When Henderson, N.C. native Johnny P. Johnson came to teach art here he thought Fredericksburg would just be a pit stop on the way to becoming a famous artist in New York City, and it could well have been.
That was 62 years ago.
He stayed because he fell in love with a young woman named Jean Blackstock and married her in 1961.
And because he fell in love with teaching, first at Walker-Grant when it was the city’s black high school, then at James Monroe when it fully integrated in 1968.
Johnson passed away Saturday at 85. The ripple effect of his leadership in the Fredericksburg area, including at Germanna Community College, will be felt for generations to come.
Johnson was named the Germanna Educational Foundation’s Distinguished Philanthropist of the Year in 2019, one of many honors showered on him as time passed. Johnson’s support helped Germanna keep the Gladys P. Todd Academy going.
He said he was a little embarrassed by all the honors bestowed on him in recent years, adding, “I’ve done what I wanted to do in life, and that is to become an artist and an educator– a teacher.”
As the decades passed he became a beloved teacher, well known artist, civil rights leader and community activist. He also became a philanthropist, donating his prized and sought after works of art to various causes, including Germanna Community College’s Educational Foundation
Johnson, a Spotsylvania County resident, earned his B.S. degree from Virginia State College and his Master of Fine Arts from Howard University, with additional study at the Corcoran School of Art.
In addition to teaching at Walker-Grant and JMHS, he has been an adjunct art professor at Germanna and at the University of Mary Washington.
He retired from teaching in 1991 and became a full-time artist. “I’ve enjoyed creating and I have also enjoyed the response people have given the work,” he said in 2019 as he sat in his studio on Charles Street in downtown Fredericksburg. “People say they like me and like my art but I think that when you’re taught the children of people they like the person their children like,” Johnson said modestly. “A lot of parents who bought my work probably were not pushed into buying it by their children but liked the idea of having a painting of mine.”