REP. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (born December 3, 1935) is an American politician from the state of Texas, currently representing Texas’s 30th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.Elected in 1992, Johnson was the first registered nurse elected to Congress. At the swearing in of the 116th United States Congress, she became Dean of the Texas congressional delegation. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
She formerly served in the Texas state house, where she was elected in 1972 in a landslide, the first black woman to win electoral office from Dallas, Texas. She also served for three terms in the Texas senate before being elected to Congress.
Johnson worked for 16 years as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital, being the first African American woman to hold the position.
Born and raised in Waco, Texas, Johnson grew up wanting to work in medicine. She left Texas, which had segregated schools, and attended Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, where she received a diploma in nursing in 1956. She transferred to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, from which she received a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She later attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and earned a Master of Public Administration in 1976.[1]
Johnson was the first African American to serve as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital. She entered politics after 16 years in that position.
