Recalling a Childhood of Segregated Schools and Libraries

Michael Johnson was born on November 13, 1956, into a city segregated by race. He grew up in a tight-knit community of African American families who lived for generations in a neighborhood a few blocks away from the public library on Queen Street. In fact, Johnson is related to one of the five young men who participated in the library sit-in of 1939, Buddy Evans. Johnson’s grandfather was one of Evans’s first cousins.

In this interview, Johnson describes how his family viewed the library, as well as what it was like to be a student in the 1960s and early ‘70s. Schools were still not fully desegregated, despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Students felt frustrated and tension was everywhere, especially in 1970 after a Black teenager was killed by a 7-Eleven manager. Johnson is now the community outreach and safe place coordinator for the City of Alexandria’s recreation department. He is also a co-founder of the Social Responsibility Group, a nonprofit organization which describes itself as “dedicated to enriching the lives of the disenfranchised,” and is leading efforts to restore and preserve the Douglass Memorial Cemetery, one of Alexandria’s historic cemeteries and the site of more than 2,000 burials of free and enslaved African Americans in the late 1800s through to the mid-1900s.

I talked with Johson on October 22, 2021, outside the Charles Houston Recreation Center in Alexandria, VA, on a site close to where Johnson grew up and where he could point to the streets where his family and neighbors lived during his school-age years. The video and conversation transcribed below is an excerpt of a longer interview and has been edited for clarity.

You have lived through a lot of change in this city. Can you tell us about your schooling and what it was like during segregation?

I went to Charles Houston Elementary School [which is now a recreation center, the site of the interview]. Prior to my family moving up here, me and my brothers—well, I was 9, my younger brother and sister were 8, and I had a couple older brothers—we moved up here from Queen Street [four blocks south]. I had lived right across the street from where Jefferson-Houston [K–8 School] is now. Then it was a school called Jefferson High School. It was all White, set up on the hill. And we used to always look over there, with just all White students.

What was it like for you and your siblings during the elementary and middle school years?

Well, this was where my father had grown up as a kid. So this was his neighborhood too. It looked different back then. It was different than when I grew up. But yeah, this is the neighborhood he came out of also. So he just moved back into a familiar setting. And my father was a groundskeeper; my mother was a cook at the famous Dixie Pig restaurant. And she just worked there for, like, about 40 years, I believe. But my mother was the only person I knew that could—well, the only one I know in my family—that could cook and bake and didn't need a recipe. You could just tell her what you wanted, and she could get it done.

So then from there I went over to Parker-Gray Middle School, and that was seventh and eighth grade and that was on Madison Street. And that was the first time I've seen a White teacher, you know? And it wasn't just one of them, it was about, like, six or seven. So we weren't really used to White teachers, because when we left Charles Houston, I'll never forget: the Superintendent*....We used to have what they call May Day [a day for celebration and performances at school]. And it was right out here, in this parking lot (but it was a bigger parking lot then, with the schools in here). And we practiced for like a month to do these dances around the lollipop pole and did little skits. And the superintendent walked over, came down the steps—because there used to be back steps to Charles Houston School—he came down the steps, walked to the parking lot, looked, turned around, and went right back out.

And we was like, as kids, we were like, “what?” I would say d***, you know? Because back then I was cussing too, but I would have said the D word, you know? I was like, “wow. He didn't even acknowledge us.”

We would just get books they used to send down here. And people my age could tell you—those that went here and to other schools—about those books. The books were like Jack and Jill, Fun with Dick and Jane, books like that. But either the front covers were ripped off or the word monkey was written in there or [the N-word]. But that's what we had to work with.

And that's why those teachers back then, I truly honor them, because they set the pace for a lot of us. My father was born here, but he couldn't go past sixth grade, you know? His father couldn't go to school at all, and his grandfather definitely better not have been reading and writing back in those days. So those are the types of things that always were in me, burning: why are people being treated this way? But we survived.

The books were like Jack and Jill, Fun with Dick and Jane, books like that. But either the front covers were ripped off or the word monkey was written in there or [the N-word]. But that's what we had to work with.

This place here was, like, sacred ground to me. I mean, I guess you could say I get choked up talking about it because the lessons I learned here [compared to what happened] once we went over to Parker-Gray…it was hard for [the educators at Parker-Gray] to transition into us. Because if I was a minute late, because I couldn't get my locker open, if I did that three times a week, I got suspended for a week, you know? And going through all that I was going through, the race riots that happened when the guy Gibson got killed at the 7-Eleven—I was young, trying to put that together, you know? [For more about the murder of 19-year-old Robin Gibson in 1970, see “Flashes of Violence in Alexandria’s History,” a 2017 article in the Alexandria Gazette.]

