INTERVIEW NO. 5 JOHNNIE BOOKER

Johnnie represented Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. at homecoming in her junior year at Hampton University.

I was born in Forsyth, Georgia, and moved to Fort Valley, Georgia, at three years old. My grandfather was a chef at Fort Valley State University. My mother was a nurse. She was one of the only Black nurses in the area. My father was a welder. He was actually working on the World Trade Center when he died.

Since my grandfather was working on campus, they gave campus housing. So, I went to the campus nursery school and what they call the demonstration school, which was really the lab school on campus. In fact, I enrolled myself. I’ve always been rather precocious. And the school was next door to my grandparents. So, I would go over and play with the children. And my mother being a young person with a new baby … you know, my sister was a baby. So my mother was happy for me to find some way to go play, I’m sure. And, you know, times were free … Children could roam at that point. And I went over and I told the lady, that teacher, that my mother said I could come to school, and that she lived next door. And so they enrolled me in school, and my mother didn’t know it until I came and told her that I was in a play and I had to have a pink dress and Shirley Temple curls. I told her at about three o’clock—she had to produce by six. It happened, though!

So you know, like I said, my grandmother had a cafe, my grandfather was a chef. Then, my grandfather retired from the school, and he worked in the cafe too. So, I continued, and then I finished. My last school went to the second grade, I think. So then, you had to transfer to public school, which was all Black. I went to segregated schools. All of my schools were segregated, you know. At four years old, I was in what was considered kindergarten today. And so, that put me one year ahead. And so when I went to public school, they tested me, and they put me in the fourth grade. I never went to the third grade. I was two years ahead, and I finished high school at 16.

During that period, my grandmother was very conscientious. And she would talk to me all the time. I never had a self-esteem problem relative to my color, being Black. She would tell me that if I got my education, and did well in the world, and even before that, that there was no one in the world better than me. That white people had an advantage because of their color, but that did not mean that they were better than me.

So I started from that point, in my mind, and in my heart, because that’s what I was taught constantly. So, we lived in an all-Black community—my mother, my sister, and I. I walked past the white school to get to my school, which was like three miles away, every morning. I understood the rules. But I was protected from the rules. Even though there were rules, I didn’t feel that they really applied to me. And my grandmother used to say to me that white people were stupid. They don’t want us to eat at their restaurant, but green is the color, so they can eat at mine. Long as they got the money!

I never felt inferior. But I did have a resentment. I resented having to read out of books that had somebody else’s name in it, because the books that the white kids had the year before, they passed them on to us. The desk had somebody else’s name carved in it. And, you know, we went to school in some barracks. They were old army barracks that had big stoves in there, but white people had the brick buildings. We had one brick building, but we had these little satellite classrooms. But the teachers were very good. And they taught us Black history. And we did have the advantage of the college because the activities that they had at the college, we could also attend on occasion. And I remember Mary McLeod Bethune coming to the college. And they brought her to our campus, and we lined up. And she patted us on the heads and shook our hands. Yes, that was quite an experience.

The college made the difference. I had some good teachers, and then I had some teachers who were kind of prejudiced towards children whose parents were not professional. And everybody that I’ve known that had gone to these segregated schools, they say that they experienced that as well. In fact, they told me: I was too Black to be queen. Homecoming Queen. A teacher told me that, and she broke the rules.

We had two sections of the 12th grade. Each section chose a person to run. I was chosen in my section. They told the girl in the other section that her parents didn’t have enough money; now remember, these were teachers doing this. Said the girl didn’t have enough money, her parents didn’t have enough money. So she should decline in favor of a very fair-skinned girl with long hair in my section. And they broke the rules.

And the girl said, okay. You know, she was afraid of the teachers. And they told the freshman class members, and they kept telling people, that they’d never seen a queen as Black as me, and that I was too Black to be queen. So I lost. But I was the runner-up. And my mother said to me: “Don’t be upset about that. And don’t be angry with the girl. The teachers broke the rules. But you are going to be the sharpest thing on the floor!”

My mother spent every dime she had to make sure that I was dressed to the nines.

But that didn’t bother me. I was always very outspoken, and I went to the teachers and said, “It is sad that you all, who are supposed to be training leaders of tomorrow, would break the rules, first of all.” Then, I turned to the other one and said, “And what are you going to tell your daughter, who’s blacker than me?” They just looked at me and said, “Oh, she’s always been so fresh.” So, you know, those were the kinds of things that happened in the Black community during that period.

We went to dances. We had dances, and got together in people’s homes because we didn’t really have any recreational activities. We had no city-based recreational activities. We had no recreation centers or anything that Black people could go to. So, we did it at home or at the school. I went to camp. I went to an Episcopal camp that was not too far from Fort Valley, and with kids from all over town. And I played in the band and we’d go to band clinics and we’d travel with the football team. That was fun to us. And we didn’t have any public swimming pool that we could go to, so we would go swimming in the creek that was not too far from Fort Valley.

Johnnie and some high school classmates.

