Paul Burney Johnson, Jr. (January 23, 1916 – October 14, 1985) was a United States Democratic Mississippi politician and son of former Mississippi Governor Paul B. Johnson, Sr..
A graduate of the University of Mississippi and Ole Miss Law, Johnson was a practicing attorney in Jackson and Hattiesburg, marrying his college sweetheart Dorothy Power in 1941. During his first year at Ole Miss, he was a member of the freshman Ole Miss football team and was initiated into Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity. He had the distinction of being the only sophomore ever elected president of the Ole Miss student body. After college, Johnson served in the South Pacific with the United States Marine Corps during World War II.
Upon his release from the service, he looked to follow in his father's political footsteps, serving as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi from 1948 to 1951. As described by noted writer Theodore White, Johnson had, for a Southerner, a liberal early record. He supported Harry Truman for President in 1948 (Truman received just over ten percent of the vote in Mississippi), Adlai Stevenson in 1952, and had an affectionate reverence for Franklin D. Roosevelt going back to the days of his then-Congressman father's friendship with the then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy (and he and his siblings had known the Roosevelt children). Twice during his tenure, and once more in 1955, Johnson ran for governor, losing all three times. In 1947, prior to his first try for the governor's mansion, he ran for an open U.S. Senate seat, but lost.
In 1959, he ran for lieutenant governor and won, serving under segregationist icon Governor Ross Barnett. He played a prominent role in trying to prevent James Meredith from enrolling at Ole Miss in 1962, physically blocking federal marshals escorting Meredith.
Recognizing that his career in state politics was hopeless, and bolstered by his segregationist appeal, Johnson ran for governor once again in 1963 "on a platform of segregation and race hatred so inflexibly extreme as to satisfy the most violent white segregationists". He defeated former governor James P. Coleman by tying his opponent to President John F. Kennedy's proposed civil rights legislation. During the campaign, he asked voters to "Stand tall with Paul" against those wanting to change Mississippi's "way of life", in reference to his confrontation with the federal marshals. Also a part of his stump speech was the line, "You know what the N.A.A.C.P. stands for: Niggers, alligators, apes, coons, and possums." In the general election, he faced Rubel Phillips, the first strong Republican candidate for Mississippi governor that any Democrat had encountered since Reconstruction in 1876. Phillips, a recent Democratic state Public Service Commissioner, ran under the slogan "K.O. the Kennedys", and tried to tie Barnett and Johnson to them as well as convince voters that he and GOP Lieutenant Governor candidate Stanford Morse represented the best hope for preserving Mississippi's traditional "way of life" while at the same time making overall progress. However, their strong efforts fell short, though Phillips did receive 38% of the vote, indicating a strong base of support for serious GOP state candidates.
White's initial description of Johnson was a realization "with a start, that this was no Northern cartoon of a Mississippi Governor; this was a man of civilization and dignity whose deep, serious voice spoke not cornpone but a cultured English—and spoke at once in fear, perplexity, and wistfulness. In his plight one could see half the tragedy of his state." In his inaugural address in 1964, he chose, "Pursuit of Excellence" as his term's theme and also stated, "Hate, or prejudice, or ignorance, will not lead Mississippi while I sit in the governor's chair." To many, that comment had a hollow ring five months later, when during the investigation of the three missing civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in June 1964, Johnson offered little or no help. He praised Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey and deputy sheriff Cecil Price. He also dismissed fears that the trio had been murdered by stating, "Maybe they went to Cuba", a reference to the Communist ties that were often used to try and discredit that movement. James W. Silver, a liberal Ole Miss history professor who was to publish a bestseller book condemning Mississippi's segregated society and who would soon leave the state under pressure would say however:
Probably satisfying no one, Johnson kept his own counsel, and his mouth closed to demagogic outbursts, while treading the uneasy path between the demands of the Citizens Council (which had helped elect him) and the imperatives of the situation. As one astute observer saw it, the governor was "tempering political expedience with common sense, yet still attempting to ease down the more radical, emotional, ignorant groups without losing those votes." And so "ambivalent Paul" could denounce in picturesque and biting language the impending civil rights law and could declare that "It is an odd thing that so much hell is being raised over three people missing in Mississippi when 10,000 are missing in New York", while welcoming Allan Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover to Mississippi and firing a couple of Ku Kluxers from the Highway Patrol. While castigating the civil rights workers and refusing even to meet with responsible Negro leaders, he did come down hard for law enforcement and played a major role in ending the violence in Pike County. It is more than a reasonable guess that the two Johnsons, President and Governor, kept each other informed, though neither could have admitted that to his public... In the meantime, the old "watchdog of segregation", the State Sovereignty Commission, lapsed into desuetude from deliberate withholding of gubernatorial appointments, and the Citizens Council prepared its own death watch.After seeing the potentially damaging effects on the state's image and business climate, Johnson worked to tone down any racist rhetoric and adopted moderate policies, including requesting that the state comply with the newly-passed Voting Rights Act in 1965. He also at one point declared "The day for a lot of bull-shooting is over." Moves such as this were seen as major reasons for the decrease in racial violence and solid economic growth, with Johnson working hard to pass a $130 million bond issue to finance a major expansion of the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula. Johnson, like many other southern governors, quietly observed the 1965 civil war centennial of the defeat of the South. In addition, his fight to repeal the prohibition on alcohol in 1966, a state law for the previous 58 years that had largely been ignored by moonshiners, was another issue that gained him popular appeal.
Johnson left politics following the end of his term. He suffered a stroke in the late 1970s, and continued to struggle with his health in his final years, before suffering a fatal heart attack at his home in Hattiesburg, surrounded by his wife and family.