Sonia Ann Johnson, (née Harris; born February 27, 1936) is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.
Early life, education, and family
Sonia Ann Harris, born in Malad, Idaho, was a fifth-generation Mormon. She attended Utah State University and married Rick Johnson following graduation. She earned a master's degree and a Doctor of Education from Rutgers College. She was employed as a part-time teacher of English in universities both in the United States and abroad, following her husband to new places of employment. She had four children during these years. They returned to the United States in 1976.
In 1991, Johnson's mother, Ida Harris, became worried about her daughter's safety after hearing rumors of Sonia's death and receiving telephone threats against her daughter. Taking the threats to heart, Ida moved to Sonia's Wildfire Community in November 1991. Six months later, Ida died at the age of 86 with Sonia by her side. Ida was buried in Logan, Utah, but Sonia did not attend the funeral because she had promised her mother not to return to Utah.
Johnson began speaking out in support of the ERA in 1977 and with three other women, co-founded an organization called Mormons for ERA. National exposure occurred with her 1978 testimony in front of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights, and she continued speaking and promoting the ERA and denouncing the LDS Church's opposition to the amendment. Faith-based feminist Joan M. Martin also testified during this committee hearing.
The LDS Church began disciplinary proceedings against Johnson after she delivered a scathing speech entitled "Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church" at a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in New York City in September 1979. Johnson denounced as immoral and illegal the LDS Church's nationwide lobbying efforts to prevent passage of the ERA.
Because the speech drew national media attention, leaders in Johnson's local Virginia congregation, including stake president Earl J. Roueche, immediately began excommunication proceedings. A December 1979 excommunication letter stated that Johnson was charged with a variety of misdeeds, including hindering the worldwide missionary program, damaging internal church social programs, and teaching false doctrine. Her husband divorced her in October 1979, two months before the proceeding. She attributed his decision to "some kind of mid-life crisis."
After her break with the church, Johnson continued promoting the ERA, speaking on television and at numerous functions throughout the country, including the 1980 Democratic National Convention. She also protested venues such as the Republican Party headquarters in Washington, D.C. She and twenty ERA supporters were briefly jailed for chaining themselves to the gate of the Seattle Washington Temple in Bellevue, Washington.
In the summer of 1982, Johnson led seven other women from around the country in a dramatic public hunger strike in Springfield, Illinois. The group targeted Illinois because it was the only Northern industrial state that hadn't ratified the ERA. During the Women Hunger for Justice fast, the feminist activists kept daily vigils in the rotunda of the capitol, but the amendment eventually failed in the Illinois House on June 22. The group broke its 37-day, water-only fast with a round of grape juice. In the 1980s, she was also affiliated with the feminist group known as A Group of Women. In 1982, the American Humanist Association awarded her the Humanist Heroine Award.
Citizens Party presidential candidate
Johnson ran in the 1984 presidential election, as the candidate of the U.S. Citizens Party, Pennsylvania's Consumer Party, and California's Peace and Freedom Party. Johnson received 72,161 votes (0.08%) finishing fifth. Her running mate for the Citizens Party was Richard Walton and for the Peace and Freedom Party Emma Wong Mar. Mark Dunlea, assistant campaign manager for her campaign, later wrote a book about a fictional female American president, Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President.
Johnson also founded Wildfire, a short-lived separatist commune for women that disbanded in 1993. She published several of her later books under the imprint "Wildfire Books."
Publications and personal views
Johnson became increasingly radicalized, especially against state power, as reflected in the books she published after 1987. They include:
From Housewife to Heretic (Doubleday, 1981)
Telling the Truth (pamphlet, Crossing Press, 1987)
Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation (Crossing Press, 1987)
Wildfire: Igniting the She/Volution (Wildfire Books, 1990)