Gulfport loses an environmental justice champion who was nationally recognized
Champion of environmental justice Rose Fairley Johnson of North Gulfport has passed away.
Johnson, 73, died Thursday in Miramar, Fla., where she had spent recent years helping one of her sons raise three children after their mother passed away.
Johnson was a native of North Gulfport and lived for most of her life on the same street where she was raised. She founded the North Gulfport Community Land Trust and served as a leader in the Mississippi Chapter of the Sierra Club.
She was the first recipient of the national Sierra Club’s Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award in 2014.
She was always polite and persistent in her activism, aimed at preserving an African-American community surrounded by industrial and retail development that increased flooding.
“In any situation, Rose Johnson always directed that, ‘We will take the high road,’ “ said Howard Page, a land trust board member who worked with her. “She insisted that anyone associated with the Land Trust follow that rule.
“She also refused to take a bad deal and call it compromise. She fought until the deal was fair. We never surrendered. We don’t quit. These were also her guiding principles for the organization.”
Tireless champion for African-American community
A 2012 profile in MS. Magazine detailed how Johnson became involved in community environmental issues. She started walking to improve her health and observed the blight in North Gulfport, including unwanted development and vacant lots taken over by drug dealers.
She gave all her time and energy to improving the community, establishing the land trust to buy property and put it in the hands of African Americans who lived there. She also fought for preservation of Turkey Creek, where she and her friends swam as children when segregation prevented them from going to the beach.
In more recent years, she was involved in the campaign to create jobs for African Americans at the state port as an expansion threatened to bring more air pollution and traffic to North Gulfport.
In a Sierra Club profile of Johnson, fellow member Becky Gillette said, “When I first met Rose we were responding to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit application to fill in 500 acres of wetlands in the Turkey Creek area of North Gulfport.
“We had less than a week before the comment period ended. Rose took to the streets, gathered petition signatures, and encouraged leaders in her community to write letters. It was an incredible response for such a short period of time.”
Gillette said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had never received so many comment letters on a Mississippi permit application. The wetlands fill was defeated.
“She loved her community,” said Johnson’s sister, Sandra March. “She loved doing that work. I’ve had so many calls, so many friends and calls from classmates. They are just devastated.”
ALS diagnosis did not diminish her spirit
Johnson helped her neighbors when they needed it and was also close to her immediate and extended family, her sister said.
Her dedication to the community was inspired by her parents, which she often mentioned, Page said.
He said she had a remarkable memory.
“Rose read many technical documents and knew them as well as any engineer or lawyer at the table,” Page said. “She could read a 300-page report from the Corps of Engineers and quote chapter and verse a month later.”
She had seven siblings, three sons and a daughter. She remained attached to her community even after she moved to Miramar, where she was diagnosed about a year ago with ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“She cried a little bit,” March said, “but just came back strong. She said, ‘It is what it is. I’ve just got to deal with it.’ “
“She was not going to let it get her down. We have been in the church all our lives so we know God has a plan for us.”
She was a member of Greater Mountain Olive Baptist Church in North Gulfport.
“Rose was a remarkable person whose spirit always shined through no matter what adversity she faced — whether it was insurmountable political odds, Hurricane Katrina, the tragic loss of her daughter-in-law and her calling to raise her surviving grandchildren, or ultimately, her diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease,” said Louie Miller, the Sierra Club’s state director.
“Rose always did so with grace and dignity.”
