Contributed
Marjorie Evelyn Johnson passed away on September 5, 2025, in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 101. She was born on January 7, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrants from Barbados, William and Kathleen Blackman. An only child, Marjorie was surrounded by “Bajans” (people from Barbados) and folks from other Caribbean islands as a child.
William Blackman was an enterprising man. He took odd jobs but made a steady living during the Great Depression as a cobbler, a profession he learned in Barbados. Kathleen was a housewife, but she sewed and made all of Marjorie’s clothes. As a consequence, the Blackmans never suffered during the Depression. William and Kathleen bought a classic New York Brownstone rowhouse by the 1940s. William also began to dabble in real estate during that period as the couple achieved a middle-class lifestyle.
Marjorie thrived in her youth. The Crown Heights, Brooklyn, neighborhood she grew up in was diverse, including immigrants from Europe and some Caribbean countries and other African Americans. She attended integrated schools graduating from the Brooklyn Girls High School in 1941.
Marjorie’s world greatly expanded when she attended Hunter College, City College of New York, in Manhattan. There she made friends with American born Black people and held jobs as a secretary and in retail. She graduated from Hunter with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1946.
At Hunter Marjorie started going to African American house parties, something girls from immigrant families were insulated from in their upbringing. It was at one of those parties that she met Vernon Johnson, a US Army lieutenant who worked guarding the port of New York City during World War Two. He would ship out to fight in North Africa and Italy. In a classic war love story, they corresponded, reconnected after the war and married upon eloping to Vernon’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1948.
The American Midwest was a cultural shock for a cosmopolitan New Yorker in those post-war years. Cincinnati was a classic “border town.” Jim Crow, though not inscribed in local law, defined the norms of interaction between Black and White and each race’s place in the social hierarchy. A college-educated Black woman, she found it impossible to gain employment in private sector office work like she could in New York City. She recalled being told at one downtown department store that “If I give you a job, who’s going to clean my house?”
Finally, Marjorie would find work in government. She held a clerical position first at Cincinnati General Hospital. Then, over a period of around four decades, she was a federal civil servant working successively at the US Department of Agriculture regional office, the Internal Revenue Service, and finally for the US Army Corps of Engineers where she retired in 1993.
A captain in the US Fifth Army during the war, Vernon became part of the first wave of African American policemen in Cincinnati after the war. He faced racial discrimination there and moved to the US Postal Service in the early 1960s. He retired in the late 1980s.
The Johnsons raised three children, Vernon (Wesley), Kevin and Kathleen. Marjorie was very attentive to the children’s education. Though never in leadership, she regularly attended Parent Teachers Association meetings. Watching Martin Luther King’s movement in the 1960s, she told us that “the world is changing and you kids are going to have more opportunities than Black people have had in the past.” She was right, and with her firm nudging, we all attained advanced degrees: Wesley a Ph.D. in political science, Kathleen, a Ph.D. in geology, and Kevin a master’s in human services.
After her parents passed there was no reason to spend summer vacations in New York. Our parents took us camping. The family traversed the Great Lakes region on numerous trips in which we were typically the only Black family on campgrounds. But we were introduced to the great outdoors in ways that few of our peers growing up in the concrete jungle were.
Marjorie continued to travel once the nest was empty traversing the United States to visit her children in Washington, Florida and Colorado among other places. She even traveled to England when Kathleen was doing post-doctoral studies at the University of Bristol.
A mild-mannered and soft-spoken person who never sought the limelight, Marjorie’s demeanor belied a steely resolve to make the most of her own life and pass along the social capital to enable her children to make the most of ours. She was always there, reliable and quietly loving.
Marjorie is preceded in passing by her husband of 54 years Vernon and her daughter Kathleen. She is survived by her sons Wesley and Kevin, her grandchildren Lakita Simmons, Sarah Johnson, Cedric Johnson , Kevin Johnson and Elizabeth Johnson, her great grandchildren Zariayh Durant, Zaniayh Durant, and her great-great grandchildren, Miracle Johnson and Mahlani Currow.
A graveside funeral will be held for Marjorie on Monday, September 29, 2 p.m. at Spring Grove Cemetery, 4389 Spring Grove Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The family ask those who wish to attend to gather at the office at the main gate of Spring Grove cemetery by 1:45 to join the procession to the graveside.
In lieu of flowers donations in Mrs. Johnson’s name can be made to Friends of the James Weldon Johnson Library, P.O. Box 1061, Saint Petersburg, FL 33731-1061.