Tags: Judge.
Clifton E. Johnson (9 December 1941 – 25 June 2009) was an American jurist who served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from 1982 through 1996. Johnson who graduated from North Carolina Central University and its law school was the first African-American to serve as a North Carolina District Court judge and the first to serve as chief judge of a district (in Mecklenburg County). In 1978 he became the first African-American elected superior court judge in the state since Reconstruction.