We traveled within Georgia, but once we played at the Bud Billiken Parade in Chicago! We raised money and went to Chicago. And my mother was the chaperone. We stayed in a hotel. But we mainly traveled in Georgia, basically. They used to have what they call a band clinic with kids from all over Georgia. They would come to Fort Valley to the college for the statewide band clinic, and I met a lot of friends, people there that are still my friends today, from other cities.

Because my grandmother would say to me that white people were stupid, I’m 13, and I said to my friends, “Let me show you how stupid white people are.” We went to the Dairy Queen. Now, everybody ordered from the middle window. But white people pay to the right. And Black people pay to the left. I didn’t even have $1 in my pocket. There were three of us. And I said, “I want 12 hamburgers, 12 milkshakes, and 12 orders of French fries.” And they fixed it. And then I decided to go to the white window to pay. And they said, “You know, you can’t pay here. You got to get over there.” So I said, “Well keep it, then!” And we ran.

Everybody was ordering from the same line, but then you have to go to a different line to pay. That’s how ignorant it was. That’s what I was showing them. Because my grandmother had told me that this whole idea of discrimination was ignorant. And then you know, we had bathrooms and they would say “White Ladies,” and then “Colored Women.” Note the difference. Ladies and women. And the water would say “White.” And we’d go and turn the water on and say, “Oh, have you ever seen any white water? Let me look at white water. Let me look at colored water!”

So I was always pushing the envelope. We had to go upstairs to the movie theater. We paid 9 cents; white people paid 15 cents. And we would go upstairs and we would throw things down on them and spit down on them.

I was kind of fearful. I convinced my stepfather—my mother had gotten married by then—that I had turned 16 when I had really turned 14. All he knew was that I’d had a birthday. And my mother was at work, and I asked him, “Would you sign for me to get my license?” And he said, “Okay.” So he signed and I got my driver’s license when I was 14. My mother told me, “Well, because you’re so fresh, you’re going to be the errand girl for everybody.” But she didn’t know that that made me happy. I was happy to drive. So one of the college professors asked my grandmother if I could drive her to the train station—the train came to Fort Valley then—and take her car back home, and give my grandmother the key. So I’m in her car, I had dropped her off, and I’m driving back. I see this white man in this little rickety truck. I stopped because I didn’t want to have any trouble. So then I get to her house, and a policeman is behind me. And he said, “Get in the car.” I said, “I’m not getting in the car with you.” I’m 14, now. Said, “I’m not getting in the car with you.” Because I had seen Perry Mason, now, and I wasn’t thinking about him. I told him, “I’ll follow you.”

I was scared to death. I didn’t know what was up. So, I followed him to the police station. And when I got there, there was this white man—the man who I had stopped to let him pass, the one in the rickety truck. He said to the policeman, “I just want you to know how niggers act when they got a big car. She tried to run me off the road.”

I said, “No, I didn’t.” I asked to make a telephone call. I wasn’t going to call my mother because the glass was always full with her. I called my grandmother, who the glass was always half empty with. So, she came down. She was right downtown since her cafe was downtown anyway. And she said, “What’s going on here?” They had given me a subpoena to come to court. And my grandmother came in to talk to the police officer, and she said, “Oh, no, he’s lying.” And she took the subpoena and tore it up. Now, that scared me to death. And then she turned to the police officer and said, “When did you get to be the policeman anyway? Anything can be the policeman, long as he’s white. You used to be the iceman.” She turned to me and said, “Come on. We don’t have time for this mess. I got a business to run.” And we left, and I never heard nothing else about it! But I was surely scared to death that day.

Because, see, the sheriff ate at my grandmother’s cafe. She would always make him sit behind the potato chips stand. She wasn’t going to give him the best seat in the house. She told him, “You tell all your people, they are not to mess with my children. If they do something, you bring them to me. Or you come see me. You don’t have to bring them to me, you come see me.” So there was no problem. And plus, he confided in her about all kinds of stuff. But she said, “You know, when he talks to me, he’s just talking to Suzie in the kitchen.” Although Suzie wasn’t her name, but that was just, you know, like how they confide in their maids, like a piece of furniture.

But that incident scared me to no end! And for a little while, when I saw the police coming near the campus when I was in high school, I would be scared. But nothing ever happened from that, because, like I said, my grandmama kind of had him scared, you know … he had confided in her about stuff. I’m just going to tell you just the way she put it: “Always keep something on a cracker in your hip pocket.” My grandmother was a mess!

My grandmother had saved her money and opened the cafe. She opened it in the mid-’40s, and kept it open until the mid-’60s, ’65 or ’66. It had a counter with stools, and it had one row of tables, about five tables, with about four chairs. And the kitchen was kind of over to the side. And then she had a room in the back where she had her telephone and a bed, because that was our babysitter. We had to come from school and go to the cafe. So, she had a bed back there where we could rest, or she could rest if she got tired before going home. The cafe, the building … it was a long place. It was kind of long.

She served soul food. The whole family had to help out there. My sister liked being in the kitchen. I didn’t. So, I waited tables and cleaned up, swept up and kept the tables clean. I knew everybody’s business in town, because I would listen to grown folks’ conversation.

