Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson aka John Ball. Donald John was his pen name, and how he was known in the nudist community. Johnson was born in Milwaukee and reportedly had an IQ on the Mensa scale. He became a club nudist in New York sometime around 1937 and later went on the serve as the president of the Western Sunbathing association from 1964-1966. ¹ Ball Obiturary by Lee Baxandall and Read Schuster archived by Naturist Vintage shared on Twitter He and his wife were members of the Pacificans travel club.

Though well known in nudist circles Ball/Johnson kept his passion for nudism separate and private from his life as John Ball. This choice was due to earlier job loss due to reactions to his nudist activities during his early days as a writer in New York. His final article American Nudism vs The Great Cover up was a hopeful for growing acceptance of nudism.

Johnson was an editor of Sunshine and Health magazine until 1951. He collected an extensive archive of nudist magazines and publications which are now housed as the Johnson nudist archives at the American Nudist Research Library. Johnson wrote several non-fiction books on the topic of nudism in the 1950s including the Nudist Society and The Nudists.

As John Ball created the character of Detective Virgil Tibbs of In the Heat of the Night and 6 other novels and two short stories. The book In the Heat of the Night went on to be a popular movie and then television series. One of his novels The Cool Cottontail (a Mystery Guild Book Club selection) was set in a nudist club. ²Pagan Nudist twitter stream

The Nudists (1959) by Donald Johnson
The Nudist Society (1970) A research study of the nudist movement co-authored with William Hartman
The Cool Cottontail (1966) by John Ball

References

• 1
  Ball Obiturary by Lee Baxandall and Read Schuster archived by Naturist Vintage shared on Twitter
• 2
  Pagan Nudist twitter stream