Karen Bass attends funeral in Dallas of first nurse to serve in Congress

Mayor Karen Bass attended the Tuesday, Jan. 9 funeral of trailblazing former Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in Dallas, honoring the first nurse to serve in Congress and first woman and African American to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Johnson, D-Texas, was a member of the House from 1993-2023. She was chair of the Congressional Black Caucus from 2001-03 — a position Bass held from 2019-21 — and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology from 2019-23.

“I had the absolute honor of serving with Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson for 12 years in Congress, during which I benefited from her advice, wisdom and guidance,” Bass said in a statement released following Johnson’s death Dec. 31 at the age of 89.

“The advancements she led as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a trailblazer and pioneer in the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology helped propel our country as a leader of industry and development.”

Johnson was born Dec. 3, 1934, in Waco, Texas where she was raised. Before her parents knew they were having a daughter, they agreed to name their baby Eddie after a young cousin who had recently died of pneumonia, according to The New York Times.

She was inspired to become a doctor after her paternal grandfather became ill and joined the household.

“But when I told my high school counselor, she said, ‘Oh, you can’t be a doctor. You’re a young lady. You have to be a nurse,”‘ she recalled in an interview with The History Makers Digital Archive in 2012.

Johnson graduated from Saint Mary’s College of Notre Dame in Indiana in 1955 with her nursing certificate. After briefly working as a psychiatric nurse at La Rue Carter Psychiatric Hospital in Indianapolis, she returned to Texas and started working at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital in 1956.

Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing in from the Harris School for Nursing at Texas Christian University in 1967, the year she was promoted to chief psychiatric nurse, the first African American in the position at that hospital.

Johnson was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1972, the first Black woman elected to office from Dallas. She was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the principal official of Region VI for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, a position she remained in until then end of the Carter administration in 1981.

Johnson then founded a real estate company and returned to politics in 1986 when she was elected to the Texas Senate, remaining in that body until being elected to the first of her 15 terms in the House of Representatives in 1992.

“Eddie Bernice turned a childhood dream to work in medicine into a lifetime of service, fighting to get millions of Americans access to healthcare, education, and opportunity,” President Joe Biden said in a statement released Dec. 31. Biden paid his respects to Johnson Monday at Concord Church in Dallas.

“Early on, as the chief psychiatric nurse at the Veterans Administration in Dallas, she helped our nation to fulfill its most sacred obligation, to care for the troops we sent into harm’s way when they’re home. And in the Texas statehouse and then over 30 years as the first Black American elected to Congress from Dallas, she fought to expand civil rights, to create jobs, to combat the climate crisis, and much more.

“Recently, her leadership was crucial in passing our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and making sure America leads the industries of the future,” the president added.

Dallas’ Union Station was renamed the Eddie Bernice Johnson Union Station by the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors in 2019. She had been a major proponent for DART and public transportation.

A school in the Dallas suburb of Wilmer that opened in 2020 was also named for Johnson.

Bass was scheduled to return to Los Angeles later Tuesday