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Friday, May 31, 2002
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
Two Knox County residents who took on both the mining industry and regulatory agencies in their battle to protect prime farmland will receive an honorary degree in June from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
Knox will award a joint honorary doctorate of humane letters to Anna Sophia Johnson of Wataga and Jane Johnson of Gilson, who are not related, in recognition of their work to protect the nation's prime farmland from damage by surface coal mining. The presentation will take place at Knox's commencement ceremonies on Saturday, June 8, 2002.
 Anna Sophia Johnson (Download publication photo) |
 Jane Johnson (Download publication photo) |
The two women have worked for three decades to protect prime farmland from the ravages of strip mining. Along with officials from Knox County, they are credited with getting federal and state lawmakers to enact regulations that help minimize damage to both the environment and agricultural productivity.
In the 1970s, in response to a mining company's plans to strip mine prime farmland, Anna Sophia Johnson and Jane Johnson helped found Citizens for the Preservation of Knox County — an organization that filed lawsuits and presented testimony at public hearings on behalf of restrictions on mining and tougher reclamation requirements in farming areas where mining received regulatory approval. Since 1995, they have also been active in Citizens Organizing Project, a group that works to preserve the rural way of life.
With some of the best farmland in the nation, and 61-percent of its area also containing coal reserves, Knox County became a natural battleground for mining and agriculture. The first surface mine in the county opened in 1933, and prior to the enactment of regulations, mining devastated more than 20,000 acres in the county. County officials attempted twice — in the 1950s and again in the 1970s — to gain local control over mining, but the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that only the state could regulate mining.
By the mid 1970s, limited reclamation regulations had been enacted, but county officials, in testimony before Congress, stated that without special protection for farmland, agricultural productivity and land values would be severely reduced. In 1977, in Copley Township alone, mining interests controlled more than a quarter of the farmland, and Midland Coal Company, a subsidiary of the multinational mining conglomerate ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Corporation), had outlined a 20-year plan to mine large sections of the township.
Biographies
Anna Sophia Johnson was born in Galesburg and grew up on a farm near Wataga, northeast of Galesburg. She attended a one-room grade school, Galesburg High School, MacMurray College and the University of Iowa. From the 1940's through the 1960's she played violin in the Knox Galesburg Symphony. She has lived in Chicago, San Francisco, and London and, for the past 30 years, on the farm that has been in her family since 1870.
Jane Johnson is a native of Mercer County, Illinois, and graduated from Aledo High School. She and her husband of 58 years, Richard E. Johnson, have farmed for more than a half-century near Gilson, southeast of Galesburg. She won the 1989 Conservationist of the Year award from the Heart of Illinois Sierra Club. Johnson is also vice president of Families Against Rural Messes (FARM), which has sought restrictions on large-scale animal operations in rural areas.
Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 47 states and 42 nations. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.
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