Here’s an easy way for Johnson County to honor real Kansas history, not a slaveholder

The Johnson County Charter Commission recently asked the Board of County Commissioners to consider renaming the affluent county. That’s off the table for now, but county leaders can’t abandon the issue — Johnson County is named after the Rev. Thomas Johnson, a slave owner and Southern sympathizer.

Here’s a simple solution: Honor a far more deserving individual with the same surname. Why would anyone want to celebrate someone who owned slaves anyway?

It was not clear if the name change process was a matter for the Board of County Commissioners, the Kansas Legislature or Johnson County voters to take up. The issue is outside the purview of the charter’s commission, which meets once a decade to chart the course for government functions.

“The proposal has been withdrawn as the sponsor determined the charter commission was not the appropriate or best venue,” the commission’s Greg Musil wrote in a text message on Sunday.

Thomas Johnson was a complicated man, historians say. He helped found the Shawnee Indian Mission historic site in Fairway. The Methodist pastor owned several slaves, including a 15-year-old girl. Worse, he was a member of a fraudulent Kansas Territorial Legislature that believed Kansas should be a slave state. But he also declared his support for the Union before the Civil War began. He was murdered in front of his home in 1865.

Here’s a namesake for the county more worthy of commemoration: Luella Johnson, a young Black student who successfully sued the Olathe School Board in 1890 to attend an all-white school.

This wouldn’t be the first time a county honored a worthy Johnson instead of one with a violent and reprehensible past.

In June, the Board of Supervisors in Johnson County, Iowa, simply voted to rename its county after a different Johnson. Their choice was professor and historian Lulu Merle Johnson, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Iowa. No change in state law or a public vote was needed.

That county’s original namesake, former Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, was a slave owner from Kentucky with few ties to the state.

Closer to home, changing the Kansas county’s name to something other than Johnson wouldn’t be easy. The name is affixed to countless maps and other legal documents, opponents against the proposal rightfully argued. There is little benefit in paying homage to a man who shackled, bound and abused others, but much merit in honoring a civil rights pioneer with the same last name.

The actions of Thomas Johnson do not embody the values of the people of Johnson County, as noted in the Charter Commission’s original proposal. The Board of County Commissioners should honor a different Johnson instead.