WINSTON-SALEM, NC — Elizabeth Barker Johnson’s name is etched in history. The 99-year-old Hickory, North Carolina, woman enlisted in the Army in 1943, becoming part of the 6888th regiment, the only all-female, all-black Women’s Army Corps battalion to serve overseas during World War II. When she was discharged, she became the first woman to enroll in what is now Winston-Salem State University under the GI Bill. Johnson earned her teaching degree in August 1949, but never had the chance to walk across the commencement stage to accept her diploma.
That achievement was historic, but it would be 70 years before she would be publicly cheered for it. And she was cheered, in celebratory fashion Friday at commencement exercises for WSSU’s 1,100-member Class of 2019. The much younger graduates roared with respect, leaping to their feet and leading a standing ovation as Johnson, aided only by a walker, rose from her place of honor with other special guests on the commencement stage and accepted her diploma.
Johnson felt like she was dreaming when she unwrapped a special gift at her surprise 99th birthday party on May 2. It contained a red cap and gown, and an invitation to finally get her due at at WSSU’s commencement ceremony.
She wondered, was this a joke?
“From serving her country during World War II to impacting the lives of hundreds of students as a classroom teacher in North Carolina and Virginia, PFC Elizabeth Barker Johnson is the embodiment of Winston-Salem State’s motto, ‘Enter to Learn. Depart to Serve,’ ” WSSU Chancellor Elwood L. Robinson said in the news release. “We are inspired by her and excited to give her the opportunity, 70 years later, to finally walk across stage for commencement.”
Johnson was too busy working at her first teaching job in Virginia to attend the 1949 ceremony. She couldn’t find a substitute teacher, and the kids in her classroom needed her.
Johnson’s daughter, Cynthia Scott, told news station WXII she feels honored that the university “thought of my mother enough to want to be able to do this for her, knowing that 70 years ago she did not get to walk across the stage to receive her degree because she did have to work.”
“I feel very honored and just blessed that she’s able to do this now, to finally be able to walk across the stage and actually get her degree in hand,” Scott said.
A single mother who worked three jobs to support her family, Johnson is by all accounts a firecracker of a woman. Her granddaughter, Tiffany Scott, told NBC’s “Today” show that Johnson’s military service record inspired her to enlist in the Navy.
“I am so proud,” Tiffany Scott told NBC. “She just keeps going. She won’t stop. She’s amazing.”
Cynthia Scott told WXII she doesn’t know many people her mother’s age who could walk across the stage under their own steam.
“Mama is the kind of woman that, if it was out there, she was going to go for it,” the proud daughter told the “Today” show. “She was going to do it.”
From her mother, Cynthia Scott learned bedrock values that have guided her through life.
“Just to treat everybody the same,” Scott told WXII. “She is just such a, I think, a wonderful individual. I am not saying that because she is my mother. I just think she is a wonderful individual.”
Johnson had grown accustomed to waiting for accolades.
She is one of only five surviving members of the Women’s Army Corps’ 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, whose duties during the war included delivering a backlog of millions of letters and packages from loved ones to soldiers — a huge, morale-boosting effort that has been largely overlooked in history.
The women of the 6888th were given six months to deliver the mail that had piled up to the ceilings in dimly lit, rat-infested warehouses in Birmingham, England. The chandeliers hanging from the ceiling shook and rattled as bombs flew overhead, but they persevered, managing the huge task in three months.
Decades passed before their contribution was recognized.
In November, the names of the 855 women in the 6888th battalion were etched on a monument unveiled in their honor at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The monument is positioned near a series of other historical tributes to African-Americans at Fort Leavenworth, including those honoring the first African-American West Point graduate and the first African-American four-star general.
When the war ended, Johnson enrolled at what was then Winston-Salem Teachers College on the GI Bill. Years earlier, the Elkin, North Carolina, native had moved to Winston-Salem to attend Atkins High School. It was years before Brown v. the Board of Education, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools, and there was no high school for black students in her hometown.
Teaching was a tough job, and Johnson thought about giving up and finding work in the private sector.
“To begin with, I felt like dropping out but then there were so many children who were not getting the help they needed, so I said, ‘I feel like I’m capable of doing it,’ so that’s why i stayed with it,” Johnson told WXII. “I felt like teaching school, I could reach more people who would listen to me than if I tried to choose a job among adults.
“I just decided I wanted to do something more than I saw most of the people around me do, and I wanted to do something to help other people so I felt like teaching school was my best choice,” she said.
She taught briefly in Virginia and then moved back to her hometown, where she spent the bulk of her 30-year teaching career at Elkin City Schools.
During Friday’s commencement, WSSU’s Army ROTC Lt. Tavoria Poole took the oath as a U.S. Army commissioned officer. Johnson was the first veteran to salute her.
“It’s a good feeling to know that I have someone whose done so much within the Army and within her time here to be able to give me my first salute so it really means a lot that she’s doing that for me so I appreciate you,” Poole told WXII.
The opportunity to walk across the stage and receive her college diploma was a highlight in Johnson’s life, one well lived and dedicated to public service.
“It’s special, it’s extra special,” Johnson told WXII after the ceremony. “One time I said I’m not even human. This is not me receiving this. At this age? But I mean I feel good about it. Really, really good.”