Researching Glencoe’s Racial Past

Taylor Family posing in Glencoe, IL, c1920s

—By Celia

I came to work at Shorefront through a circuitous series of realizations and referrals. During the summer of 2017, just before I went to college, I was reading Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy on my back porch in Glencoe. I was taken aback by Stevenson’s stories of defending inmates on death row, but equally struck by two of his other ideas: First, that the United States has a long, long way to go in memorializing the horrendous legacy of slavery, and second, that one must be proximate to issues to truly understand them and make a difference.

While reading about the cruelty of systematic incarceration and capital punishment of African-Americans, I couldn’t help but think about to which issues I, a Jewish girl on her back porch in Glencoe, was proximate. Throughout my time in Glencoe’s public schools and New Trier High School, I could count my black classmates on one hand, and had never considered why. Nearly all-white suburbs are not natural; they are the products of deliberate racial discrimination. I had been so close to the issue that I couldn’t see it for what it was. It was time to transform that inability to examine my surroundings to a meaningful proximity, like stepping back from an impressionist painting.

How did my town come to be so white, and what was to be done about it? That was the question I tried to answer with a free summer and the internet at my disposal. I found scans of census records on a genealogy website and hand-counted each black resident from decades of data. Although tedious, I found something important: the black population of Glencoe halved in between 1920 and 1930. What had happened during that time?

I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t know where to go next for my research. I read Robert Sideman’s African-Americans in Glencoe, which illuminated some important sources for me, and interviewed a few residents. I would be starting school soon, and had to table the project to transition to college.

Just a few weeks in, I met Dr. Chatelain, a history professor at my university. She’s regarded as a must-take professor – equally accomplished and devoted to her students. When I told her about my nascent project, she directed me to Shorefront, where she had done research in graduate school. I reached out to Dino, and started to work in the archives when I returned home for the summer.

I really enjoyed organizing sources to be used by future researchers. I categorized letters written by Freedom Summer teachers to their disapproving parents. I sifted through legal notices and memoranda about discrimination by the Noyes Cultural Arts Center. But what interested me the most was a heap of unsorted materials about Glencoe from the 1880s to present day: newspaper clippings, letters, invitations, pamphlets. They proved incredibly helpful in establishing what had happened in my hometown, from its inception to the present. With that arc of history came a set of patterns that made Glencoe the way it is today.

First, Glencoe was always meant to be idyllic. This hasn’t changed much since its founding: Glencoe is situated overlooking a beautiful beach; it’s filled with well-maintained green spaces; the schools are well-regarded and small enough that everyone knows one another; the houses are beautiful and often sell for millions. Such was the vision of its founders, who sought an escape from their busy city lives.

St. Paul A.M.E. Youth Choir practicing for the MLK remembrance in 1983. Photo by Jim Robinson

African-Americans bought property in Glencoe from early on in its history. Morton Culver, a local real estate developer, first sold land to blacks from Chicago in the early 1880s. The St Paul AME Church was founded shortly after in 1884. I found a Chicago Tribune article from the same year about a picnic in Glencoe, an event that drew blacks from the city and a number of surrounding suburbs. The picnickers are reported to have sung, “We’ll rest in this beautiful land, / Just along Michigan’s shore / Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, / And dwell in Glencoe evermore.”

The vision of a blissful suburb seemed, at this moment, accessible to blacks. The air was fresher and the schools, which had always been racially integrated, were better than the cramped ones in the city.

But Chicago’s white elite was also taking notice of this ideal setting. Wealthy white couples started to pine after lakefront mansions for the weekends, and founded country clubs to entertain them during their stays. Eventually, these weekend visitors began to permanently settle in Glencoe.

A critical mass of them took measures to remove black people from Glencoe. In 1919, the Glencoe Homes Association was founded by residents with the intent to “beautify” the town. It bought properties to be resold with what Robert Sideman calls “zoning-like restrictions” to increase the town’s green space and sell selectively to what it deemed “proper” buyers.

In 1927, Glencoe Homes embarked on a project with the town’s government to build a public park. Rather than using the town’s many vacant lots, it would be located in the middle of southwest Glencoe – where the majority of black families lived. After much opposition, the families were forced to settle. The Glencoe Homes Association published an op-ed in the local paper about their disapproval of the “negro colony,” paraded under the headline: “Prevention by ‘Syndicate’ of Blight to Community Saved Realty Values in Millions.”

