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North Carolina and the country lost a legend last month with the passing of the Rev. Dr. Nelson N. Johnson at age 81. Johnson’s work as a civil and labor rights activist had far-reaching implications beyond his home base in Greensboro. He is most known for being wounded in the 1979 anti-Klan protest march, known as the Greensboro Massacre, in which white supremacists killed five marchers and wounded a dozen more. But Johnson also collaborated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and was often on the frontlines of protest marches nationwide. Johnson was laid to rest on Feb. 21, where his colleague and friend — former NAACP president, the Rev. Dr. William Barber — gave the eulogy.

Rev. William Barber: "Didn't Nelson Johnson labor? Didn't he work? Nelson Johnson was scheduled to pick up Dr. King the day after he was murdered. King was murdered, so he didn't get to pick him up. It was not for him to pick up King in a car — but to pick up the work and the working toward the beloved communion."

Gwendolyn Glenn: Rev. Johnson made an impassioned speech a year ago to lift the spirits of North Carolinians at the Poor People's Campaign’s Moral March on Raleigh.

Johnson family

Rev. Dr. Nelson N. Johnson: "Walk together children and don't you get weary. I want you to know today that there's hope on the other side of what seems hopeless, and there's victory on the other side of all of this oppression and exploitation."

Glenn: Rev. Johnson was supposed to make more than 20 appearances statewide for Vice President Kamala Harris presidential campaign, but failing health kept him off the trail.

Johnson was born into a family of five boys and four girls in the close-knit rural community of Airlie in Halifax County. Most of the people there were land owners and farmers and also Johnson's relatives. Airlie is where Johnson’s brother, Winston-Salem developer Simon Johnson, says his activism began.

Simon Johnson: When he was a senior in high school, a fella came to our community to organize and help get Black people registered to vote. And Nelson was driving people to the polls along with my mother and I and, you know, they called us the ‘N’ word. And they spit on us and, even on the way home, they tried to run us off the road. That was my first recollection of Nelson working directly for civil rights and things like that. We were taught to make a difference, and to look out for those who were less fortunate. Nelson just carried that farther than the rest of us. That was his nature was to help the downtrodden.

Johnson Family

Glenn: Rev. Nelson left early for the Air Force, then enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University as a political science major. He became student government vice president and pushed towards students rights and better work conditions for cafeteria workers. While still a student, Johnson founded the Greensboro Association of Poor People in 1968. He worked on voter registration campaigns, tenants’ rights, labor relations causes, and race and equity issues.

So, it was no surprise that in the late 1970s, when Ku Klux Klan and Nazi activities increased in North Carolina, Johnson — a leader of the Communist Workers Party at the time — led protests, first with a march in China Grove just outside Charlotte and then the infamous deadly March on Nov. 3, 1979, in Greensboro. That violent day ended with five marchers killed by white supremacists as police stood by. Twelve marchers were wounded, including Johnson, who was seen on news video being dragged away by police and arrested. His wife Joyce Johnson — a former professor at A&T and an activist in her own right — says they knew their lives were in danger at times, but the absence of police protection during the march was jolting.

Joyce Johnson: To know that you had a legal parade permit and that they were supposed to be there with you, and then the police did not show — and essentially ushered Klan and Nazis in — we knew that this meant there was an attack on those of us who are trying to improve our society. We thought about Dr. (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) getting killed. But what we mainly did, thank God, was pulled ourselves and our friends, and our families together and persisted with fighting for justice.

Johnson Family

Glenn: Now (Nelson) was stabbed right?

Joyce Johnson: Yes, stabbed and arrested.

Glenn: Your husband didn't give up on this over the years to try to see justice done. What do you think motivated him?

Joyce Johnson: The roots that have been put in him, spiritual roots for truth, for justice, for kindness, for other people, that I know is rooted in their family. It’s what attracted me to him as a potential spouse. He and I will often talked about the fact we were both called to this work. And it's not always easy, but it's not something you can't ignore if you are true to your call — and we both were.

Glenn: Rev. Johnson went on to get a Master of Divinity degree and founded Faith Community Church in 1991, but continued his activism worldwide. He worked on human rights in Mozambique and Angola, but he also maintained a local profile as well. Of the poor, he led a yearslong, successful boycott of Kmart in Greensboro over employee wages. And in 1991, he co-founded the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, a social justice organization. Simon Johnson talks about some of the center’s successes.

Simon Johnson: The workers at Cone Mill, he helped to get better salaries for them, better working conditions for the Smithfield workers who worked down there in the meatpacking industry, he went on to get better conditions for them, and then the situation on Freedom Monday, working with Rev. Barber.

Johnson Family

Glenn: Rev. Johnson also worked to bring both sides of the Greensboro Massacre together. He formed the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2004, patterned after the Reconciliation Commission in South Africa that followed the end of apartheid. His brother, Simon, explains why reconciling with the Greensboro Massacre attackers was important.

Simon Johnson: Nelson always believed in the best in people — and we argued a lot about that — because he believed that he could find the good in those people, and he could turn them around to be good people, and do good things for society.

Glenn: Do you think he accomplished what he wanted to with that? Because I understand the report came out and blamed the police in terms of not providing the marchers with the security that they should have had that day.

Simon Johnson: He felt like that someone should be held accountable and that there needed to be some redress on that — in the sense that if people could do this type of heinous thing and get away scot-free, that it would exacerbate the situation for poor people and for people of color. And, ultimately, he received an apology from the city and the state as well for allowing that travesty to occur in the first place — and then for their level of participation in it, because they finally acknowledged that they had participated in it at some level.

Glenn: He was part of the Communist Workers Party. What do you think was a defining moment when he decided to work with the church and become a minister?

Simon Johnson: His grandfather founded the church that we attended on my mother's side, and his grandfather on my father's side founded the church that my father attended. Our older brother, James Johnson, was a minister and he did civil rights work, as well, in Halifax County. And so, Nelson had been surrounded by this type of thing all of his life, and he felt he was doing God's work even before he became a minister. And I think people were not ready for the word Communist in any form or fashion in America. It had become a hindrance to the work.

Glenn: Simon Johnson says many people may not know his brother by name but are aware of the work he's done and are beneficiaries of it — including him, on a more personal level, when he almost drowned at an early age.

Simon Johnson: I tell that story because when I would have surfaced, I could see all of my cousins and friends, but they were just having a great time — and I was drowning. No one really paid any attention, but he did — and he always did. It was just his nature.

Glenn: Saving drowning people?

Simon Johnson: Saving a drowning country, a drowning world.