MEAC Title IX 50th Anniversary Page


With the 50th anniversary of Title IX's passage less than a week away (Thursday, June 23), the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) will be posting daily to recognize the outstanding student-athletes, coaches and administrators who have exemplified Title IX's promise.

Charlene Johnson played basketball for South Carolina State University, helping the Lady Bulldogs win the 1979 AIAW National Championship, but after graduating, she gave over three decades of service to the university as an administrator. In addition to serving as an assistant coach with the women’s basketball program, Johnson was also head coach of the volleyball and women’s tennis programs, becoming the first woman to serve as a full-time head coach at South Carolina State.

She was the 1986 MEAC Coach of the Year in tennis, and she was named the conference’s Coach of the Year in volleyball in 1990 after leading the Lady Bulldogs to their first MEAC championship. Johnson also served the university as Associate Athletics Director and Senior Woman Administrator, and she twice served as Interim Director of Athletics before being named to the position on a permanent basis in 2004.

Johnson served as Director of Athletics at her alma mater for 11 years, the first woman to serve in that capacity at the school and the first woman to serve as Chairperson of the MEAC’s Directors of Athletics.

A 1998 inductee into the South Carolina State Athletic Hall of Fame, Johnson served on both the NCAA Div. I Football Championship Committee and the Women’s Volleyball Championship Committee.

Johnson was inducted into the MEAC Hall of Fame in 2018.