This is the point at which Glencoe’s black community halved, the enormous dip in the census data. I had sometimes wondered why Watts Park, where I learned to ice skate and had lacrosse practice, was divided by a street in the middle. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for it to be continuous? But nearly all-white suburbs are not natural; they are planned deliberately.

July 10, 1942 Chicago SunTimes article

Despite this major fracture in Glencoe’s black population, the suburb continued to be relatively more diverse and progressive when compared to its surrounding suburbs. A.L. Foster, a Glencoe resident and then-Executive Director of the Chicago Urban League, won a case to desegregate Glencoe’s public beach in 1942, while Kenilworth didn’t have a single black resident until 1963.

Glencoe became a small enclave for black residents in an otherwise overwhelmingly white sea of suburbia. Mayor Robert Morris initiated programs to encourage African-Americans to apply for the village’s jobs in the mid-1950s, and the Glencoe Human Relations Committee formed to advocate for open housing and more harmonious race relations. When parents of New Trier students formed Concerned Black Parents in 1977, it met consistently where there was a critical mass of black parents: Glencoe. The group pushed for New Trier’s recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and inclusive teaching at the majority white high school.

Newspaper articles I found from this period struck me as odd. There were multiple articles that profiled Glencoe’s black residents as anomalies in their exposure to such a progressive society. In particular, I found this article bold in its claim to Glencoe as a champion of race relations:

February 9, 1977 (Suburban Trib)

“Assumptions on Race don’t Hold; Glencoe’s 6% Black”: The article rebukes the assumption that Glencoe has no black population, but rather a percentage far below the national average. It also acknowledges that “…a black homeowner will have to sell for a bit less than a white homeowner with a comparable house in Glencoe.” It recognizes that the original sale of property to blacks in Glencoe may have been a scheme to resentfully decrease its property value, but it “backfired and for years Glencoe was a primary source for domestic help on the North Shore.” Such “backfiring” refers only to the quality of life for white residents.

While these articles clung to every testimony and long-time residency of black Glenconians, the population has been declining gradually, but consistently, at about 1% per decade since 1930. One woman whom I interviewed cited the exorbitant housing prices as the main reason that her children didn’t raise their families in their hometown – an obstacle exacerbated by the fact that blacks often sold their homes for lower than they were worth. Another black resident wrote to the Glencoe News in 2004 to lament her inability to return to Glencoe because the homes on her childhood block had been torn down to build houses of twice the value. One might be reminded of the Glencoe Homes Association’s calls to beautify the town, and its consequences.

But economics aside, and with a multitude of studies proving that black families are more likely to live in lower-income areas even if they can afford not to do so, other factors influenced this gradual exodus. In a 2004 Glencoe News article entitled “Black Population Dwindles,” advocates cite widespread “‘steering’ [of] prospective homeowners toward communities that fit their demographic.” Carol Hendrix, a co-founder of Concerned Black Parents, witnessed her community leaving Glencoe over time, saying, “…[T]here was an effort by the builders to engineer the neighborhood.” Angela Hatfield, another resident interviewed in the article, said she was virtually certain that a white family would live in her home after her. 

Glencoe is currently 0.7% black. With its green spaces and beautiful beach, its colonial homes and quaint downtown, I can’t help but think of a line from Martin Luther King Junior’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He writes of the shame and injustice in “when you…see tears welling up in [your six year old daughter’s] eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people.” Glencoe is Funtown. While it wasn’t part of the Jim Crow South, it had been closed off to African-Americans in a gradual, de facto manner. Beyond the public policy implications of this injustice, it’s an affront to the dignity of so many.

In closing, I tried to better understand this issue to which I was so proximate. In doing so, I realized just how much history this suburb, of less than ten thousand residents and five square miles, holds. This history was sometimes subject to the reverberations of events far beyond its own scale – the Great Migration, for example – but, on the whole, was largely influenced by everyday people trying to change their hometown. From Morton Culver to A.L. Foster to Carol Hendrix, these individuals transformed the microcosm that is Glencoe, beyond the purview of anything I would learn about in an American History class. I’m grateful for organizations like Shorefront, that safeguard these local histories, and the legacies of those who sacrificed for their vision of a more equitable society.

