Leadership

Johnny Barnes

Treasurer

American Civil Liberties Union

Johnny Barnes

Johnny Barnes spent more than a quarter of a century in various Congressional staff positions, including service as Chief of Staff for two Members of Congress. During his time with Congress, he served as a Hearing Examiner for the D.C. Office of Human Rights and later as a Member of the D.C. Commission on Human Rights. Prior to that time, he constructed course materials and instructed Examiners and Commissioners with the Human Rights Agency on the D.C. Administrative procedure Act and administrative practice. In addition, he has taught law and college courses at area schools and has practiced law in the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

Other related experience includes his appointment as the first male Member of the D.C. Commission for Women; as a Member of the D.C. Commission on Residential Mortgage Investment, an entity that tackled the prevalent problem of redlining and mortgage loan discrimination; and as an attorney on a Special Task Force that addressed ill treatment of small Black farmers by the Reagan and Bush administrations and discrimination by rural loan officers. That activity resulted in a resolution --- supported by the Congressional Republican Leadership --- in which billions of dollars was slated to flow to the Black farmers.

Also, during his time with Congress, Barnes worked on a range of issues. He drafted and steered the successful effort to secure passage of a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would have given Full Voting Representation --- two voting Senators and the requisite number of representatives and Electoral College Votes demanded by the population ---to the District of Columbia. That amendment passed by supermajorities (two-thirds) in the House and Senate, but later died during the ratification process in the states. And, he drafted the first D.C. Statehood Bill, H.R. 51, following the District of Columbia’s Constitutional Convention. While still working for Congress, he engineered the impressive caravan of 750 individuals, congresspersons and their staffs, Democrats and Republicans, who journeyed to North Carolina to assist in the clean up of the historic Town of Princeville, following the unprecedented flooding of Hurricane Floyd.

Barnes is particularly proud of the role he played in helping to create the “Street Law” Program at Georgetown University Law Center; a program that began in two D.C. High Schools and is now taught throughout the United States in schools and prisons and in many foreign countries.

A Distinguished Military Graduate, Commissioned and Honorably Discharged, Regular Army, Engineer Officer, Barnes graduated, Cum Laude, from Central State University and received his Juris Doctor Degree from Georgetown University Law Center. He is the Father of two grown sons, a grown daughter and two grandchildren. Barnes currently serves as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union for the National Capital Area.