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"Let the heathen rage and the people
imagine vain things...."
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Some years ago, I was not privileged to hire Ms. Johnson, but because Judge Wilmont Sweeney trusted my advice, I offered it on the matter of her hiring.

I was working as the head of Alameda County's Juvenile Court, a court with great influence and much direct working relations with the Probation Department. Having been in a position to see the Probation Department from the inside, I realized the problems that were transpiring inside that institution more than the local Oakland Tribune Newspaper and more than Gail Steele, Alameda County Supervisor.

There was delay and obfuscation to block good and innovative programs or ideas arising from outside that institution and there was much stagnation within that institution. Many Deputy Probation Officers spent valuable time fraternizing with staff to the point that it was almost a Payton's Place. I was informed when taking over the position of Director of the Juvenile Court to not submit to any callings upon my affection from those surely to importune; it was that type of place.

White privilege was the order of the day, and many insecure DPO's exercised their police powers and reveled in their authority to declare probation violations and to make recommendations to the court concerning the lives of this heavily ethnic populated Probation Department.

The entire American Juvenile Justice system was and still is saturated with racially discriminatory practices, most of it intentional and some unwittingly. But the Alameda County Probation Department was virtually blind or callous to discrimination and therefore did little to see it or change it.

The hiring and firing practices were discriminatory; the treatment of wards and staff was discriminatory. The institution was flawed with disparage treatment and thin layers of logic to cover it. Many in authority exercised that authority for their personal benefit and the benefits of friends within that institution.

The Probation Department needed someone who would break that culture of privilege, warped assumptions, lack of concern for the good of the children and society. Sylvia Johnson changed that culture through strong medicine.

Change is never easily brought about, especially when the paradigm needing change is deeply rooted. This truth is the lessons taught by inertia and gravity. Second, when the change agent is black and female in a white male dominated and cultured institution, there are always cries of excess and arrogance. And many became overly concerned and self-righteous about her competence and certainty, which they labeled excess and arrogance. I have been there in corporations and governmental agencies too many times. Those conditions were present when I took the job of Director of Juvenile Court. Those conditions are always present and are laid out as a road the black trail blazer must travel.

This is the trail Sylvia Johnson had to walk, and she walked it well. She had to stand when all the forces were coagulating against her; she had to become almost paranoid to navigate through poison pen politics and cronyism so well entrenched in the institution she headed; she had to walk the road almost alone to rid that institution of a culture of privilege and entitlements; because she is black and female, she had to walk roads other Probation Officers did not have to go.

Sylvia Johnson was simply walking in the shadows of other great black pioneers, of the First of her race group, and the road of change agents. She suffered at the unfair hands of journalists who sided with Gail Steele. They took a stand against Sylvia Johnson because she was and is big enough, brash enough, and bold enough to make the changes so necessary in Alameda County's Probation Department.

Because I perceived she would be strong enough to change it, I recommended strongly to Judge Sweeney that he select her as the Probation Officer for the County. That was a recommendation I have never regreted.

Ms. Johnson leaves without ceremony, yet Alameda County owes a debt to her it will never pay because we have suffered the confusion of a few nay-Sayers who simply resisted a needed change. But though she goes, the Probation Department of Alameda County has been forever changed. And that is good.

Having seen the fire that she has gone through and the changes she has brought to that institution, I salute Ms. Sylvia Johnson for a job well done.
Frank A. Jones