Retired U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson has died, her family said Sunday on social media. She was 89. A towering Dallas political figure — once a nurse, state legislator and congresswoman — Johnson was the dean of the Texas Congressional delegation before retiring from office in 2022. She proved effective at her work due to her long tenure serving in the U.S. House — nearly 30 years at the time of her passing — and a pragmatist streak that made her open to working with Republicans. “I am heartbroken to share the news that my mother, Eddie Bernice Johnson, has passed away,” Johnson’s son, Kirk Johnson, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday. “She was a remarkable and loving mother, motherin-law, grandmother and great grandmother, as well as a trailblazer and public servant. While we mourn the loss of an extraordinary woman, we celebrate her life and legacy.”
Born in Waco on Dec. 3, 1934, Johnson became one of the most powerful Texas Democrats in recent memory to serve on Capitol Hill. She was the lone Texas-based committee chair in either chamber when she became the chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. She broke many glass ceilings: she was the first Black woman elected to any seat in Dallas, she was the first nurse and Black Dallasite to serve in Congress, and she was only the third Texas woman — behind Lera Thomas and Barbara Jordan, both from Houston — to represent the state in the U.S. House.
“I am stunned and saddened to learn of the passing of my dear friend, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson wrote on X Sunday morning. “Congresswoman Johnson was a groundbreaking leader for this country and for our state and city, and there really are no words to express my profound sense of grief and loss at the passing of this legendary American.” Johnson will lie in state at the Hall of State in Dallas’ Fair Park on Monday, Jan 8 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and a wake service will follow at Concord Church from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Johnson’s funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Concord Church. A graveside service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Jan. 10 at Texas State Cemetery in Austin before Johnson is laid to rest.
Johnson’s ascent Johnson said her first introduction to a career in fighting racial injustice came when she was in elementary school. That’s when she met Doris “Dorie” Miller, a Black Navy man who was relegated to mess duties due to segregation policies while stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941. During the Dec. 7 attack, he joined the combat to shoot down Japanese planes with no munitions training, becoming a heralded war hero. Get our biggest scoops and breaking stories, delivered to your inbox “I met Mr. Miller when I was in the first grade. I shook his hand and I just knew that I wanted to do something to thank him for his service in the military,” she told KXAS in 2020.
“I collected money in my neighborhood to buy him something nice for his return, but he never made it back.” Miller died when a torpedo struck his ship in the Pacific theater in 1943. Decades later, Johnson helped get a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier named after Miller, which was the first to be named a er a Black man. A er graduating from A.J. Moore High School in 1952, Johnson sought to work in the medical field. Segregated Texas had no nursing program she could attend, so she went to St. Mary’s College at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, where she received a nursing certificate in 1955.
She received a bachelor’s of science from Texas Christian University in 1967, followed by a master’s of public administration from Southern Methodist University in 1976.
