Among the masses at the historic presidential inauguration today was a special attendee: Ella Mae Johnson. She turned 105 last Tuesday.
A resident of Judson Park, an assisted living facility in Cleveland, the African-American centenarian traveled to Washington as a guest of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
“She definitely is a huge fan [of President Barack Obama],“ said Robert Lucarelli, director of communications for Judson Services. He noted that Johnson, who is “sharp as a tack,” has read both of his books.
Johnson took the trip with a nurse and Lucarelli. They stayed at Georgetown Retirement Residence, a for-profit retirement community. An employee from Judson said this morning that, seated for the inauguration, Johnson kept warm in the frigid temperatures with a sleeping bag. While Johnson gave a press conference in the capital on Monday, she was unwilling to grant other interviews, Lucarelli said.
For a black woman who has lived through prejudice, segregation and the civil rights movement, the election of a black president was especially powerful.
She reportedly told her two children they could be what they wanted to be if they worked hard and acted accordingly, “but I don’t think I really believed or expected it,” according to a news report from WKYC-TV. “But now it’s happened.”
Johnson’s life reflects a uniquely African-American experience. Born in Dallas, she was orphaned and taken in by a neighborhood couple. She graduated from from Fisk University in 1925, according to a biography taken from the Case-Fisk Partnership commemorative book.
While she graduated with a B.A. in French, she didn’t think she would be hired to teach French as a black woman, so she tried out social work and worked in a settlement house her senior year. She later decided to go back to school and received a graduate degree from the School of Applied Social Sciences at Western Reserve University in 1928. She is the university’s oldest living black alum, according to Lucarelli.
When she worked as a social worker in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, one of her clients was Louise Stokes, whose son, Carl, would become mayor of Cleveland—the first black elected mayor of a major U.S. city. His brother, Louis Stokes, is a former U.S. representative from Ohio.
Johnson has encountered other important black figures in her lifetime. During college she heard a commencement speech by W. E. B. Du Bois, a celebrated black American writer and activist. In his speech, Du Bois criticized the Fisk administration for being too preoccupied with money. That led to a student strike in which Johnson participated, refusing to attend classes the first quarter of her senior as a year. As a result, her graduation was postponed until the following August.
By any measure, Johnson is an accomplished woman. She has studied, worked and traveled to 30 countries. She is a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother.
She feels a particular affinity for Obama, notes Lucarelli, because she visited Kenya—the birthplace of Obama’s father—in 1973 with her church. When she celebrated her 100th birthday in 2004, she asked her nearly 100 guests to make a donation to AIDS relief in Kenya. They raised $3,000.
Being a good citizen is one of her core beliefs, Lucarelli said. While she was a senior at Fisk, she painted a portrait depicting the Good Samaritan Parable from the Bible, he said. She has a copy framed on her dresser at her home. She looks at it when she wakes up and when she goes to bed.
“That sums up her outlook on life: How can I be of service today?” Lucarelli said.
Today, bearing witness to the inauguration of the first black president, Johnson enjoyed a long-awaited fruit of her service.