It was a neighborhood hotspot because everybody came. Field hands. People who worked in the factories. The college professors, you name it. Everybody came there. It was called Rogers’ Cafe. My grandmother was Johnnie Mae Rogers. She served lunch and dinner. She didn’t serve breakfast. She closed because she was getting old. And she’d kind of gotten sickly.

I knew everybody’s business, but she would say to me, “Whatever you hear in here, you keep it. Because it stays here. This is the way I make my business; it’s my money. We cannot talk about it. It’s all our secret,” she said. And so that’s what we did. You know?

I saw my maternal grandmother every day. My paternal grandmother lived in Atlanta. That was about 100 miles away from us. I didn’t really see her that often. In fact, I only saw her when my daddy came to Georgia, maybe once a year. But she worked for white people, you know, cleaning and cooking for them in her young years.

In fact, her father was the product of a white man. And they’re kind of wealthy in Forsyth, Georgia. And she worked for her cousin. Her white cousin. And my mother said that every holiday.… My grandmother’s father died very young, and her mother did too. And she was raised by her aunt. But my mother said that every holiday there would be a big box on their porch. Of gifts and clothes. So, the white man acknowledged him then, and he had their name. Had his name.

My grandmother accompanied the woman she worked for to the premiere of Gone with the Wind. And all of her memorabilia, when her house was hit with a tornado, all of her memorabilia was gone in the trunk that she had. But my grandmother was very fair, so she drove with her because she needed somebody to ride with her. And she told my grandmother, “They won’t know what you are.” Talking about her being Black.

Could she pass? I don’t think she could have passed. She wasn’t that fair to me, but white people don’t know, you know what I mean? Black people can spot Black people easier than white people can. She couldn’t pass to me. But she said that the woman told her, you know, they won’t know. So she went with her.

My paternal grandmother was Mamie Brooks Merryweather. I don’t really know a whole lot about her, my paternal grandmother, because I didn’t grow up with her. In fact, my maternal grandmother did not like my paternal grandmother! She would say, “They didn’t come from nothing, they ain’t nobody, they haven’t been nowhere, ain’t going nowhere, and ain’t doing nothing!” I mean, you know, that was my maternal grandmother. As I say, she was a mess! But, I saw her every day of my life during that period.

I didn’t visit Atlanta a lot. But I, you know, would come up. I had a cousin up there that I would come up to see periodically, but didn’t visit a lot. But I tell you what, that was also the time when Black people couldn’t try on clothes in the store. My grandmother was a dresser. She was the first person I ever saw wear rhinestone earrings in the middle of the day. And she wore big furs, you know, big suits and coats and big fur collars. And there was a store called Goldman’s in Macon, Georgia. It was a boutique. And they had gorgeous clothes. And although we—you know, Black people—couldn’t try the clothes on, they would call my grandmother. And she would go after the store closed, and we could try on clothes then. Isn’t that stupid?

When I was eight years old, my grandmother got the Atlanta Daily World, the Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier. Black newspapers. I went to the college library and I researched other Black newspapers and ordered them. It was a little store that had magazines, and I went up there and I ordered five other newspapers: the Washington Afro, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the LA Sentinel, Amsterdam News, and it was one other one. I can’t remember the other ones. I don’t know, but it was five additional newspapers. And I read newspapers. I called it “Reading About People in Faraway Places,” because I knew that there was life beyond Fort Valley. And I wanted to experience life beyond Fort Valley. People thought I was a little kooky.

My grandmother paid us for working in the cafe. And it wasn’t much, but you know, she paid us. She wanted us to manage our money. She used to say, “You have to save in the spring because the winter is coming.” But I took my money and I bought newspapers. And I ordered those newspapers from this little store called The Candy Kitchen. It was two Greek brothers who owned it. And then I got Jet and I got Ebony, as well. So I knew about life beyond Fort Valley by reading. And I would imagine myself being in these different places. So, you know, that was a way of entertaining myself and reaching beyond my environment.

We would go visit New York to visit my father in the summer. It was just a great big place. We went to Coney Island. We went to all the different sites. And his father lived in New York too. That’s why he went to New York. His father lived in Harlem. They lived in Harlem. So we went to New York to see him. Oh yeah, we enjoyed it. We didn’t go every summer, because he would come, and we would rotate it. Like he would come to Georgia. And then we would go to New York, because they would put a little tag on us and put us on a train. My sister and me.

We would go on the train, but we didn’t go every summer. And we would go for maybe like a week to 10 days, and then we’d come back. My uncle worked on the railroad. He worked on the railroad from Atlanta to New York, and we would end up being on the train with him. He was a dining car waiter. And I know we used to be on the train with him.

He was really my mother’s stepbrother. We would go from Fort Valley to Atlanta, and then we would change trains. We were in the Black car. And we would always go when he was going. Yeah, that was the way we went. And he saw to it that we got from that train to his train. I can’t remember what it was called.… The Nancy Hanks … or the Silver Comet. It was something like that. I can’t remember the name of the train.

Did you know anyone who was lynched or a victim of any other form of racial violence?

