Olin D. Johnston

Johnston was born near Honea Path, South Carolina in Anderson County. His family maintained a farm and worked in the Chiquola Manufacturing Company's textile mill. Johnston's youth was divided between schooling, work on the farm, and work in the mill. He could attend school only while the family was on the farm, usually in the summer. Johnston eventually enrolled in the Textile Industrial Institute, now Spartanburg Methodist College, in Spartanburg and here Johnston earned his high school diploma in thirteen months, graduating in 1915. He entered Wofford College in the fall of 1915, where he worked his way through school by holding a variety of jobs, but his studies were interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War I. ==Military involvement==

Johnston enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1917 and served with the 117th Engineer unit, which was attached to the 42nd Division, the Rainbow Division, in France. He served eighteen months overseas and attained the rank of sergeant. Following his discharge in June 1919, he returned to Wofford where he received his bachelor's degree in 1921. In the fall of 1921, Johnston entered the University of South Carolina where he earned both an M.A. in Political Science in 1923 and an LL.B. in 1924. That same year established the law firm of Faucette and Johnston in Spartanburg, and in December, married Gladys Atkinson of Spartanburg. She would serve throughout his career as his most trusted counselor. ==Politics==

In 1922, while still attending college, In 1937, he signed the South Carolina Public Welfare Act into law Where previous governors used the National Guard and martial law to crush strikes, he would largely ignore the issue of preserving racial segregation, Meanwhile, Smith had opposed Roosevelt's labor reform and for years campaigned on a two-plank platform to "keep the Negro down and the price of cotton up," and had recently demonstrated that he intended to maintain his fight to preserve racial segregation after he had walked out of the 1936 Democratic National Convention when he heard that a black minister was going to deliver the invocation. South Carolina US Senator James F. Byrnes, though also an ardent New Dealer, opposed this new push, claiming it would make the state's textile mills uncompetitive. declined to endorse Johnston and instead supported the re-election of Smith. Stinney had been wrongfully convicted for the murders of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. Johnston wrote in a response to one appeal for clemency that It may be interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the larger one. Then he killed the larger girl and raped her dead body. Twenty minutes later he returned and attempted to rape her again, but her body was too cold. All of this he admitted himself. It is reported that these statements were merely rumors, and were contradicted at the time by the medical examination report on the girl's body. In 2014, 70 years after the execution, Stinney's conviction was posthumously overturned. His case is remembered in the modern day as a wrongful execution and miscarriage of justice. ==Death==

Johnston died on April 18, 1965, following a long battle with cancer. near Honea Path, South Carolina. Johnston's daughter, Elizabeth Johnston Patterson, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina's 4th congressional district from 1987 to 1993. In the 1986 general election she defeated Mayor Bill Workman of Greenville, the son of the man whom her father had defeated in his last race for the U.S. Senate in 1962. Patterson was the unsuccessful 1994 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. ==See also==