Author, pundit, Pulitzer-winning reporter
WASHINGTON - Haynes Johnson, a pioneering Washington journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the civil-rights movement and who migrated from newspapers to television, books and teaching, died Friday. He was 81.
The Washington Post reported that he died at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. In a statement to the Post newsroom, Managing Editor Kevin Merida said Johnson died of a heart attack.
Johnson was awarded a Pulitzer in 1966 for national reporting on the civil-rights struggle in Selma, Ala., while with The Evening Star in Washington. He spent about 12 years at the Star before joining its chief rival, The Washington Post, in 1969. Johnson was a columnist for the Post from 1977 to 1994.
The author, co-author or editor of 18 books, Johnson also appeared regularly on the PBS programs Washington Week in Review and The NewsHour. He was a member of the NewsHour historians panel from 1994 to 2004.
Johnson had taught at the University of Maryland since 1998.
He was born in New York City on July 9, 1931. His mother, Emmie, was a pianist and his father, Malcolm Johnson, a newspaperman. The elder Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Sun in 1949 for his reporting on the city’s dockyards, and his series inspired the story told in the Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront.
Johnson’s first marriage, to Julia Ann Erwin, ended in divorce. They had three daughters and two sons. Johnson and Kathryn Oberly, an associate judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, married in 2002.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 14 on 05/26/2013