Indeed, throughout his career he supported racial and economic equality, starting with his participation in the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., while he was in college.
Later, when he was chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he and his wife at the time, Maxine Isaacs, created and underwrote the Millennium Stage, which provides free concerts and other performances 365 days a year, making the elite Kennedy Center more accessible.
And as chairman of the Brookings Institution, a liberal research group, he recruited scholars, writers and thinkers to study demographic trends in urban areas and the intersection of race and public policy. With funding from the Fannie Mae Foundation, he started the institution’s Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, now the Metropolitan Policy Program.
James Arthur Johnson was born on Dec. 24, 1943, in Benson, Minn., a small town along the Chippewa River where his Norwegian grandparents had settled. Within two blocks, there were 14 houses filled with his aunts, uncles and cousins.
His mother, Adeline (Rasmussen) Johnson, taught Latin and German at the local high school. His father, Alfred Ingvald Johnson, owned a grocery store and was a real estate broker. A member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, he was elected to the state legislature and became speaker of the House in the late 1950s.
Jim attended the University of Minnesota, where he was elected student body president in his sophomore year. He graduated in 1966 with a degree in political science.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/politics/james-a-johnson-dead.html
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