Reginald Johnson

Metuchen native Reginald Johnson shares a plethora of interesting stories and life experiences from working as a civil service agent, to doing outreach for the police department, to his work with the executive search firm and the NAACP.

“Tomorrow I’ll probably think of a whole line of other stuff, but for right now, you pretty much got everything out of me.”
— Reginald Johnson

ANNOTATIONS

1. Resistance to Racism, Green Book - For Reginald’s family and other African-Americans in Jim Crow-era America during the early to mid 20th century, traversing outside your neighborhood onto the open road meant the high probability of danger, as many faced discrimation while passing through predominantly-white neighborhoods. To combat this, Victor Hugo Green, a postal carrier from Harlem, NY, published the Negro Motorist Green Book in 1936. The first edition of the book initially only listed hotels and restaurants in the New York Area for African-Americans to travel to without fear, but by the early 1940s, Green expanded his listings across the country and included establishments such as gas stations, guest houses, drug stores, bars, and beauty salons. The Green Book would go on to sell up to 15,000 copies a year and became an important staple among African-American travelers. With the creation of the national highway system in 1956 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Green Book and other travel guides decreased in popularity and soon ceased publication in 1966.
2. Police Brutality - Up until 2018, New Jersey did not list police shootings in its crime reports and did not keep a central tally. An investigation led by USA Today Network in 2017 provided the first-ever statewide examination of police use-of-force in New Jersey. The records, which were provided by the state Attorney General's Office, revealed that at least twenty people, more than half of whom were minorities, had been killed by police shootings in New Jersey between 2014 and 2017. The racial disparity between the victims is disportionately wide, as sixty percent of the people killed by police were either African American or Latino, yet they make up between fifteen to twenty percent of the New Jersey population. While the reports do not indicate if the shootings were ruled justified or questionable enough to be sent to a grand jury for possible indictment, a 2017 study determined that African Americans fatally shot by the police were twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.
3. Police Falsifying Evidence - The unlawful practice of planting evidence (ie. drugs, weapons, fingerprints), otherwise known as “flaking,” has been a rampant nationwide form of police corruption since the early beginnings of the war on drugs. According to The National Registry of Exonerations, in about 5% of exonerations, police officers planted incriminating evidence on suspects or at the scene of the crime, or booked the evidence and falsely claimed it was found on the suspects. Police forces across the country adhere to quota policies administered by their state or county head police department. These police quotas act as formal, though most times informal, measures that require officers to make a certain number of arrests or issue a particular number of tickets within a specific time frame, usually daily. If officers fail to meet these quotas, they risk salary cuts and even losing their jobs. Although quota policies have been investigated and legislated against, their effects are undermined by other police-related misconducts, such as over policing or fatal shootings.
4. Racial Profiling, Driving While Black - On the various highways and turnpikes across the United States, police routinely pull over drivers based on their skin color. The US’s continued war on drugs has spawned racist profiles of minorities based on the false premise that minority groups commit the majority of reported drug offenses. The racially motivated traffic stop practice, known sardonically as “Driving While Black or Brown,” has led to African Americans being stopped 3 times more likely and Latinos being stopped 2.4 times more likely than white drivers. A study done in Maryland revealed that 72% of drivers pulled over were African American, yet they only represented 14% of drivers. Racial profiling on highways has led to a disproportionate number of minorites being arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed for drug trafficking, while at the same time white drivers, who recieve less police attention, go unapprehended.
5. Racial Disparities in Youth Incarceration - In the United States, African American and Latino youth face disparaging rates of inequality when it comes to arrest and sentencing. A 2019 study found that African American youth as a whole are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities than their white peers. Another study found that white youth were 16% less likely to be referred to juvenile court and more likely to be released with a warning into the custody of a parent or guardian. A New Jersey report found that African American and white adolescents engage in similar offenses at about the same rates overall, but African American youth are disproportionately incarcerated in youth prisons. For example, African American adolescents in New Jersey are at least seventeen times more likely to be held in placement than white adolescents. A significant proportion of minority youth often experience social and contextual disadvantages such as lack of employment, low socioeconomic status, disadvantaged neighborhoods, and poor educational attainment, factors that increase likelihood in the involvement of criminal activity. This was found to be troubling given the fact that early contact with the police increased the odds of further police contact in later adolescence.

Transcript: “So, we were developing those types of models and what I found coming out of the police reports, on the police reports coming out of that area– we were trying to figure out why the correctional facility in North Brunswick, the juvenile facility, was primarily black and Latino. And, uh, so nobody could come up with any idea as to why, so the first thing I thought of was that, where are the bulk of these individuals coming from? […] What do you have in Woodbridge? What do you have in Edison? You have the Woodbridge shopping mall. You have the Edison shopping mall. So, if juveniles were stealing, shoplifting, what we found was, if white students were caught they would send them home and tell them that, ‘Don’t you ever come back to the store again.’ However, minorities were being caught and they would automatically be sent to the workhouse.”

