New Orleans Johnnie Pugh, a longtime member and leader of ACORN in Arkansas, passed away. Anyone who has seen the documentary, The Organizer, will remember her as a star talking about having joined in 1971 and working with Gloria Benson Wilson. Gloria was elected to the Little Rock city director seat, that Johnnie later was elected to fill. Her obituary in the Arkansas Gazette Democrat does a good job on her whole career, including her leadership of ACORN and the city. Today, I’ll share a good part of her journey from cotton fields to nursing to ACORN membership, leadership, her role in the New Party and leading the city.
Ex-LR city director Johnnie Pugh dies at 98
- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- 18 Jul 2025
- JOSEPH FLAHERTY
Johnnie Beatrice Pugh, a former Little Rock city director and advocate for low-income people, is dead at the age of 98.
Pugh, who died Sunday, was born in Snyder in 1926 and was raised with her aunt in the community of Mount Olive.
As a young person in Hamburg, she drove a cotton-picking truck, picked cotton and worked as a midwife, but Pugh found herself striving for more.
“There’s got to be something better, and I’ve got to do something to get out of here,” she recalled thinking in a 2006 oral-history interview.
While delivering babies as a midwife, a nurse told Pugh, then 25, that she was “too young to be doing this,” and urged her to go to school and become a nurse, Pugh recalled.
Having only attended school up to the ninth grade at that point, Pugh got a job driving a school bus from Hamburg to Crossett that allowed her to attend classes, and she ultimately graduated from T.W. Daniel High School.
Pugh moved to Little Rock to become a licensed practical nurse and later worked at area health care facilities, eventually retiring from the VA hospital at Fort Logan H. Roots.
In Little Rock, Pugh advocated for issues affecting low-and-moderate-income people as an organizer and leader of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which she had joined in 1971, the year after the group was formed in Arkansas.
In 1998, while serving as ACORN’s state chairperson, Pugh was elected to the Ward 1 seat on the Little Rock Board of Directors as a member of the New Party, a grassroots political organization with ties to ACORN.
“It seems like the inner city is disintegrating,” Pugh said prior to the election in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article. “We need better housing in this area, and we need livable wage jobs to entice people to come back to the inner city. Why come back to the inner city if there are no jobs to have while you’re there? The city needs a program to get these youths into where they learn a trade, so they can be able to get a job that pays them a livable wage.”
Pugh and Genevieve Stewart, who was elected to the Ward 6 seat the same year, joined fellow New Party members Willie Hinton and Paul Kelly on the city’s governing body.
As a city director, Pugh supported an effort to establish a living wage for city workers, as well as companies doing business with the city or receiving tax breaks. She also pressed for recovery efforts following a 1999 tornado outbreak that caused damage in her ward.
She was reelected in 2002 but lost her bid for a third term in 2006.
“Johnnie Pugh was a trailblazer for social justice and equity, and she was a passionate voice for the people of Little Rock,” Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said in a statement. “Without question, Little Rock and the entire state are better because of her leadership and tireless advocacy. Our prayers are with her loved ones at this time.”
City Director Virgil Miller Jr., the Ward 1 representative, admired Pugh, calling her a “champion” for low- and moderate-income people, neighborhoods and causes.
“I really wanted to be like her in so many ways, and now that I’m on the city board, I feel somewhat of a connection with that,” Miller said, adding that he has sought to maintain a strong relationship with Arkansas Community Organizations, the successor organization of Arkansas ACORN.
Pugh and ACORN were focused on issues like renters’ rights and directing resources to long-neglected areas, according to Miller.
Neil Sealy, the executive director of Arkansas Community Organizations, first met Pugh in 1987. “She took city officials for a tour of the neighborhood around her home on Booker Street in Little Rock to show them streets that needed to be fixed,” he wrote in an email. “Her street and others were later curbed and guttered.”
In addition to serving as state chairperson, Pugh served on the national ACORN board, according to Sealy.
“She was a grand lady, always a gracious woman and always helpful even though she fought hard for her constituency,” said former Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey. In terms of their skill at seeing through their agenda, Pugh was one of the two best officials that the city had during Dailey’s time in office, the other being Hinton, Dailey said.