Justice Legacy

From Detroit Bureau to Historic Courtroom Battle

Johnson was born in Rochester, New York in 1937. She joined the AP in 1972 as a general assignment reporter in Detroit. She was one of very few Black women in the newsroom at the time, according to Newsday. In Detroit, she covered court-ordered school busing, tensions between the mostly white police force and Black residents, and the rise of Black-owned businesses.

The path to the lawsuit began in 1973, when female journalists filed a sex discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Johnson later joined as a key plaintiff, expanding the case to include race discrimination. By 1978, the EEOC found "reasonable cause" to believe the AP had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to Dayton Daily News.

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1983 Settlement Set Concrete Hiring Targets for AP

The Newspaper Guild's class-action lawsuit was settled in 1983 in U.S. District Court in New York. The deal required the AP to set clear hiring goals. Women were to make up at least 37% of the news staff. Black journalists were to reach at least 5% of the editorial workforce — a huge jump from sub-1% levels in the early 1970s. A separate target of 2.8% was set for Hispanic journalists.

The AP's reach made the settlement especially important. Because the wire service sends content to thousands of local papers, diversifying the AP meant diversifying news coverage across the entire country, The Hour reported. Before the deal, one analysis noted, "readers were getting virtually all their news from one group: white men."

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Johnson's Life After the AP and Second Career in Ministry

After leaving the AP, Johnson pursued a different path. She earned a master's degree in religious studies from Howard University's School of Divinity, according to Winnipeg Free Press. Colleagues at Howard remembered her as a "warrior for justice whose reporting was her first ministry."

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Her Legacy Faces New Pressure as DEI Programs Retreat

Johnson's death comes at a difficult moment for the programs her lawsuit helped create. Affirmative action in hiring and education has come under growing legal pressure in recent years. The News Media Guild has announced plans to create a "Marlene Johnson Memorial Internship" to keep her 1983 victory alive, according to MRT.

The AP itself paid tribute in its own obituary of Johnson, acknowledging her role in "spurring hiring of female, Black, and Hispanic journalists." Her lawsuit, filed nearly five decades ago, remains one of the clearest examples of how legal action by individual journalists reshaped who gets to shape the public record.

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