Lynching? I knew a man who they said was killed in jail with his hands handcuffed behind him, saying he was trying to break out of jail. That was a lynching. That was the only person that I knew. I remember hearing about it in the cafe. But sometimes I would filter some of that mean stuff out of my mind. I don’t know. I remember that his name was Mr. Big Boy Scott. They said that he was trying to break out of jail. And people in the cafe said, “How could he break out of jail with his hands handcuffed behind him?” And they killed him. I didn’t know of anybody that was hanging in a tree or anything like that, but there are all kinds of ways to go about lynching.

We didn’t have a whole lot of violence in my area. I think maybe the college had something to do with it. I remember we had a Black doctor in Fort Valley. And he was trying to get a patient into the VA hospital. And that was during the time when you had to say “Operator” and you had to give the operator the number and all of that. There was no dialing. And he heard somebody say something about “It’s nobody but that nigger doctor,” or something like that. And he said, “What’s wrong with you? I’m trying to get this patient settled.” You know, he “talked back,” as they say. He talked back to her. And he had a farm and when he came home, all of his paint and everything was poured out all over his farm, and his tractor and truck had been damaged. He left Fort Valley. And I don’t blame him.

I left Fort Valley and went to college at 16. I turned 16 in July, and went to college in September. I went to Hampton. The principal of my high school, and the elementary school too … he was.… We had one Black principal here. He went to Hampton. He and his wife went to Hampton, and then their children were going to Hampton, and one of his youngest daughters was my friend that I met in nursery school. So I said, “I’m going to Hampton.”

It was great fun. I did protests there at Hampton. Hampton was the second school to protest after A&T. But Hampton didn’t make the kind of news that A&T did. But my sign said, “Khrushchev can eat here and I can’t.” Khrushchev was head of Russia at that time. I thought that was such a cool sign.

And my girlfriend and I, actually three of us, decided we were going to go integrate this tea room at this department store in Newport News. We dressed up. We dressed up and went to the tea room, and there was nobody sitting there. And the man came out with a big old hose and he said, “If y’all don’t get out of here, I’m gonna turn this hose on you.” And then, we ran outside. Kids were protesting, you know, Woolworths and all the other places to eat. And we went outside—all our friends were out there with handcuffs on them. And they were wet from being shot with a water hose. We flew back to campus!

But I did march in all the protests at Hampton. We protested at Woolworth’s, places in the bus stations, you know, where they had places to eat, anywhere that wouldn’t let us eat there will work. All the eating facilities. In Hampton and Newport News, we would march and we would have a lawyer. The lawyers would come to the campus and talk to us about what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. They said that if they asked us to leave, then you get up and another group would come. Because if we stayed, we would be trespassing. NAACP lawyers.

They would have buses to take us into town. And we would line up two at a time at a certain site, and we would walk with our signs. And white folk would be screaming at us. “Niggers go back to Hampton,” and all kinds of stuff. I always had a football player walking with me. I was too little.

We would be out there probably about three to four hours, you know, off and on. One group would come, and one would leave. Some students didn’t participate because their parents would tell them, “Don’t do that. Don’t do this.” So they would catch it when those of us who protested would get in from downtown. People were mean to them. They would put ketchup on their clothes or something else crazy to the students that didn’t participate. It was expected that all the students would participate.

When I was sitting down at counters and everything, I was scared as the devil. I must admit that I was scared. But I didn’t show it. And they’d say, “You know you can’t eat here. We’re not serving niggers,” or whatever other things they would say. And then, the manager might come and say, “You got to get out of here, ’fore I call the police.” So we would get up when they told us to leave. We’d leave, and then somebody else would come in. It would be at least 20 to 25 people, but you could only sit at the counter; see at Woolworth’s, they only had about 8 to 10 stools. They weren’t that big. We would go every weekend.

I never got the hose turned on me. Thank God. And nobody spat on me or threw eggs at me. I didn’t get it, but others did. Maybe I was at a different place in the line, you follow me?

I was never arrested, and it’s interesting, when I got my job at Department of Welfare in New York, that was one of the questions they asked.

I protested mainly my junior and senior year, because I finished in 1961. My mother was worried about me protesting. But my grandmother thought it was wonderful! My grandmother thought it was so wonderful that I did that. And she’d tell me, “Call me and tell me what happened!”

I was always against what the white people were doing. I was always against segregation. In my mind, I just knew it wasn’t right. And that we should have some fairness. Because remember, I had read all these papers, now. For years, I’d read all these papers. I knew that stuff was going on all over the world outside of my little neck of the woods in Fort Valley, Georgia. Because a lot of times, people were afraid to do that protesting in Fort Valley, because they were state employees at the college. And the teachers were state employees—county and state employees. They would be fearful for their jobs. And the only other place they had, people worked in Warner Robins, which was an Air Force base. They worked there. And in my little town, they built … you know those school buses that have Blue Bird on the back? They were made in Fort Valley. So people worked there, too. Or they worked in the fields, or they worked in the packing houses, you know. So their jobs … they were fearful of losing their jobs. But there were no protests really going on while I was in Fort Valley when I lived there. Because Dr. King had not started the whole movement at that point.