What do you remember of that time, when Gibson was killed?

Well, first of all, you know, race relations in this city hadn't improved that much, you know what I mean? The Blacks stayed on this side, the Whites stayed on that side. And then later on in the ‘70s, that’s when we started really mingling it up. But you know, back then, from my perspective, the problem was that most of the Whites just couldn't accept us. We was told to love everybody regardless, you know. My mother used to say it's good people that's White people and it's good people that’s Black and she used to point out the different colors. So that's what I grew up in. Now a lot of kids are not coming up like that. But yeah, that's why I thank my mom so much.

But yeah, once we got over there and were dealing with that system, it was like, "why are we here?" So a lot of guys that did well in elementary school, they started turning to dropping out because, by the time we got to the eighth or ninth grade—I think I had lost like six buddies that I used to hang with from elementary to middle school—they got disinterested in school….

We was told to love everybody regardless, you know. My mother used to say it's good people that's White people and it's good people that’s Black and she used to point out the different colors. So that's what I grew up in... that's why I thank my mom so much.

Back to the original question of Mr. Gibson. He got killed in the 7-Eleven and the guy planted a knife on him. So that sparked off some racial tension, but the tension was already here, because Blacks was still being treated subhuman, you know. Seriously. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth, but that's what it is, it's the truth. And it got to the point there where, you know what, some of [the older students] had come through [learning about] Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, so they were ready to go [and protest] anyway. Me, being younger than them, I'm watching them like, “whoa, okay, well what is this, what he's all about?” and they're hollerin' "power to people!" and I want to find out what that was about.

But [the murder of Gibson] is what sparked the burning and rock throwing and all of that, you know, and that's, I think that might have been the first time that the Whites in Alexandria were like, "hold up,” we got to start paying attention to them over here because ain't nobody gonna want to come here and make this an "All-American" city. And I'm [thinking to myself that I should be] just trying to make sure I help keep this an "all-American" city just by standing up for the promises that you made, like the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. That's what it's all about. And I truly believe in that…

Thinking back to what led up to that time period, what do you remember about the library or the various libraries? The library system was not fully desegregated until 1962, when you were six years old. Do you remember going to the Robinson Library, which was designated the “colored” library, when you were a little kid?

Well, when Robinson Library was the library, we weren't going to the library, you know? And then when I was about 12, it became what we call a counseling center, with outreach to the youth in this area. And I think the first time we set foot in any library, I know for me, going down to Queen Street [the library that was the site of the 1939 sit-in], I might have been in the fifth grade. It was because we didn't even go—we didn't understand the importance of that.

One of the gentlemen [who participated in the sit-in] is Buddy Evans. And he has some relatives who live here and grew up here. In fact, his grandfather married one of my great grandfather's sisters. So that's how we became cousins with the Evanses.

When we went in there [to the library on Queen Street], I was probably 10 years old, and it had not even occurred to me, because nobody said anything about it….I think some of our parents kept us from there, because they would say, "don't go 'round that Queen Street library" when we would tell them we went out to the library. "Don't go 'round there, you'll get in some trouble." That's all they used to say. Because they came through that. Because my father was born in 1922, you know, here in Alexandria. So I know he's seen all that, you know, and they used to tell us little things like that. But that library, we may have made it off limits to ourselves mentally because, you know, the things we heard. But there wasn't nobody really trying to invite us in, either. So it is what it is, you know.

What else do you remember about the libraries or the classrooms at school?

Let me give you the classroom. At Charles Houston [Elementary School], let's start there, because I never went to kindergarten, so we're gonna get that one out the way, right? Couldn't afford that. Charles Houston had desks that had probably been there since it was first built. Some of the chalkboards was cracked even though the teachers used to have to take the chalk to write on the board. I'm left-handed, and every desk was right-handed, you know, so I had to learn to write upside down. The rooms were like old cabins, seriously, I kid you not.

That was here, on this site, which is now the Charles Houston Recreation Center, right? And what about your middle school?

This was on this site. Charles Houston, right here. Then the transition over to the Parker-Gray Middle School from there, but we didn't have the best equipment. But they taught us how to spell our name, taught us how to, if you had a phone, how to dial your number and count, how to learn how to count, the basics.

