Gregory Johnson

Gregory Lee Johnson achieved a wee bit of national celebrity of the notorious kind in 1984 as leader of a group of young protesters angry at the Republican Party and its policies.

His group, which characterized itself as having Communist leanings, came to Dallas, Texas, to protest the Republicans and their hawkish corporate backers. The group had staged what they termed "die-ins," which they did to symbolize the deadly effects of war, especially nuclear war.

The youthful Johnson, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses, was handed an American flag by another protester who had climbed a flag pole to remove it. Johnson poured kerosene on the flag and set it ablaze while his companions chanted anti-U.S. slogans.

No violence occurred, but police came to the scene and arrested Johnson, charging him with violating a Texas statute by burning a U.S. flag.

The upshot of these events was that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988 ruled 5-4 that if flag burning was done to convey political protest, then it was symbolic expression and as such was protected by the First Amendment.

Johnson's case was one of the most influential early court cases involving what came to be called "expressive conduct." Earlier in America's judicial history, expression was a matter of the written or spoken work, and conduct was conduct.