Civil & Human Rights Legend • Lecturer • Speaker

Rev. Peter Jerome Johnson

A living witness to more than six decades of the American Civil and Human Rights Movement.

Johnson began organizing for civil rights as a teenager in Louisiana, later working with Dr. James Farmer and CORE and helping organize the Louisiana delegation to the 1963 March on Washington.

His movement work has included the Poor People’s Campaign, anti-war organizing, voting rights, employment, fair housing, hunger and malnutrition, immigration justice, community safety, and international human-rights advocacy.

In Dallas, Johnson led landmark campaigns that helped open employment opportunities, establish emergency food assistance, reshape political representation, and pioneer gun buyback programs later replicated in major U.S. cities. He is founder of the Peter Johnson Institute on Nonviolence and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of North Texas at Dallas.