After graduation, I worked for the Department of Welfare in New York, then I came to Washington, DC, after that. New York was just a bit much for me, particularly the Welfare Department. But with my recipients, my clients, I gave everything that was on the books that they could have. And I had a whole lot of families who were on drugs. Heroin was king then. And I had families of drug addicts, basically. And coming from Fort Valley, and then Hampton, I didn’t know nothing about that! So it was a little bit rough for me.

Then, I had immigrants, mostly Polish, because I worked at East 68th Street. And they would say to me, “Are you one of them spics or one of them niggers?” And I would say, “I’m your social worker, and guess what? It will take me 20 minutes to get to my office and 10 minutes to close your damn case!”

The first time I encountered discrimination with regard to housing was in New York City. I was trying to get an apartment, and we’d go look at apartments that we would find in the paper. And we would get there and they’d say they weren’t renting. This is before Fair Housing, now. So one of my colleagues and I said, “Okay, well, let’s get our friend to go see it.” So we get the white girl who worked with us to go and look at the apartment. And they told her it was open. They had told us it was rented already. And we said, “That’s ridiculous, that’s discrimination!” But we didn’t know anything about any fair housing. So that was the first time I had ever encountered that. Because back home in the South, I knew where to live. I already knew that I was supposed to live in the Black community. But it was in New York City. And I was discriminated against for housing.

I had moved in with my dad when I first got to New York, but my dad was so strict. If a guy called and asked, “Is Johnnie there?” my dad would say, “This is a home, not a bar. You ask ‘May I speak to Johnnie,’ not ‘Is Johnnie there.” Which is right! But he was real strict, so that’s why I was looking for an apartment. After leaving New York, I moved to Washington, DC. And I couldn’t find a job. And I went to Adam Clayton Powell’s office to get help finding a job. The woman said, “Well, the congressman gets requests like this all the time. Give us your resume.” I did.

But then I went to the guard and asked, “Could you tell me who the congressman is from the Third District of Georgia?” Fort Valley was in the Third District at that time. And he told me, and added, “But he’s a hard segregationist.” He told me that his name was Tic Forrester. So I went to his office, and I said, “I’m here to see the congressman.” They told me that he was on the floor of the House. I asked if I could wait, and they say yes. So when he came in, and he walked to his office, I followed him. By the time he got around to his desk, I was seated in front of him. And he said, “Well.” He said, “How can I help you?” I gave him my resume and told him that I needed a job, I couldn’t find a job, and that they told me that I should come see my congressman. So I told him I was from Fort Valley originally. He said, “Do you know the Pearsons and the Dukes?” Now, they were the people who were the big peach growers. They were the wealthy people. I said, “Yeah, my grandma used to work for them.” Which was a lie.

He said, “And you can’t find no job? You educated, you come from good stock, your folk worked for the Pearsons and the Dukes, and you presentable. I’m gonna find you a job.”

So, he called his staff—a staff person—in, gave him my resume, and told him to find me a job. They had just passed the Manpower Development and Training Act. That was a Wednesday when I went to see him. Saturday morning, they called me and told me to report to this building at 9 o’clock on Monday. So, I had a job! And I started out as a GS-9 [author’s note: a particular federal pay grade], teaching illiterate adults under the Manpower Program. How about that? A 9 at that time was unheard of for Black people.

It was very interesting. I didn’t know a damn thing about teaching no adults, no illiterate adults. Some of them could read, some of them were functional illiterate. So I had to be very creative. I interviewed all my students; every one of them was older than me. I interviewed all my students one by one. And I made books up for each of them. I mean, it was hard work. But I wrote about their family: “My name is so and so, I live at this place, I have so many children, their names are,” and so on. Each person had their own book. And we then would move up to different things. It was quite gratifying. I really enjoyed it.

I was working there when Kennedy was killed. Because one of my students had a transistor radio, and she was in the back listening. And I said, “Why, you’re listening to a radio in this classroom?” And she turned it up, and it was talking about the president was dead. So that was very memorable to me, because that was where I was the day he was killed. Teaching. But I enjoyed my students. And I had people who could not write their names, so we’d practice that every day. They got paid to come. And I would tell them stuff like, “If you put an X on your check, I’m gonna stop your checks!” You see, that gave them incentive to learn how to write their names. I had to do all kinds of creative stuff, because I didn’t know nothing about this! But by the time they left, they could write their names, they could write their children’s names, they could read a few things. Some of them could read much better than others.

But we had a good time, and when they finished their program, I took them as a farewell to the Watergate Inn. Before the Watergate apartments and hotel was put up, there used to be a Watergate Inn. It was the place where the congressmen and everybody went. And I collected money and took all of them to lunch to the Watergate Inn. I told them to dress up, but don’t put on hats. Dress up like you’re going to church, but don’t put on a hat. And I told the men to dress up in suits. So it was real gratifying. And from there, I went to work with the district government. And then, I got married during that period, got divorced, then came back to Georgia—to Atlanta—and went to graduate school.

In graduate school, as my field placement, I was assigned to the Southern Regional Council. And I sat in the hall. My desk was in the hall. This was my internship, now. My desk was in the hall, and the office across from my desk was John Lewis. The office above me was Julian Bond, and the one we worked for was Vernon Jordan. So you know, I’ve been involved in civil rights all my life.

