Michael Johnson papers

Michael Johnson was born Michael Sussman in New York on 10 May 1912. Soon thereafter his family moved to Detroit, but around 1922 they returned to New York. While in high school he took the nom de plume Michael Johnson, and later he made that his legal name. After graduating from high school at the age of 16, he studied at Columbia University, but lack of money obliged him to drop out and take a job in Harlem as a presser in a coat factory, where he organized workers and a strike. In 1932 he married Sulamith Cohen; they had two daughters. For two decades, 1934 to 1955, Johnson worked an organizer, a district manager, and a director for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in the northeastern region of Pennsylvania. He was education director for the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor (1955-1960) and then returned to the ILGWU as its education director (1960-1965). Johnson served as executive vice president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO (1965-1975) and then finished his career as a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (1975-1985), where he was renowned as a fiery advocate of consumer rights. He died in Philadelphia on 17 October 1995.