April 22, 1892

Fiery civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. He taught himself German and other languages so well that when the dean of Oberlin College handed him a book of German scripture, Johns easily passed, won admission and became the top student at Oberlin College.

In 1948, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, hired Johns, who mesmerized the crowd with his photographic memory of scripture. But he butted heads with the middle-class congregation when he chastised members for disliking muddy manual labor, selling cabbages, hams and watermelons on the streets near the state capitol.

He pressed civil rights issues, helping Black rape victims bring their cases to authorities, ordering a meal from a white restaurant and refusing to sit in the back of a bus. No one in the congregation followed his lead, and turmoil continued to rise between the pastor and his parishioners.

In May 1953, he resigned, returning to his family farm. His successor? A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.

James Earl Jones portrayed the eccentric pastor in the 1994 TV film, “Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story,” and historian Taylor Branch profiled Johns in his Pulitzer-winning “Parting the Waters; America in the King Years 1954-63.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, tells Mississippi Today's Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance he's hopeful he and other negotiators can strike a deal on Medicaid expansion to address dire issues in the unhealthiest state.

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April 21, 1966

Milton Olive III became the first Black soldier awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War. 

Olive had known tragedy in his life, his mother dying when he was only four hours old. He spent his early youth on Chicago's South Side and then moved to Lexington, Mississippi, where he stayed with his grandparents. 

In 1964, he attended one of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, and he joined the work in Freedom Summer, registering Black voters. Concerned that he might be killed, his grandmother sent him back to Chicago, where he joined the military on his 18^th birthday. 

“You said I was crazy for joining up,” he wrote. “Well, I've gone you one better. I'm now an official U.S. Army Paratrooper.” 

He joined the U.S. Army's 173^rd Airborne Brigade and became known as “Preacher” for his quiet demeanor and his tendency to avoid cursing. On Oct. 22, 1965, helicopters dropped Olive and the 3^rd Platoon of Company B into a dense jungle near Saigon. They returned fire on the Viet Cong, who retreated. As the soldiers pursued the enemy, a grenade was thrown into the middle of them. Olive grabbed the grenade and fell on it, absorbing the blast with his body. 

“It was the most incredible display of selfless bravery I ever witnessed,” the platoon commander said. 

Olive saved his fellow soldier's lives. Then-President Lyndon B. Johnson presented the medal to his father and stepmother, and he has since been honored with a park and a junior college named for him.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.