A historically black junior college in Florida that operated 1962–1966 to serve Lake and Sumter Counties.
Johnson Junior College opened in 1962 at 1200 N. Beecher Street in Leesburg, Florida, as one of eleven black community colleges established by the Florida Legislature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Created in response to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, these colleges were intended to demonstrate a "separate but equal" educational system for Black students. The college was named after local Negro educator John Wesley Johnson and was led by its founding and only president, Perman E. Williams.
The college offered both college-parallel (transfer) programs and technical vocational programs, including Secretarial Science, Food Services, Laboratory Technology, Technical Secretary, Auto Mechanics, and Cosmetology. For the first two years, classes were held in the adjacent Carver Heights High School before three new buildings were constructed containing science laboratories, a business education suite, a speech arts laboratory, faculty offices, a library, and vocational technical facilities. In 1965, fifty-seven students graduated in the college's first and only commencement ceremony.
Three days after the dedication of new facilities in 1965, the Lake County Board of Public Instruction voted to combine Johnson Junior College with Lake-Sumter Junior College in light of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson Junior College was effectively closed, with no formal effort to transfer students or employees. The college operated one more year (1965–66) as the Johnson Center of Lake–Sumter before being fully closed by 1966–67. In 1996, the administration building at Lake-Sumter Community College was named the Williams-Johnson building in honor of the college and President Williams.