And a lot of them always said something about "keep reading, keep reading." They would throw stuff at you to read, you know? But they didn't have a lot to work with. They didn't. And I think we got everything that was either broke or they was getting ready to throw out in the dump or junkyard somewhere, you know? The only thing I ever seen that was new when I was going to school here, and that was in sixth grade, they used to show us—they used to separate the girls, you know, when they take you all and they show y'all one film about puberty and they show the men the other film. That's the only time I saw a new projector, you know? Because everything else was a chalkboard or those big old numbers on the flip chart or animal designs on flip charts.

Fast-forwarding to the present, you are involved in work throughout Alexandria to help people connect to their own histories. For example, tell me about what you are doing to preserve the Frederick Douglass Memorial Cemetery.

Okay, I'll start from how I got there. My mom...I used to drive her, I would take her to the doctor or something like that, so I used to come past there, you know, right before she retired. She would always say, "there’s an old cemetery over there and it's been abandoned or something."

She would say, "Michael, your grandfather and them is over there." So I'm like, "yeah, okay." And I was about 34 when she told me that. My mother died four years ago on Mother's Day. And six months after her death—nah, maybe it was like four months after—I went to that cemetery. And I was looking and looking at how messed up it was. And then I took another month, maybe month and a half, to find my great grandfather Warner Johnson, who my dad was named after, and then found records that say that my grandfather, Albert Johnson, who died September the third, 1956 [was also buried in the cemetery]. I was born on November 13, 1956. So I never got to meet him….

When I saw [the headstones] I was like, "whoa, wait a minute!" And then I looked and I'm like, "hold up. There’s a whole lot of headstones." So I started walking around, mapping in and out in my head various names for some reason. And it's a true story; I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but that's how it went, to me. And it's like…what do they call them, epiphanies? That's what it was for me. And it was like, why am I doing this? I just got to walking around.

So then I started looking at the dates on the gravestones, then I'm looking at the condition. And then I went down [another day] and it had flooded. And that just sent me off, and I came back and the water was still there. And then when it rained again, it flooded and I said, "something is wrong here." And then there was this White gentleman, and I hope he won't mind me mentioning his name, James Blackman. He said, "I saw you out here two years ago. Are you still coming out here?" And I told him the story and he said, "Wow. Any help I can be, let me know." So I said, "Oh, wow. That's cool." He said, "'because this ain't right, you know?” So that project is happening right now and we're having dialogue.

I started looking at the dates on the gravestones, then I'm looking at the condition ... And it had flooded. And that just sent me off, and I came back and the water was still there. And then when it rained again, it flooded and I said, "something is wrong here."

Looking at what wasn't taking place [to preserve the cemetery], I said, you know what, I've got to bring the group I helped start—the SRG, our Social Responsibility Group—and get some help. And like I told them, it's like a kid drowning. I don't care what hand reaches out to save you when you’re drowning, you grab that hand, whether it's pink, green, white, black, blue, you grab that hand. That's life. That's what I reached for. And everybody, like I said, they just came together. We want to work with the Alexandria Historical Association [through the Office of Historic Alexandria] in the city to help raise money.

I know you have also been involved in gang-violence prevention and other issues that affect the youth of the city. Is that also connected to the Social Responsibility Group?

About the Social Responsibility Group: We put that together because we saw an uptick in young people getting involved in the legal system, you know, with guns and fights and so forth. So we started the group, saying, "well, how can we be, instead of finger-pointers, how can we be an asset to help other city agencies and nonprofits? So we came up with the name. And then I work also with Firefighters and Friends to the Rescue. We help [by providing families] with coats, backpacks, turkeys, toys, you know. Then, also, we work along with Keith Burns, who's from here and who is a two-time Super Bowl champion with the Denver Broncos. And we work closely with the Sheriff's Department, with their program, and the Alexandria Police Department, and some of their youth outreach programs. So some years ago, about nine years ago, I would say now, these agencies really weren't working together. I’m going to boast a little and say I kind of like brought them together. Because people can be territorial around here and that's the other half of our problems, you know?

And then I was doing something in the schools called Pathways to Manhood, working with some of those young men who were on the border [of getting into trouble] but who could be pulled back. So I did that. So just about anything in this community they want a volunteer for, I try to go help out, you know? I try to help everybody, regardless.

* Alexandria’s high school carried the name of this superintendent, T.C. Williams, from 1965 to 2021. In 2020, students and community members called for removing Williams’ name from the school so that it wouldn’t honor an ardent segregationist, and a year later the school was renamed Alexandria City High School. The high school was also the subject of the movie Remember the Titans, a true story about the football team helping to integrate the school in 1971.