My school was Atlanta University School of Social Work. And I was in community and administration. So that’s why we were at a place like Southern Regional Council, which was a council set up for race relations in the South. And Vernon ran the voter education project for the South. And then, after I finished graduate school, I was in Atlanta when King was killed. In fact, I was working in the church helping to organize his funeral. I volunteered to go to West Hunter Church, and I was on the telephone. And I organized. Before he died, he was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. And a part of my project for social work was to organize the students—Black and white—to work with the Poor People’s Campaign. The Southern wing of the Poor People’s Campaign. So I did that as a project for school. From there, I moved to California, and worked for the National Urban League. Because Vernon, by that time, he had become head of the Urban League, and he asked me to join him. Well, I was first with the Community Redevelopment Agency, which was the urban renewal agency. I developed a social services program for them, and worked there for about three years. Then, I went to the National Urban League. I came back to Washington and worked for the National Urban League in Washington.

And the Urban League and NAACP had sued the financial regulatory agencies for their fair housing posture. And fair housing was part of my portfolio. Fair housing, minority business, and equal employment were all part of my portfolio. And so the financial regulatory agencies—FDIC, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and the Comptroller of the Currency—had to create these civil rights positions. And they called me in. Ron Brown, you know, who used to be head of the … the one who got killed in a plane crash, remember? Well, he was my boss. So, I’ve worked for some great people. And Ron called me in and said, “We’ve determined that you need to go get one of those jobs.” Because they had to create these new jobs, you see? I didn’t know a darn thing about no Federal Home Loan Bank Board. And he said, “You go over there and interview and get the job.” And I did that, and I got the job.

I had to train examiners on how to detect discrimination in lending. I had to go to examiner school and learn how to be a bank examiner in order to develop a program, and that’s where I had my big discrimination complaint. That I lost. I did all of the development of the program, and when they wanted to make it bigger and broader, they hired a white woman over me. And I filed a discrimination complaint. ’Course, I lost. But then she left and went to HUD, after being so mean and nasty to me. And then I went to HUD later. And talk about just desserts? I became deputy assistant secretary, and she was three levels under me. And she begged me to take her because her boss was mean to her like she had been to me. And I took her. And worked her like a junkyard dog. I wasn’t nasty to her. But I worked her. And we did a lot of stuff, good stuff.

Then, I became vice president of Resolution Trust where we cleaned up the savings and loan scandal. My job was to develop a program to assure that minority- and women-owned businesses got contracts. And we did 48 percent under my program. Nobody had ever reached 48 percent. So you see, I’ve done civil rights kind of stuff all of my life.

We were in an encounter group session, believe it or not, with the white students [when the news of Dr. King’s murder broke]. And somebody knocked on the door and said, “You’ve got to break this up, you got to get out.” I said, “We can’t get out, leave us alone.” Because we were really dealing with some Black and white issues, because we had white students. But we were all students dealing with things in our little encounter group. But they said, “You’ve got to get these white people out of here”—whoever that was knocking on the door said—“because the folk are getting ready to riot.” So, we took our coats and put them over their heads and walked them through the campus to the dormitories and to their cars so they could get out of there. And it was just chaotic.

It’s hard to even relive that. So then, they wanted to organize. They were saying that West Hunter Street Baptist Church, which was right down the street at that time, was going to be the headquarters. So I volunteered for that. But my friends were getting ready to get on a plane—they wanted people to get on a plane that was going to go to Memphis to march. By then, I had a child, and they were telling me to come on and that I had to go. So I went to get on the plane, and as they would call one group, I would move backwards and let people go ahead. I wasn’t going to no Memphis!

And my friends went to the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, two of them, and stayed out there in those tents. But I did stuff here, because my son was four years old, so I couldn’t do that. And you know, we did research for them with the voter education project as students, and then, my second year, I went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to work with the Urban League, who only had two employees. So we really became the employees of the Urban League.

Later, I had to go and learn how to be a bank examiner. I went to what they call new examiner’s school. I had to learn what they do in the back of the house. There was a real smart white boy who liked to travel, so I asked him if he wanted to work with me. He knew bank examining back and forth. So we developed a real training program. And there were only two Black examiners in the country at that time. Two Black examiners.

Okay, by that time, you had the Community Reinvestment Act that was being developed. I served on the interagency task force to write the guidelines for the CRA. We had what they call the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which that was already in place through HUD, which showed the location of loans that each financial institution made; and we developed nondiscrimination guidelines. So, we had those three instruments. So when the examiners went into an institution, and they looked at the loans and the patterns of the loans using those instruments, you could tell if they had redlined certain areas if there were no loans in certain areas of the census tracts. So, they would call me. And we would set the scope of the exam: how far to look, where to look. And they would write their reports. And then, I would take it to what they call supervision. If my recommendation was that the bank be … not censored, but dealt with. I can’t remember what they call it now. This is my 80-year-old mind! I turned 80 in July.

Johnnie during her professional years.

