Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson will be remembered as a trailblazer with a mountain of firsts DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer taffet@dallasvoice.com Eddie Bernice Johnson survived a lot of things in her life.
Turns out, the one thing she wasn’t very good at was retirement. EBJ, as she was popularly known, died on Sunday morning, Dec.
31, at the age of 88, less than a year after she retired from Congress. Johnson began her political career as a voting rights activist.
She said she and Dallas activist and City Council member Juanita Craft would pay the poll tax for people who couldn’t afford it at predominantly Black voting locations on Election Day.