative Johnson who is the only psychiatric nurse ever to serve in Congress. My recent conversation with her coincides with her impending departure since she has decided not to run in the 2022 election.
Eddie Bernice Johnson graduated from the segregated A. J. Moore High School at the age of sixteen and shortly after left for St. Mary’s College in the South Bend area of Indiana to obtain her nursing diploma. This was her first time away from home. It was her first real opportunity to experience a dormitory lifestyle as well as be in close everyday contact in a predominantly white education setting.
But nursing was not her first career choice. Observing and assisting her paternal grandmother through various health episodes including breast cancer and with encouragement from her father, she aspired to be a physician. But it was her high school counselor who took note of her “feminine and gentle ways” who suggested she should choose nursing as a career. But like many during those times of rigid segregation, she knew she would not be admitted to any medical school in Texas. The state of Texas was not ordered to integrate their schools, including nursing schools, until 1956 so she applied and was accepted into St. Mary’s.
Her diploma requirements met, she returned to Texas and began her nursing career at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital. While working, she completed her Bachelor of Science degree from Texas Christian University and in 1967 Johnson passed the National Board Examination in Nursing and became the Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the VA Hospital, a position she held for 16 years. She was the first African American to hold this position. This was an uncommon achievement and recognition that would mark her rise to positions of increased influence linked to many “firsts.”
In 1972, Johnson left the VA to run for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives and won. Her victory was described as a land slide. During her tenure in the Texas Legislature, she was chosen to head the Labor Committee—the first for a woman and an African American to do so. One year after achieving her MPA degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, President Jimmy Carter appointed her as the principal official for region VI of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. So, she left state politics to devote her time to health care, public housing, and racial equity concerns among others, a pattern that marked her years in public and representative service.
Representative Johnson’s first area of interest as a nurse was pediatric nursing. But it was while working with children in completing her practicum for certification as a registered nurse that her interest in mental and behavioral issues was cemented.
Johnson says that as her understanding of mental health diagnosis and treatment deepened, she realized that “treatment takes a much longer time than a two or three weeks stay in a hospital. It is expensive. But there was [a period] of inadequate coverage of these conditions, nationally, by the insurance companies, and there was even denial in some quarters whether there was a need for professional treatment.” She, however, has been true to her commitment to address mental health concerns and has been very vocal in calling for national attention to this issue and sponsoring legislation to do just that.
“Our country must reevaluate the way we talk about and classify mental illness, in order to initiate a pragmatic and comprehensive reform of our mental health care system,” says Johnson.
In 1986, Johnson resigned from the VA and reentered politics and was elected a Texas State Senator. She was the first woman and first African American from the Dallas area to hold this office since Reconstruction. Midway through her second term as a state senator she decided to run for the Texas 30th District congressional seat and won. Her election made her the first registered nurse elected to Congress.
Over the course of her nearly 30 years in Congress, Johnson has risen from junior status on the various committees where she served to now chairwoman of the powerful and influential Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Over the course of those years, she has stirred controversy over some of her decisions—the most prominent of which was her distribution of scholarships to relatives or to individual families with which she was familiar. This violated the anti-nepotism rule baked into the program to how the scholarships were to be awarded. Johnson worked to correct this situation.
U.S. Representative Johnson has served as the Democratic co-sponsor of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act 2016 to provide more proven and effective services to more individuals, offering them the tools and mechanisms to treat mental health issues and improve the lives of those affected by mental illness in the U.S. As Chairwoman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology she has oversight responsibilities of some of the nation’s most significant resources. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson is proud of her public service and believes that she has served the people of the 30th District of Texas and the United States with the best that she has had to offer.
Given her history of breaking through glass ceilings, who knows where she might end up next?