So that’s what I did for a number of years. And after I got the program all set up, then they gave it to the white woman. But then I got it after she left. So I did consumer affairs too. So when they would close an institution, I would have to go with the examiners to make sure that the customers were really treated properly.

And so that, you know, from social work to that, was quite interesting. And then the Resolution Trust was when they closed 700 savings institutions. And we were liquidating the assets. And as I said, my job was to ensure that minorities and women got contracts. Because we had $650 billion dollars in assets. And I did 48 percent. And after.… Oh, and I sued them too.

Did you experience any discrimination in your professional roles?

Well. $5,000 was quite a bit of money to give as a bonus in government at that time. And they gave all of the vice presidents except me $5,000 and gave me three. And they were so stupid because EEO was under my portfolio too. I just called the lawyer in Washington that wins all the cases. And, in less than two weeks, I had six figures in my checking account!

Because I had to testify before Congress a lot too, see. Because, you know, this was a congressionally created agency. And so, they didn’t want me to go to Congress and say that they had discriminated against me, right. I had a good staff that got me prepared to testify. I thought at first that it would be intimidating, but they made me feel comfortable. And welcome.

Okay, so then I retired. One of the stipulations of my settlement was that I had to retire, but it was over anyway, we were transferred to FDIC, and they hated me over there anyway. But did I care? No. I’ve never really cared about what people thought about me when I was doing my work. Because let me tell you, when I was at the Resolution Trust, Congress made them put me on the policymaking committee. I was the only woman and the only minority. It was all white men. And they would try to do stuff when I would leave town, underhanded stuff, you know, behind my back, and do stuff for white people that they weren’t going to do for Black people. And I was very outspoken. One time, I told them that they thought their sheets were invisible, but that I could see them.

Also, this was before cameras. The security guard and the janitor, I’d tell them where to find the document, and they’d go get the documents and bring them to me hidden in between the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and I’d copy them. And then, they’d take them back. So I would know exactly what they were doing for white people that they weren’t doing for Black people. And they would wonder how I got that information! And there was the secretary who worked for one of the big boys who would bring me stuff she typed. She’d say, “I’m bringing you this in the name of Mother Africa!” We called her Mother Africa. I don’t know her name to this day! So, that’s how we get 48 percent. You follow me? Plus, I developed a program where if a major company was going to bid for a contract, they had to have a minimum of 10 percent minority or women participation. If they didn’t, they were noncompliant. And their bid was thrown out. They said that was unconstitutional. And if they did 25 percent, I gave them bonus points on their technical and cost proposals. And if they gave them 40 percent, they got a bigger bonus point, and if they did a joint venture, oh, it was home free. But … it might have been a little unconstitutional. But, in the federal government, you publish in the federal registry. So people can comment. So, I never made my rules final. They were interim until we went out of business. So, if they were interim, people can continue to comment on them. So, how can that be unconstitutional?

It was really interesting that my first chairman had been the chairman of American Airlines. He was a staunch Republican. And he would let me do whatever. Because he didn’t want the Congress on his butt. Because Maxine Waters would call up there and chew him out. And then, when the Democrats came in, that’s when all the “unconstitutional” stuff started coming up. In fact, they sent for me at the White House and told me that my program was unconstitutional. I said, “Well, this is interim. These are interim rules.” They sent this lawyer—Black lawyer who was very known in Washington—to tell me to cease and desist. And she was going to show me how I could change my program, which was working. And I said to her, “Go get your 12 pieces of silver and get the F out of my office.” So, they said I was crazy.

After I retired, I did consultant work with the guy who was head of procurement in the White House, and we wrote the empowerment zones, contracting rules with the Commerce Department, which eventually became what they call the HUBZone rules. And Coke recruited me to develop their supplier diversity program after they had had a discrimination complaint against them. So I developed that supplier diversity program and I stayed there for 10 years and I retired 10 years ago.

While I was in grad school, they were doing voter education for the voter education project. King was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. Okay, and I also marched in the March on Washington. The original one, and the next one. I marched in the March on Washington. I told my students—see I was working at that school then—I told my students don’t come to school tomorrow. And they were happy not to come to school! I said don’t come to school, don’t worry, it’s not going to affect your check. My friend and I went down early. And we said at first, “Oh, it’s gonna be a flop, we don’t see anybody!” It wasn’t that many people at first. And we were standing there, and Peter, Paul and Mary were performing under a tree. And we were watching them. And then we looked back and the droves of people started coming. We saw people in wheelchairs, and on crutches. I mean, just people were coming from everywhere. And yeah, we’re at the March on Washington. The original one. And then, we marched so far, we got so tired, we said, “We’re going home to finish watching on television!” But I mean, we were so excited. I mean, it was just so exciting.

And the day that Kennedy’s cortege came through Washington, my same friend … we always did everything together. We went down and it was just so crowded, we said we got to go down to see the president and see Little John John [author’s note: the president’s son] walking behind him. We got down there, and we were just way in the back. And these two officers were saying, “Let me through, let me through!” and I said, “Let’s get behind the police.” We got behind the police and walked up to the front and stopped. We were in the front row. And I told my friend, “Don’t look back, because people are going to be mad!” And we saw the cortege go past. I mean, we did a lot of stuff.