Learn More: Ronald E. Claus, Sarah Vidal, and Michele Harmon, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests” (Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service, June 2017).

Learn More [2]: Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, “Institute Report Finds Extreme Racial Disparities Exist in NJ’s Youth Prisons,” New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, December 20, 2016.

Learn More [3]: Josh Rovner, “Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration,” The Sentencing Project, accessed November 15, 2021.

Learn More [4]: Dana DiFilippo, New Jersey Monitor August 12, and 2021, “New Law Aims to Slash Youth Incarceration, Expand Community Supports,” New Jersey Monitor (blog), August 12, 2021.

Learn More [5]: “150 Years Is Enough,” New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, 2021.

6. Segregated Communities - As Reginald states in his interview, the United States’ substantial mix in population is more of a “salad bowl,” a multicultural society integrated with different cultures that maintain their separate identities, rather than the “melting pot” we became known for throughout the world: a common (American) culture that all assimilate into. Cities, suburbs, and rural communities across the country still face racial and ethnic segregation, particularly due to decades of redlining, white flight, stagnant housing policies, and ethnic isolation. In the early 20th century, African Americans migrating from the rural South to cities in the Northeast and West were forced into designated neighborhoods and faced local zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants, and violence. The combination of ongoing redlining, local housing policies, unethical real estate practices, and the denial of loans prevented African American families from moving into prospering suburban communities and left them in isolated, underdeveloped neighborhoods. When more immigrants began arriving in the United States during the 20th century, they migrated to parts of town where families had already settled, creating isolated culturally-specific communities, for example, New York's Chinatown, LA's Koreatown, and Miami’s Little Havana. The racial segregation of neighborhoods and denial of capital to people of color has led to the geographic concentration of poverty, disinvestment in minority communities, and neighborhood distress.
7. African American Veterans, Soldiers in World War II - Despite playing a crucial role on the American and European fronts of World War II, African American troops faced discrimination abroad and at home. Many described being in slave-like conditions and treated like animals, and they were often sent to do menial and treacherous work. In spite of their mistreatment, all African American units preserved throughout the war, campaigning through tide-turning victories such as the Battle of Bulge and liberating Nazi concentration camps. Although there is some controversy surrounding the presence of African American troops in Dachau, history cannot deny the participation of African American units, such as The 761st Tank Battalion, in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
8. Political Parties, Racial Politics - A misconception in the US is that all African Americans are Democrats. Since the 1968 US presidential election, no Republican presidential candidate has received more than 13% of the African American vote, and surveys of African Americans regularly show that upwards of 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats. However, trends in party affiliation among African American voters showed that around 7% of the voters identified as Republican. While Reginald and other senior African American Republicans have shown scepticism towards the Democratic Party, some African Americans of the younger generation are beginning to call out the hypocrisy they’ve seen in the Democratic Party. Cathy Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, states that the recent cynicism of the Democratic Party is due to African American GenZer’s recognizing that even after the elections of African American mayors and the first African American president, their lives haven’t changed. In a 2020 survey conducted by American University, young African Americans voiced their frustrations with the Democratic Party’s belief in their unwavering “loyalty” and vote. Despite the history of the African American communities' continued support of the Democratic Party, race and civil rights issues have taken a backseat in the party's political agenda. For decades, Democrats have participated in a nationwide habit of omitting minority interests, ignoring the intersectionality between race and poverty, and remaining moderate in race-specific appeals to appease white voters.
9. Workplace Discrimination - Retaliatory action occurs when an employer penalizes an employee for asserting their workplace rights. Forms of this retaliation include getting fired, receiving a negative performance review, a change in salary, increased oversight on job duties, a change in workplace responsibilities, being denied a raise, getting transferred, etc. Under the laws enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), it is illegal to retaliate and/or harass an employee because they, “complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit.” It is also illegal to make decisions about job assignments and promotions based on an, “employee's race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.” Under New Jersey law, as defined in New Jersey Statutes Annotated section 10:5-5, it is prohibited to aid, abet, incite, compel, or coerce unlawful discriminatory acts or attempt to do so.

Transcript: “We had minority transit officers come to our, uh, our location and they were being discriminated against by New Jersey Transit and part of the problem was that they had a chief who was discriminating against on as far as who he wanted in management at New Jersey Transit. So, he had a Black female sergeant who he was encouraging to develop negative information on many of the minority officers there. Because then what they would do, if anyone wanted to get promoted, they would have that information in their folder and say, ‘Oh you might have been late a couple of days in a week or we noticed that you weren’t dressed properly when you went out.’ You know, all of that nitpicky. Well, she refused to do that. But what happened was, they placed her on the midnight tour in Newark at some of the most dangerous places in Newark and when the other officers found out that that’s what they did to her, that was a form of punishment, in their time off they went to back her up. Because anything could have happened to her. She was there by herself.”

