Dorothy Hodge Johnson (1916-2004)

Like generations of African American women before her, Mrs. Dorothy Hodge Johnson devoted her life to creating and participating in networks, organizations and institutions that served the social and economic needs of her local community. As recipient of the 1990 Woman of the Year by the Central Exchange, an organization of business and professional women in Kansas City, Kansas, Mrs. Johnson described the inspiration for her extensive record of community activism this way: “I think I’m so involved because of the expectations from my backgroundWhen I was a child my father would hurry from his job as high school principal to attend civic and church meetings. My mother was active in the PTA and church. To me you cannot live and see all the problems in the world and not want to do something.”

A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Mrs. Johnson attended Stowe Elementary School and Northeast Junior High School. In 1933, she graduated from Sumner High School where her father, John A. Hodge, served as principal from 1916 to 1951. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, she earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Kansas in 1937. She married Dowdal Davis Nov. 25, 1937.

Her career in community service began in 1937 when she joined the staffs of the Kansas City Call as a reporter and the National Urban League as a community liaison. From 1944 to 1951, she served as Public Relations Secretary for the Urban League of Kansas City. For the next following two years, she served in the federal government as Information Specialist for the Regional Office of the Office of Price Stabilization. In addition to these activities, she served on the boards of leading civic organizations in Kansas City, Missouri, including the YWCA, the City Committee and Council on Human Relations, and the City Children’s Committee.

In 1953, she was appointed as Director of the Florence Crittenton Home for Negro Girls and continued in that capacity until 1958, when the area’s Crittenton Homes were integrated. Mr. Davis passed away in 1957, and Dorothy married Herman A. Johnson in 1960.

After she received an MSW from KU in 1960, Johnson became a social welfare caseworker for Family and Children’s Services in Kansas City, Kansas, and was director of the Jackson County, Missouri, Department of Health and Welfare from 1973 to 1976.

She went on to serve as research associate for the Greater Kansas City Mental Health Foundation and as consultant for local social welfare projects and studies. From 1978 through 1981, she served as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s School of Medicine.

Among her many awards for contributions to the social welfare needs of her community are the Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Kansas in 1974 and Social Welfare Worker of the Year from the Kansas City Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers in 1977.

Mrs. Johnson passed away in 2004, and her impressive legacy to her community is documented through the personal papers that she left to the Kansas Collection at KU.

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