Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Federal Courthouse Complex

"Civil rights decisions made by Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. in the Montgomery federal courthouse, seven blocks from the state Capitol, had significant impact on the segregationist South in the 1950s and 1960s. Johnson set standards in the region, and often the nation, that addressed voting rights, employment discrimination and affirmative action. He was instrumental in clearing the way for blacks to register to vote and outlawed poll taxes, rejected state laws barring women and blacks from jury service, and issued the country’s first court order for legislative reapportionment, anticipating the Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote rule. After the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955, Johnson struck down Montgomery’s bus-segregation law as unconstitutional. In 1965, he allowed Martin Luther King Jr. to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the denial of black voting rights. Local architect Frank Lockwood designed the five-story Italian Renaissance style building that bears Johnson’s name with a post office on the ground floor and federal courts upstairs. The most significant interior space, with its stenciled wood ceiling, is the second-floor U.S. District Courtroom where Johnson presided. The Government Services Administration added a radial annex to the south end and named the complex for the noted jurist."