Full Breakdown
Marlene Johnson’s Discrimination Lawsuit and Its Legacy
6/12/2026, 1:43:55 AM
Core Lawsuit and Early Career
Marlene Louise Johnson, a Rochester, New York native, earned an associate’s degree from the University of Buffalo and a bachelor’s from Wayne State University. In the early 1970s she worked for Congressman John Conyers and befriended Rosa Parks. Hired by the Associated Press Detroit bureau in 1972 through a minority-hiring program, Johnson reported on Black capitalism, court-ordered busing, police-community tensions, breast-cancer screening and women’s empowerment. After months without training and a performance standard she said differed from white, male peers, she filed a race-and-gender discrimination suit in 1973 with help from the Newspaper Guild; the case later grew into a class-action claim.
Timeline of Key Events
- 1972 – Joined AP Detroit.
- 1973 – Filed discrimination suit.
- June 1975 – Took leave; AP byline appears on a Detroit story.
- 1983 – Settlement reached.
- 1994–2004 – Worked at the Washington Times, retiring as assistant features editor.
- May 9 – Died in Inglewood, California.
Settlement and Institutional Response
Negotiated with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the $1 million settlement required the AP to adopt affirmative-action plans for female, Black and Hispanic journalists, to provide training and bonuses for minority staff, and allocated $83,120 among seven named plaintiffs, none of whom was Johnson. The agreement was reached roughly a decade after the original suit was filed.
Criticism of the Settlement Outcome
Johnson’s daughter, Morenike Joela Evans, said her mother received only about $700, noting the amount “got taken away from her getting justice.” Johnson also said her name was removed from the plaintiff list and replaced with an unfamiliar Black woman, describing the shift as changing the suit from “all Black and one white” to “all white and one Black.” She added the lawsuit made it difficult to find subsequent journalism work.
Impact on Newsroom Diversity
The settlement’s affirmative-action provisions prompted the AP to institute systematic hiring, training and bonus structures to increase representation of women, Black and Hispanic journalists.
Conflicting Details and Gaps
Sources differ on Johnson’s plaintiff status: settlement documents list her among the seven women, but she was not publicly named. The $700 payment contrasts with the overall settlement pool, and no direct AP statement appears in the sources.
Verbatim Quotes
- “What the suit was about originally was racism,” — Marlene Johnson, 2013 History Makers interview
- “It was a scary thing for her to do,” — Morenike Joela Evans, daughter
- “The suit turned from all Black and one white (plaintiff), to all white and one Black (plaintiff),” — Marlene Johnson, interview
- “We should be grateful that someone like Marlene, a Black woman in the 1970s at a major news organization who had the courage,” — Vincent McCraw, veteran journalist