Learn More: “Prohibited Employment Policies/Practices | U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accessed November 15, 2021.

Learn More [2]: “Retaliation: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accessed November 15, 2021.

Learn More [3]: Iris Hentze and Rebecca Tyus, “Discrimination and Harassment in the Workplace,” National Conference of State Legislatures, August 12, 2021.

Learn More [4]: Ryan Hutchins, “NJ Transit Faces New Lawsuit, Fresh Scrutiny over Racial Discrimination,” Politico PRO, January 9, 2017.

10. Military Draft, Anti-War Movements - While conscription into the armed forces has existed in the United States since the Civil War, draft resistance and evasion peaked during the Vietnam War. As the Vietnam War dragged on into the mid-1960s, anti-war protests began developing across the nation with the mandatory draft and the U.S.’ involvement in Cambodia acting as major sources of rebellion. Civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued a statement condemning the war, proclaiming that, “the United States government has been deceptive in its claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people.” Many African Americans opposed the Vietnam war, wondering why they should lay their lives down for a country that denied them basic human rights. In Maine, student activists from various campuses led anti-war strikes and activities, assembling their communities to raise awareness and prompt discussion about the Vietnam war. Alongside the protests, thousands of draft resistors filed for conscientious objector status, a position taken by individuals who oppose participation in a war on the basis of their religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. Conscientious objections can take many forms, such as refusing to serve in combat, registering for the draft, paying taxes tied to war allocations, or making any type of contribution to a war effort. There were other methods young Americans engaged in to avoid the draft, such as seeking refuge in college or parental deferments, intentionally failing aptitude tests, fleeing to Canada, and going AWOL. These draft deferments were never mutually inclusive as the poor and young people of color lacked the same options as many white, middle-class college students.

TRANSCRIPT

Interview conducted by Daniel Swern

New Brunswick, New Jersey

July 23, 2021

Transcription by Allison Baldwin

Annotations by Lanai McAuley

00:00

Today is Friday, July 23, 2021. It is 2:04pm. This is Dan Swern. We are at coLAB Arts at 9 Bayard Street in New Brunswick and I am here with–

Reginald Johnson. 

Reggie, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. 

Thank you for inviting me. 

Of course. Well, whenever you’re ready you can start from the beginning. 

Okay, well, I guess my beginning, I start with my father because I’m a military brat and my father, just to give you a little history on him, he was born in Pennsylvania right outside of Pittsburgh and, during that time, the only jobs that were around were in the coal mine. And the life expectancy was really short as a result of that so when World War II was developing he and his friends–he had two white friends–they had went to Canada. Canada had put out an invitation for folks to come and join their army because at the time Germany had bombed London and London was asking for help and the United States, basically their policy was to keep it hands off at that period of time. So, he joined. They brought the two white soldiers on board, but they discriminated against him. They said that he couldn’t fight for them, but he was determined to stay, so they had whole different groups there. They had the Irish army, which passed on him. But they had a Scottish army, which decided to pick him up. And so my father fought for Canada wearing kilts. They called themselves “The Fighting Women”. And he was in the military for two years, and that’s when the United States got into it, and he had to come back to the States because as an ex-patriot he would have lost his citizenship. Had he stayed in Canada. So he came back and fought in World War II. 

My father spent over thirty years in the military. He fought in World War II, the entire war, plus two years, you know, with Canada. He fought in the entire Korean War and he fought in the first two years of Vietnam. So, my father wasn’t really around that much, but when he was around we used to travel from base to base–

And this is where I come in. One of the things– we were stationed in California numerous times so we would cross-country three or four times and I remember going down Route 66 and being stopped by police. Occasionally, because of the fact that my father would put so much miles on the vehicle, we would buy a new vehicle every two years. So, when the police would stop us the first thing they wanted to know was how could a black man afford a new car? And in certain districts he would explain that it wasn’t his vehicle. It was so-called “Mr. Charlie’s vehicle” so that– he let him borrow it, so he could take his family for a ride. And the movie came out, Green Book. It did– I’m very familiar with the Green Book because travelling down South and all that way around, we needed that book to navigate us. As we were going away. And when we came to an area where we couldn’t find services, we would go to the nearest train station because, during those years, you had the black porters. At the train station. So, we would stop at a train station, wait for the train to come, black porters would come out and we would ask them, “Hey, where can we go to sleep? Where can we go to eat? Where can we go to get gas?” Get all of that. But during that period of time, we really spent most of our time on the road. You know, I– I– I didn’t know what a bathroom was like. Because we were discriminated against, so we always had to stop on the side of the road. And we always had picnic baskets. Wherever we could find food, my mother made sure we bought enough of it, so we travelled that way. 

