Mississippi Governor During Civil Rights Turmoil Dead at 69

Former Mississippi Gov. Paul B. Johnson Jr., a racial moderate whose Administration was marked by bloodshed, died Monday at a local hospital after an apparent heart attack. He was 69.

Johnson was governor from 1964 to 1968, an era of night-rider attacks, church burnings and the deaths of three civil rights activists during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964.

Violent Incidents

Johnson deplored the violence but was unable to stop it as thousands of civil rights workers flocked to Mississippi from across the nation to join local blacks.

The low point came when Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were killed on a lonely road in Neshoba County.

Johnson, a former lieutenant governor, was sworn in Jan. 21, 1964, slightly more than two decades after his father had died in the governor’s office. The Johnsons were the only father and son to hold the state’s highest office.

A graduate of the University of Mississippi, where he also received his law degree, Johnson practiced law in Jackson and Hattiesburg.

Service in Military

He served with the Marine Corps in the South Pacific in World War II and entered politics with unsuccessful races for governor in 1947 and for the U.S. Senate in a special election the same year. He then served three years as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.

He lost bids for the governorship in 1951 and 1955. He won the post in 1963, defeating Reubel Phillips, Mississippi’s first serious Republican gubernatorial candidate of this century.

Johnson once said he would like to be remembered as one who tried to be fair, uphold the law and do the best job possible.

“A lot of things you don’t get done that you want to do,” the tall, balding man said once in an interview at his Hattiesburg home. “We tried to do everything we could.”