GROENSBORO, NC — A longtime Greensboro council member who was also the first black mayor of North Carolina’s third-largest city has died.
Yvonne Johnson, mayor pro tempore of the current City Council, died Wednesday at the age of 82, Mayor Nancy Vaughan announced in a statement.
“Our city has lost one of its champions,” Vaughan said. No cause of death was given, but Vaughan had said Tuesday that Johnson was absent from the council meeting that evening due to illness, the news reported & Report from Greensboro reported.
Johnson served on the council for nearly thirty years – first from 1993 to 2009, the last two years as mayor after an election victory in 2007. She lost her re-election bid for mayor in 2009, but returned to the council in 2011 and served until her death.
Johnson “was a dedicated public servant and friend who led Greensboro with courage, passion and a sense of justice,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday on X, adding that he was “grateful for her good work and the positive changes she helped bring about.” ‘
Johnson was long involved in civil rights. She recalled in a 2023 interview with a North Carolina League of Municipalities publication about participating in the 1963 March on Washington and in the sit-in movement while a student at Bennett College in Greensboro.
“I grew up here and experienced segregation,” Johnson told Southern City Magazine. “I always felt like it was wrong, but I never really had that spark, that motivation to go out and do something that could make a difference. The spirit in Bennett urged me on. Once I was on the wagon, there I was.
Johnson was the leader of One Step Further, a nonprofit that provides food assistance, mediation and other services, from its founding in 1982 until earlier this year, according to an earlier news release from the nonprofit.
“Our family is extremely proud of her service and she was and continues to be a role model for her four children and seven grandchildren,” said Lisa Johnson-Tonkins, Johnson’s daughter and current Guilford County Superior Court clerk, in Vaughan’s statement. statement. “Her mantra was that service is the rent you pay for your time on earth. My mother’s rent has been paid.”
Funeral arrangements were pending.