Sources:

Sideman, Robert A., African Americans in Glencoe: The Little Migration, © 2009, The History Press, Charleston, SC.

Chicago Sun-Times, “Court Opens Glencoe Beach To Negro Family: Injunction Granted Against Official Of Park District”, July 10, 1942.

Suburban Tribune, “Assumptions on Race don’t Hold; Glencoe’s 6% Black”, February 9, 1977.

Allen “Bo” Price: Shaping Evanston Youth

—By Carlis Sutton

Allen “Bo” Price

Anywhere you go on the West Side of Evanston and mention “Bo” Price, there will be an immediate response: “He’s the man!” In Bo’s brief eighty-six years of living in Evanston and over sixty years of working with young people, Allen “Bo” Price has had an indelible impact on our community.

Interviewing a living legend is slightly intimidating, but a conversation with Bo Price is both a lesson in Evanston and American history as well as an experience in witnessing overwhelming personal strength tempered with humility.

Bo’s sense of humor puts you at ease. Watching him polishing his favorite horn, a coronet, the instrument he uses in his all-girl drum and bugle corps, to a gleaming stainless steel gives you an opportunity to observe both his demeanor and thoroughness. Bo cautiously chooses his words and responds introspectively to probing personal questions, demonstrating his compassion while perceptively protecting his privacy.

He has a remarkable memory and recalls incidents and individuals from his past as though they occurred yesterday, and recounts a wealth of individuals who have influenced his life. While attending Foster School, Bo was greatly influenced by his physical education instructor, Mr. Boyer. Mr. Boyer had been a captain in the army and was the only black on the staff. Mr. Boyer’s philosophy of “A winner never quits and a quitter never wins” became Bo’s mantra.

Allen “Bo” Price was born in Evanston, Illinois, on July 1, 1922, the youngest of seven boys and the tenth of eleven children, who included three older and one younger sister. He is the sole survivor in his family.

His father, Squire Price, migrated to Evanston from Tennessee, and his mother, Gertrude Bell, came from Virginia. They married in Evanston in 1900. His father died in 1925; his mother lived to be eighty-four.

Bo’s family first lived on Elmwood Avenue near Lake Street, then moved to the 1700 block of Lyons, east of Darrow, where they were living when Bo started to school at Foster School. Foster School was integrated then, and Bo went there from kindergarten through eighth grade. Mr. Boyer, the Foster School gym teacher, was also employed at Foster Field across the street from the school. It was on the playground that Bo acquired an early interest in sports, and he participated in all sports at Foster Field: softball, football, and ice skating.

Price worked as a cobbler at a nearby shoe shop

After completing eighth grade, Bo attended Washburn Trade Institute in Chicago, where an older sister was also going. He was planning to be a cobbler. Washburn Institute is now Dunbar Vocational High School on Chicago’s South Side. When I inquired why he went to Chicago for high school when there was one right here in Evanston he replied, “Because there were better opportunities for blacks at Washburn than those available at Evanston Township High School.” In fact, he related how many black families sent their children to boarding schools in other states to avoid the racism of Evanston High. The policy in effect at Evanston Township High School at that time allowed only one black athlete on the field at a time.

However, there were ample opportunities for blacks at Foster Field, with its organized competitive teams in both football and baseball. Their reputation for performance brought scouts from black colleges to recruit athletes at Foster Field. During this time the park captured all the city championships between the other parks, mainly Boltwood (Crown) and Chandler Parks.

In December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress declared war on Germany and Japan. Many young Evanston black men were drafted, including Bo and his six brothers; they served in the army, all seven at the same time. After being inducted at Fort Sheridan, Bo received basic training at Fort Custer in Michigan, then Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. The military was segregated, so many blacks, including Bo, were trained to be quartermasters, whose primary responsibility was keeping the all-white infantry supplied. Little did Bo know that the skills acquired at this time would be instrumental in preparing thousands of young black soldiers to return to civilian life. In the military Bo acquired the discipline and determination that would be the foundations for his future success in training youngsters. He remembers the trains segregated by race for troops being sent to fight the same war. Eventually Bo arrived in Hampton, Virginia, where he boarded the Queen Elizabeth I cruise liner turned troop transport ship to sail with 20,000 other soldiers headed for the battlefields of Europe. The trans-Atlantic crossing took five days. They sailed unescorted, hoping to avoid the German U-boats (submarines). They traveled northeast near Iceland, a circuitous route, and landed in Glasgow, Scotland.

