First Black woman to serve as US Capitol Police officer is a Rocky Mount native

The DCN News Blog Online TV response: Thank you Theresa Alston Stokes for sharing the Black History moment about Ms. Johnson. So glad the TV picked up on it. I look forward to meeting her very soon.

The first woman and the first Black woman to serve as a US Capitol Police officer was Arva Johnson, a Rocky Mount native who broke the department’s gender barrier in the 1970s.

Johnson says she became a trailblazer by accident, chalking up her ability to overcome the difficulties she faced to her early years in eastern North Carolina.

Johnson told WRAL News she remembers the Rocky Mount of the 1950s and 60s.

Growing up in a house on South Church Street, the quiet and reserved community became the lens she saw the world through.

“It was a little small city,” Johnson said. “Everywhere we had to go, we had to walk, like to school, to the grocery store, everything was kind of close in.”
After graduating from then-Booker T. Washington High School in 1971, Johnson made her way up I-95 to the big city: Washington DC.

Following three years of searching for a career, Johnson’s cousin called one day with the news that would change her life: the US Capitol police force was hiring for officers.

“Growing up in North Carolina, I always wanted to be in uniform,” Johnson said. “So they called, and they hired me to come to work October 15, 1974. I was 24 years old.”

Johnson became the first woman and the first Black woman to serve as a US Capitol Police officer. (Read more)