BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Civil rights activists gathered inside a Birmingham church Saturday to say goodbye to one of their own, Colonel Stone Johnson.
Johnson died Jan. 20 after a brief illness. He was 93 years old.
During the civil rights movement, Johnson had served as a bodyguard to Martin Luther King Jr. during a local visit. He had also organized a group of watchmen to guard Bethel Baptist Church after it was bombed on Christmas Day in 1956.
The widow of the church’s pastor, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, told the crowd at Mount Calvary Baptist Church on Saturday that Johnson made sure her husband and their family were protected.
“Colonel was family to my family,” Sephria Shuttlesworth said.
Hezekiah Jackson, president of the Birmingham chapter of the NAACP, said Johnson exemplified loyalty, respect and courtesy.
“When I think about Colonel Stone Johnson, I think of a man with a heart as big as the hats he wore,” Jackson said. “When I think about Colonel Stone Johnson, I think of a man who permitted you to be who you are, even though, with so much dignity, he encouraged you to do better.”
Johnson was also credited with once helping carry a bomb from a Collegeville church before it exploded. He told the newspaper last year that in June 1958 a woman returning home late at night saw a smoking object next to the church and alerted the men. He said it was a five-gallon white bucked with 16 sticks of dynamite inside.
Johnson’s wife of nearly 70 years, Beatrice, died last May at age 89. They had no children.
Birmingham last year dedicated a street in his honor.
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