Immediately the quartermasters started stockpiling supplies for the invasion of France. While in Great Britain, Bo visited English cities, including Liverpool and London. The black soldiers could go into town only on alternate days when the white soldiers weren’t furloughed. Since all the officers were white, one remarked that if his grandmother knew that he was giving passes to black men to go date white women she would turn over in her grave. One of Bo’s buddies received his pass and commented to the white officer, “Spin, Granny, spin.” Bo remembers the German bombing raids on London, where they had to live in the subways.

The invasion of Europe began on D-Day June 6, 1944. The casualties were enormous, and Bo’s unit, the Fifth Infantry, had to encamp in Bivouac for several months.

Bo saw action in Belgium and eventually in the Battle of the Bulge, from December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945. He was injured by shrapnel and medically evacuated. White boys with similar injuries were returned to the States, Bo was returned to the front lines. Since the casualties were so high, members of the quartermaster corps were given a two-week crash course and sent to the front beside the white infantry. The army was unofficially integrated. However, upon return, the blacks who served as infantrymen were remanded to their quartermaster positions before returning to the States.

The white infantry were awarded the Presidential Commendation for their services in the Battle of the Bulge; the black quartermasters were not given any official recognition until after World War II, when they were decorated by the French government with La Croix de Guerre, or the Legion of Honor. While serving in Europe, Sergeant Bo Price had the opportunity to occasionally encounter other black Evanstonians, and he ran into one of his brothers upon his departure from Marseilles, France, to return to the States.

Bo Price was discharged from the armed services in 1946 at Fort Sheridan and returned to Evanston. He held several jobs before securing employment with the state of Illinois. He continued his athletic activities by joining the Foster Field Evanston Rams in 1947. The team was coached by William Johnson.

Price leading a housing protest march c1960s

One day he went to Jody Clay, a black Evanston shoe repairman, to have his uniform altered. Clay offered to repair the uniform for free if Bo would join the Snell Post of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). There had been a previous black chapter of the American Legion here in Evanston, but several veterans had organized a new chapter named for the first black Evanstonian killed in World War II, William Snell. The previous American Legion had a drill team, and the members of the new organization were interested in organizing another team. It was felt that Bo, due to his young age, would be able to identify better with the young men who would specialize in precision drill and rifle handling. Bo started with several young men, including Charles Thomas, Paul Wilson, Edwin Jourdain III, William Dawson, and Chris Gilbert. Bo inculcated his high expectations in these drill team members and emphasized self-discipline. They accepted his challenge and soon became famous throughout the state.

The Vanguards drill team

The legacy of excellence was forged. First called the VFW Drill Team, their name became recognized for the group’s expertise and they performed at halftime at the Chicago Cardinals National Football League and halftime at the Chicago Stadium for the Harlem Globetrotters. The name of the drill team changed to the Gay Blades Drum and Bugle Corps in 1969.

In 1978, the name changed to The Pride of Evanston Drum and Bugle Corps. Bo’s drill team integrated the Evanston Fourth of July Parade down Central Street and became the first black championship drill team in Ilinois, therefore breaking down barriers in Evanston, Chicago, and Springfield. Evanston Mayor John R. Kimbark (1953–1962) stated, “If the drill team can’t march in the Fourth of July parade, then there won’t be any parade.” This legacy of excellence continued and Bo won his first national championship in Miami, Florida, in 1957.

The rise from our community at Foster Field to national prominence was accomplished through a combination of community support, wealthy Evanstonians, masterly training, practice, mentoring, and illustrious and innovative motivation emphasizing high self-esteem.

Bo’s most ardent supporter from the community was Ms. Fanny Lazar, the owner of the famous Fanny’s Restaurant. Ms. Lazar sponsored Bo’s only birthday party at Fleetwood/Jourdain.

Bo’s recollection of that first national championship was mostly of the support of the parents and participation by so many high-achieving young people. The majority of that championship group attended and graduated from college, producing principals, certified public accountants, schoolteachers, business people, and attorneys who returned and contributed to our community.

