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CATHY WURZER: You're listening to Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Cathy Wurzer. One of the state's most influential leaders in the Civil Rights and labor movements has died. Nellie Stone Johnson was 96 years old. Johnson who was born in Lakeville was the first African-American person elected to citywide office in Minneapolis. She was also the first woman in the nation to negotiate labor union contracts for equal pay for women. In 1944, she joined with Hubert Humphrey in forming the DFL party. Hy Berman is a history professor at the University of Minnesota, and Professor Berman's on the line with us right now. Good morning, Hy.

HY BERMAN: Good morning, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Well, tell us a little bit about Nellie Stone Johnson. What kind of woman was she?

HY BERMAN: Oh, she was a fabulous person. I've known her ever since I came to Minnesota. I came in here in 1961. So I've known her for 40 years, over 40 years. In the 1930s, to begin with, which sometimes people overlook, she organized the hotel and restaurant workers in the Minneapolis club. She was an elevator operator in the Minneapolis club.

And she and a group of East European immigrants and some Finns fact organized the help there and went on strike. It was the first major strike in Minneapolis among these kinds of menial workers. And they came out with the establishment of one of the strongest unions in the city, a union which is still in existence today. So that was her early beginnings.

She was involved in labor and politics in the City of Minneapolis in the '30s and in the '40s. And she was instrumental in getting Humphrey elected to be mayor of Minneapolis. After, she, of course, worked to get the DFL organized through a combination of the Democrats and the farmer-labor party. And, of course, her civil rights activism is, of course, began even long before it was in fact in Vogue to be a civil rights activist. And this is just her resume. It doesn't tell us anything about the character of the person, the strength, the determination, the warmth that she exuded.

CATHY WURZER: Talk a little bit high about how Nellie Stone Johnson viewed issues and how she worked with people.

HY BERMAN: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: There seemed to be kind of a sense of fierceness about her when she tackled an issue, would you agree?

HY BERMAN: No question about it. She was a bulldog when it came to determination and single mindedness, when it came to a particular issue. She was fierce and really unrelenting and unforgiving sometimes. But that was the way she worked, and that was the secret fact to her success. That and the fact that she was able to temper that with a, well, with a layer of sweetness. So that is what made her really effective.

CATHY WURZER: Did she ever tell you why she became so active in politics, in the labor movement? What was it about her background?

HY BERMAN: Yes, well, she came, of course, from a farm family, a Black farm family, which is, of course, unusual to begin with in Minnesota, not in the South but in Minnesota. And when she came to the city, she immediately-- well, she came here in the midst of the depression. And that hit her personally very hard. What hit her heart was the fact that the kind of indifference and exploitation that she saw all around her meted out to people who were, of course, in subordinate positions. She was a crusader against injustice. And that's, I guess, the way to put it. Some people have that built in them, and she did. And, I guess, that's her legacy.