Hillsborough’s 1st Black mayor, Horace Johnson, a mentor and activist, dies at 95
Hillsborough’s first Black mayor, who crossed the color line to draw support from white residents while pressing for civil rights and his community’s future, died Thursday at the age of 95.
Horace Johnson Sr., a native of Alabama, didn’t intend on staying in Hillsborough when he first visited in 1954. In 1977, he was elected to the town’s Board of Commissioners, serving until 1989, when he was elected the town’s first Black mayor. He lost re-election in 2001.
The military veteran sat for 10 years on the Triangle J Council of Governments — now the Central Pines Regional Council — and two years as chair of the N.C. League of Municipalities’ Energy, Environmental and Natural Resources Policy Committee.
He attended N.C. Central University and retired as a Veteran’s Administration Medical Center counselor. He and his wife, Beulah, had five children. Last week, he celebrated his 95th birthday surrounded by family, The News of Orange reported.
Hillsborough Commissioner Evelyn Lloyd, who was first elected in 1991, recalled worked alongside Johnson in the 1980s, when they used county grants to get home repairs, plumbing and paved streets for Hillsborough residents.
“He promoted the town, which he loved, and was proud of its history,” Lloyd said in the release. “I enjoyed serving with him and can’t begin to tell all the things that he did to help make the town what it is today.”
A public viewing was held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 22, in Chavis-Parker Funeral Home in Hillsborough. A memorial service will be from 1-3 p.m. May 31 at New Horizon Church, 100 Horizon Place in Durham.
Neighborhood and civil rights leader
Local children knew Johnson as “Mr. Horace,” Kenneth Chavious, the county’s former finance director, said at a 2017 celebration of Johnson’s life.
Johnson was a mentor to them, offering advice and even clearing his back yard, so neighborhood kids could play baseball and shoot hoops. Sometimes, he would join them, said Gerald Shanklin, whose father ran Shanklin’s Press, a Black-owned printing business.
“Not only did he play with us, he reinforced the values that our parents taught us: The importance of education, respect for yourself, and self-esteem,” Shanklin said at the 2017 event.
At the same time, Johnson was challenging segregation and “the disruption of education for Black students,” a town news release said.
In 1966, he enrolled his son Horace Johnson Jr. in sixth grade at the whites-only Hillsborough Township High School. Only a handful of Black students attended local white schools then, and the Orange County Schools wouldn’t be fully integrated until 1968 — 14 years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education.
Only Black 10th-graders were integrated that first year. Other grades were added in 1969.
“I figured we were going downtown to a store or something, but we pulled up to the white school,” Horace Johnson Jr. told The Daily Tar Heel in February. “Dad got out of the car first, and then he came and let me out and the kids parted like (the) Red Sea.”
It was a time of Ku Klux Klan rallies, student walkouts, violence and boycotts, and Johnson’s work to break down color barriers caught the attention of white supremacists who chased protesters at gunpoint to his home in 1968.
Guiding a small town’s growth
In 1989, Johnson wore a bulletproof vest because of threats he received after being elected mayor. Later, he would call police to report a resident threatening to kill him and other town officials over tax increases.
He was part of a slow-growth movement, driven by water shortages and droughts that plagued the town for decades, and he advocated for preserving green space, promoting tourism and limiting development on the outskirts of town.
The West Fork Eno Reservoir was among his first planning initiatives, along with a new police station and a police substation for the historically Black Fairview community. The building now serves as a community center.
Johnson also established affordable housing communities and added a meals tax to support tourism, while advocating for the town to follow sound financial practices, the town news release said.
In 2014, he advocated for saving the Colonial Inn, a 186-year-old historic building that sat on the verge of demolition in downtown Hillsborough. It has since been restored and expanded.
“Mayor Johnson was a transformative leader whose courage and advocacy helped reshape the town during a pivotal era,” Hillsborough Mayor Mark Bell said. “As an elected official and as a resident of Hillsborough, he championed civil rights, municipal development and community engagement with lasting influence on the town.”
Johnson was independent, outspoken
But the outspoken mayor also rocked boats, especially when his stance on Hillsborough’s growth put him at odds with officials in Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro. He saw their polices as unfair to Hillsborough and a threat to the ability of moderate- and low-income residents to stay in the county, The News & Observer previously reported.
When one long-simmering feud blew up in 1999 over the effect of town decisions on school crowding, Johnson and former Orange County Schools board chairman Steve Halkiotis traded caustic and threatening barbs in the press. The exchange prompted the Orange County Board of Commissioners to seek a countywide resolution calling for civil speech among local elected officials.
Johnson wouldn’t sign the resolution, telling The N&O: “It’s a free country, and they can write and resolute all they want to, but I’m going to speak my mind.”
In 2017, the town designated Feb. 4 as Horace Johnson Day to recognize his life, service and leadership.
“Mayor Johnson loved Hillsborough and deeply appreciated Hillsborough history, something he would discuss for hours,” said Tom Stevens, who was the town’s mayor when the proclamation was passed.
Funeral arrangements are pending with Chavis-Parker Funeral Home in Hillsborough.
This story was originally published May 17, 2025 at 8:47 AM.