This significant contribution, the first national championship of a black drill team group, has been immortalized by a sculpture in the foyer of Fleetwood/Jourdain Community Center.

Bo has similarly been recognized by the naming of a street (Foster Street from Darrow to Ashland) in his honor. Only three other individuals have received this recognition in our community; it is a small but significant tribute to an individual who has contributed so much and who mastered the art of training, mentoring, and motivating young people. Bo continued in this effort by sponsoring a girl’s drum and bugle corps and color guard. Some participants are the grandchildren of his famous “57” unit.

Mr. Price and neighborhood Brownies

What is Bo Price’s response to the current plight of our community? He summarizes in one word: “parenting.” Most Evanstonians are experiencing the fallout of second- and third-generation single teen parenting. At a recent workshop that Bo attended, sponsored by Neighbors at Work, he emphasized that the most important years for establishing learning skills are the formative years, one to three years old. By that time a child has established his learning processes for the rest of his life.

What we need now are parenting classes for our young people who are parents. Says Bo, “It is frustrating to observe all the accomplishments that my generation made and to see young people not taking advantage of the opportunities in our community.”

The loss of our neighborhood school has been a major reason for the breakdown in our community today.

Let’s hope that this is the last generation in Evanston to experience a wandering in the wilderness for forty years like the Jews who were liberated from Egypt. Like Moses and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bo has shown us the Promised Land and the only thing left is for us to take possession of the land.

 

Note: This article was originally written for Shorefront on March 8, 2004. The article has been slightly revised to take into account dates and some tenses. Allen “Bo” Price passed away May 1, 2009—one month before his birthday—after a sustained fight with lung and heart disease. The article originaly appeard in the printed quarter Shorefront Journal, Volume 9, No. 1, 2009. Photo of Price as a cobbler ©1998 courtesy of Marina Samovsky/marinaphoto.com. Photo of Price marching by Charles Johnson

Robert Johnson: An Entrepreneur in Spirit

—by Joi-Anissa Russell

Mr. Johnson in his office at Sears

Not wanting to be late, I leave my home at 1:40 p.m. and enjoy a relatively quiet ride over to Mr. Bob Johnson’s home on Barton. I check my I-Pod recorder again and ring the doorbell of his town home. A tall, slender gentlemen opens the door and I blurt out, “Hello, Mr. Barton.” Well, honestly, what a great first introduction. “I mean Mr. Johnson.”

Mr. Johnson is very unassuming. He opens the door and smiles sweetly. “May I take your coat, please?” I take a sweeping glance around his front room. The room is very unassuming as well. Oscar Peterson, a Canadian jazz artist, is playing softly in the background. There is a rose scent wafting through the first floor. The neutral colors of the couch and carpet are settling.

Mr. Johnson eases onto one end of a rose colored couch and I onto the other end. He is at ease. He is casually dressed. This is home. These are his treasures. And the interview begins.

Mr. Johnson began his career at the Chicago Housing Authority. Although he has a background in sociology and history, he begins in management at the CHA after attending DuSable High School and Roosevelt College. He meets Rose, and in 1961 they are married. Somewhere in between a marriage and a career, he has two children. Needing and wanting his children to grow up in a diverse, educated community, he moves his family to Evanston in 1972 to Dewey and Oakton and eventually, in 1979, to Barton Street.

It is important to understand that Mr. Johnson is an entrepreneur in spirit. After leaving the CHA, he spent twenty-five years with Sears, Roebuck and Co. in management, working his way up to Vice President of Merchandising. The first and major challenge was one of pioneering.

Article on Mr. Johnson that appeared in Ebony Magazine

“I started in 1965 when Sears had four African Americans in the executive trainee program and had 4,000 executives. These four were the first. It was a shock for people to see us. The reactions were quite individual. The company did not take a strong stand and just introduced the program. The responses we received were quite insulting and some were very progressive.

“As a buyer, I traveled extensively in Pacific Rim countries and Europe. In the Pacific Rim, I saw the beginning of the industrialization of Asia and saw them emerging as important factors in world commerce. Europe was beginning to lose business to the Pacific Rim and we were winding down exports from primarily Spain and France.”

 It is important for an individual to remain rooted in the community

In a culture that did not necessarily support four African American executive trainees, how, I ask Mr. Johnson, did he manage to achieve his success— thriving professionally and socially?

