Kathryn Johnson

Kathryn Johnson covered the civil rights movement on assignment from The Associated Press from the early sit-ins through the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Born and bred in a segregated South, Johnson had not sought the civil rights beat, but ultimately covered some of the great stories of that era, including integration of the universities of Alabama and Georgia. She was at the march from Selma and was the only reporter in the King home from the time he was assassinated until he was buried.

Born in Columbus, Georgia in 1926, she attended all-female Agnes Scott College and went to work for AP in 1947 as a clerk-typist. It was not until 1959 that she got her first reporting assignment, which she held until leaving the organization in 1978. Among other assignments, she covered the wives of the American POWs, held in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and their return from captivity to the United States beginning in 1973. She also reported on the court-martial of Lt. William Calley in 1971, who was charged with the murder of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. She worked later for US News and World Report and for CNN.