Wyanetta Johnson was a beloved and lifelong advocate for racial justice and equity for children, parents, professionals, and teachers throughout the Oak Park and River Forest communities. “Mrs. Johnson,” as her allies referred to her, or “Grandma” as generations of students fondly called her, passed away on New Year’s Day, 2026. While she had been limited in her activism in the past few years, she continued to inspire and counsel today’s racial equity workers.
Mrs. Johnson was born on April 18, 1939. Her early years were spent in and around the Sikeston and Charleston area of Missouri, where both Black and white people worked as sharecroppers. Her family was engaged with racial justice efforts in the generation before the Civil Rights Movement.
She was a leader in African American Parents for Purposeful Leadership in Education (APPLE) from the late ’80s when she joined with other Black community members, working to protect and guide Black and other children in Oak Park schools. She helped children navigate and succeed in school settings that were trying to transition to integrated, inclusive and culturally respected places for Black children. In the current era, Mrs. Johnson was a leading voice in calling for District 200 to adopt a racial equity policy and expand high-status learning to all students by launching the Freshman All Honors Curriculum, now in its fourth year.
She served as president and vice president of APPLE, working closely with other Black leaders, white allies, and progressive board members to move the high school into the era where racial equity became the district’s avowed priority in the first decade of the new millennium.
In the ’80s, APPLE had a presence in all the schools in Oak Park. Mrs. Johnson and other parents mentored Black students during the school day and after school, leading study skills and homework assistance programs. They organized career days, “Saturday school,” seminars for parents, and overnight retreats for children. Through APPLE programming and generous donation of time and resources, Black mothers, fathers, and community members were engaged in guiding Oak Park’s Black children. Mrs. Johnson was known for her energy and generosity, often reaching into her own pocket – whether to feed children or to assist in enrolling students at Triton or other programs.
In what one might consider a successful precursor to Social Emotional Learning, APPLE had their own room at OPRF High School, where all students were welcomed, counseled, tutored, and found rest. Remarkably, Mrs. Johnson also counseled first-year teachers on classroom management and discipline. For several years in the 1990s, she and other Black parents organized the wildly popular Fashion and Talent Show, a standing-room-only event open to all students.
In 1994, OPRF administrators and some teachers became territorial about roles and space, so APPLE moved out of the school. Subsequently, Mrs. Johnson united APPLE in an election coalition, creating a multiracial alliance of the Oak Park NAACP, the Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Alliance, students, and racial equity advocates from District 97, who successfully reversed new forms of in-school segregation in the 1980s. Mrs. Johnson regularly was also involved in organizing around elections at the local, state, and national level.
In the first decade of the millennium, with attorneys and community education experts, Mrs. Johnson helped organize a legal challenge to the gross inequities Black children experienced in Oak Park’s special education and discipline policies. Those efforts set the stage for a subsequent major overhaul of special education at OPRF and the beginning of evidence-supported ways to bring equity to the school’s discipline practices.
Wyanetta Johnson, through more than 40 years of advocating for children and teachers, epitomized the adage “speak truth to power.” She never failed to do so. She advocated with an open, loving heart, showing kindness and respect to all she encountered in her calling to make Oak Park schools truly for all children who walked through their doors. That is the exact standard our schools must seek to realize today. All who knew Wyanetta will continue to press forward with her vision and her boundless dedication to that quest.
Mary Bird, John Duffy, & Burcy Hines
Oak Park
