Lulu M. Johnson is born into a successful farm family on September 14, 1907 in the small southwestern Iowa town of Gravity.

In 2021, Johnson County, Iowa did something counties rarely do. Originally named for the ninth Vice President of the United States, Richard M. Johnson (1837-1841), the Johnson County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to change our county’s eponym (namesake), placing Lulu Merle Johnson (1907-1995) into that lofty position. Johnson was a BA and MA graduate of The University of Iowa (1930), the second African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in History, and the first to receive a Doctorate of any kind in Iowa!

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