“I have been asked that question a lot. It is important for an individual to remain rooted in the community that she or he identifies with. The job is not the person. The work community is not home. It is important to maintain your close relationships with friends, family, and your community ties.

“Socially, I always knew I was at work. There was never a point where you could relax and assume that you were in a nonwork environment if engaged in a work-associated activity.”

Packaging Company c. 1990

Retiring in 1990, he and his daughter bought a packaging company in Atlanta, Georgia. While there, they improved upon flexible packaging material for Frito-Lay, Hewlett-Packard, and Proctor & Gamble, among a host of others. You are probably most familiar with this type of packaging for potato chips.

In the interest of pursuing additional technology means for a large customer base, their company moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Mr. Johnson’s goal was to retire within five years after moving to Memphis, leaving the company in his daughter’s capable hands. However, she had different plans and left the company after four years.

I have always been interested in history and our history

“Running a company is a full-time business and sometimes more than full-time,” Mr. Johnson states. After several years of managing the business, Mr. Johnson retired for a second time in 2007 and pursued his love of collecting historical documents. His unwavering dedication to building and having his own business is also apparent in his collection, which includes several authentic maps, slave trade papers, and a number of documents from the early 1700s. Its importance to Mr. Johnson?

“I have always been interested in history and our history. And the present and therefore the future are largely determined by history. So developing a better understanding of what we have gone through as African American people is very important because it helps to explain where we are today and the nature of our current challenges.”

One map from 1776 details the coastline of the Ivory Coast and Ghana, illustrating the various sites where slave castles were built. These slave castles allowed slave traders to come to one location, load their ships with slaves, conduct business, and then set sail for either South America or the Caribbean. In yet another map from roughly the same period, one will see the South Carolinian coast where plantations were built along the river. This allowed the plantation owners to ship their cotton production to the coast and off to textile mills in the North and sometimes England.

Mr. Johnson explains the significance of the maps as if a professor in a lecture hall. “You will see here that many of these points show where ships could be anchored safely and slaves delivered to the plantations.” The earliest of the three maps show how the African tribes fought and secured slaves for their own growth. This type of slave trade between Africans is not what is typically thought of when you hear the word slavery in America.

It is important to note that on a trip to a South Carolina plantation documenting a family’s life in the 1830s, a docent explains the children’s education, their travels, the wealth—but oddly enough, there is no mention of the slaves that kept the home in order. Mr. Johnson says it was as if they were “sanitizing history.” As he notes the exclusion to the docent, she reviews her notes and shares that she is not certain why this information is not included; she points him to the local library for additional information. So you see, these maps and documents are of great importance to Mr. Johnson, they show that a history of slave trade existed and that lives were affected now well into 2010.

“I am certain that there is residual racism today. It is apparent in the prison system where the population is 75 percent men of color and, to be specific, mostly Black men. Somehow the community has not instilled the importance of education. And then African American men are faced with racism in education, the police force and job opportunities. These additional hurdles are truly obstacles to overcome but do not take the responsibility away from Black men, who need to get beyond racism. A difficult task, but it can be done, as many recent examples of successful Black men demonstrate. The struggle must be fought on a higher plane and that is with education.”

When asked if integration has played a role in the destruction of the Black family, Mr. Johnson pauses. “Integration was necessary. It had to happen. However, with integration, Blacks must compete with other Americans as well as globally.” This was not the case in the 1960s. In 2010, the opportunities are there, but the obstacles have grown as competition for jobs has increased. Understanding technology is critical and makes the stakes higher, Mr. Johnson observes.

Mr. Johnson considers each question, reflects, then responds. As a former vice president at Sears, he has seen much good and some challenges in countries around the world. So with authentic slave trade maps, an illustrious career in corporate America, a beautiful home, and great jazz music to settle the soul, what is this man’s greatest accomplishment? He smiles widely and assuredly, “My happy, functional children and grandchildren are my greatest accomplishment.” Considering this response, everything else could be assumed immaterial.

 

Source: Mr. Johnson was interviewed in his home on Saturday, April 24, 2010, by Joi-Anissa Russell. Images and articles courtesy of Mr. Johnson. The article first appeared in the quarterly Shorefront Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall 2010.