Johney Brooks

Brooks was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the daughter of sharecroppers Thomas A. Johnson and Beulah Johnson.[1][2] She was raised in Texas and California. After a time in the military, she earned a bachelor's degree in biology from California State University, Los Angeles, earned a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Arizona, and trained as a teacher.[3] She completed doctoral studies in international and comparative education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[1]

Brooks joined the United States Air Force in 1951, during the Korean War, and was honorably discharged in 1953.[1] She was a chemist in Los Angeles, taught high school in Los Angeles and Compton,[3] worked as a school administrator in Sacramento[4][5] and Pomona,[6] and was an assistant professor at Humboldt State University.[1]

From 1969 to 1971, Brooks taught science teachers for USAID in Uganda.[3] From 1982 to 1985,[7] she was the appointed director of Peace Corps work in Gambia.[8][9] She worked at the Bahá'i World Centre in Haifa. She held embassy posts in Tunisia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Guyana, Turkmenistan,[10] and Papua New Guinea.[1]

Brooks was an adherent of the Bahá'i faith.[11][12] She had two children:[3] her daughter Alexis Brooks de Vita is a professor of English at Texas Southern University,[13] and her son W. Abdullah Brooks is a public health physician on the faculty at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.[14] Brooks died from complications of a stroke in 2016, in Lake Katrine, New York, aged 83 years.[1]