What was it like when integration happened? What were your thoughts on how it unfolded?

It was exciting to see public spaces integrate. You know, we could do new things and go explore places where we couldn’t tread before. It was exciting. But my grandmother said, “You know, integration ruined Black people. The mess they’re doing today? They never would have done that mess had they not been hanging around with white people!”

I could go to Atlanta and we could go to the movies and not go upstairs. You know, that kind of thing. We could go to the same place and pay at the same window. Everybody could use the same bathroom. I remember that I told my mom I was going to become a Freedom Rider. And she said to me, “If the crackers don’t kill you, I am. You better stay in school.”

John Lewis and I were friendly, you know, forever. And my granddaughter when she was nine, when we saw him on the Vineyard, she went to him and asked him to speak to her school. She’s a little forward, too. She went up to him at Union Chapel, and said, “Mr. Lewis, I’d like for you to come to my school to speak to us. Because I’ve read about you, and I know all the good things you’ve done.” And I said, “John, that’s my granddaughter.” And he said, “Oh, my goodness, you are just like your grandma!” And he gave her his card and told her to have her teacher write him. And what the school did—it’s an Episcopal school in New York—they made him the Absalom Jones honoree, and then they sent the children to his office. And so, of course, from then on, my grandson and granddaughter said that he was their friend. “Our friend John Lewis” is what they called him.

I didn’t attend Dr. King’s funeral. That was by invitation only, and I was a lowly student. The riots? Well, you know, the news showed every other city, but it didn’t show Atlanta. It didn’t show Atlanta rioting. It kind of kept that quiet. But I remember telling people, “Don’t burn no buildings! If you’re going to burn something, go burn the credit bureau and everybody will be free!” You know, that was before computers! Why are you going to burn your neighborhood? Burn the credit bureau. And your mama and everybody will be free.

I stayed on campus during that time, and the campus was pretty quiet. Except people were trying to volunteer as much as they could to do whatever they needed to do. You know, everybody was sad when he was killed. It was just a sad time. It was like a dark gloom was over the world, it appeared to me. It was just such a sad time.

Do you believe that Dr. King’s dream is possible in America?

At one time I did believe that Dr. King’s dream was possible here, but now I don’t know. There’s so much division. And Trump kind of was the catalyst for bringing back all of the old vestiges of hatred and racism. It saddens me to see this. I think that all of it, too, is related to us having a Black president—two terms of a Black president. Backlash. I mean, that’s a part of it. That helped to generate the hatred. Because, see, it was latent. And Trump said, you don’t have to be latent with it. Let’s bring it on out. And that’s what they did. That’s what they are doing, rather. It’s current … it’s as we speak. And all the other -isms that go along with it. I thought it could be, and I still think that it may be, and I think that we just still have to keep the faith. And go to the ballot box. That’s the only place we can get them. And they know that. That’s why they’re making all these crazy laws.

It is very scary, very scary. It’s sad, but it’s something we have to live through. But I’m very happy that my grandchildren are very clear on who they are.

People are afraid to challenge the status quo. I challenge the status quo. I have never been afraid, even when I needed my job. You have to be willing and able to stand up for what you believe. And you got to push it.

At Coke, when I first came here, white women and white men told me that if they use a minority or a woman, that they would get an inferior product. Okay? And I said to one white woman, “You know, a lot of men think that women ought to be barefoot and pregnant on the edge of town, and I think you’re one of those women that should be, if that’s the way you think.” I’m very outspoken.

And they couldn’t stand me at Coke. And I’d say to them, “Let me get the correct spelling of your name. Because if you don’t believe in this program, I think I have to report you.” I did stuff like that. And they’d say, “Oh, she’s such a bitch.” And when I was at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, there were only four Black people in managerial positions. And I was in an elevator—this was pre–Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. I was in the elevator and I felt somebody touch my butt. And I thought maybe I bumped into somebody because the elevator was crowded. And I felt it again, and turned around, and it was this white man looking cheap. And I broke his glasses on his eyes with my fist. Cut his face. Then cussed him out … I said, “You bastard. You touch me again, and I’m gonna pick up your check every two weeks.” So they labeled me as crazy. I didn’t care. I get the job done. And they knew not to mess with me.

I’ve really been that way all my life. Just like when I challenged the teachers who said I was too Black.

I grew up in the AME church. Sunday school. Vacation Bible School. I was very active in the church. And I was at the Metropolitan AME church. I was a steward, which is, you know, an officer. Ernie Green from the Little Rock Nine was there, Vernon Jordan went to that church, and Gwen Ifill. A lot of people went to that church. But anyway, I was a steward. And we planned the 160th anniversary for the church. Ernie Green and I were the chairs, Gwen Ifill was the emcee, and Bill Clinton spoke for the anniversary. Bill Clinton used to do his two prayer services at our church during his inauguration.

What message would you give to African Americans now, and in the future?

My message to them would be always believe in yourself. Always strive to do better each day. Love yourself and be true to your people and your heritage.

Johnnie as a freshman at Hampton University.