[Annotation 1]

5:00

And then I remember stopping– my father would stop at a motel or an inn, and he would put his uniform on in the car to see if we could get a room. Now, remember all that service he had had in the military and yet I would always see the sign flashing “no vacancy, no vacancy”. Yet people would come in behind us. We would pull to the side of the road and see if people came in behind us and they would go in and they wouldn’t come out, so we knew that we were being discriminated against. 

And, uh, I think my other experience happened to be on the beaches of New Jersey. We would go to the beach and, uh, there was discrimination on these beaches. They would segment us, they would place us in the black section of the beach, and I remember laying on the beach—it might have been Atlantic City, I can’t remember exactly what beach it was—where the police came and told my father he had to move, and my father said he was not moving, so they told him if he didn’t move they would arrest him. So after that we never went to another beach in New Jersey. We would always patronize the beaches in New York. So, we went to the Rye Beach, Far Rockaway, Reese Beach, you know, all the different beaches in New York because they didn’t have that as a policy. 

So, you know, I know that in my senior year we had moved to– we settled in Metuchen. My family were originally in Metuchen, so I graduated from Metuchen High, uh, when we bought our house, they did burn a cross on our lawn, uh, when we first moved in and my family tried to shield that from us, but we could see it, and from that point on it started to be a little bit smooth sailing. I graduated from Metuchen High. I went to school in Maine, uh, Ricker College, which eventually became part of the University of Maine. It was a small, private school, where I majored in Mathematics and English. And I think that the two significant events that happened to me up there, or some of the significant events was– it was during the time of the Vietnam War and a funny story was that the college itself was about two miles from the Canadian border, so I think that a lot of– we had approximately 800 students that were attending and I think that half of them were males that attended the school because if they were drafted they could go across the Canadian border. And be a conscientious objector. 

[Annotation 10]

But I remember one time going to Halifax and I was getting a ride to a certain section of Maine, or rather of Canada, and I was stumbling in so they dropped me off and another person picked me up and actually drove me to the entrance of the United States border. And he said to me that he would drive me through the border, but that he was a conscientious objector and he was avoiding the draft. You wouldn’t believe this, but he had actually graduated from Metuchen High School. You know. So, that was quite a mind-boggling event, to have somebody, as a matter of fact he had graduated with my cousin, who had graduated two years before I did, so that was quite a– a story. 

So, then, my freshman year, we had the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. And one thing I admired about the school was that they closed the school down for a week. They brought the African American students into the cafeteria and they asked us—they didn’t wait or us to make demands—they asked us what demands would we like from the school and the first thing we said was a black history course, so they actually put a black history course together. I mean, there weren’t a lot of African American students attending the school, however, I know that every single one—once the course started—everyone took the course. And about half failed the course because they felt that just because they were African American they knew everything. So, they rarely studied. So, they had an eye opening experience when they found out that just because you walk in there and think you know something– you still have to read the book and do the studying, so it was kind of an eye opening. 

10:00

And, uh, also it was during the time of the Black Panther Party movement and, um, we actually–

The school actually paid to have two Black Panthers come to the school and, uh, to actually, uh, and we had a forum.  And, uh, you know, the school was extremely tolerant. I think they were a little bit concerned about the language. But they allowed that to happen and it was, uh, you know, a pretty good exchange. As far as, uh, after I graduated I applied for a position, a civil service position, and during that particular time, Nixon was being re-elected President. President Nixon. And they were trying to find minorities to fill positions as federal agents. So, I applied and I was accepted as a postal inspector whose job it is to investigate the theft of mail, anything to do with letter bombs, things along those lines. And I did that for a number of years. I probably would have stayed in that position, but there were very few African American postal inspectors and many of us were assigned to street duties. There are usually two types of assignments: one is on the street and the other is in the post office. When you’re in the post office, your job is primarily to do audits, you know, you audit the post and make sure none of the postal clerks take money or take stamps or anything like that. And during that period of time—and I’m talking about in the early 70s—crime was pretty high in New York City. We couldn’t interact with the police because many of our investigations involved the police. I was assigned to Harlem. Actually, I worked with the organized crime unit, so part of the people we investigated were people like Nicky Barnes, who was then considered the Godfather of Harlem, um, you have probably heard of Frank Lucas from American Gangster, but that was during that period of time and those two were rivals, so we had to deal with, uh, but by the time I was involved they had already convicted Frank Lucas, but Nicky Barnes was still out there and eventually he was arrested and that was part of my experience. Going into what was then considered bodegas, which numbers were being run out of there– prostitution, you know, a lot of that type of crime was there. My job was to go in and purchase the items to prove that the store was not selling fresh items. You know, the people were going in there, not to buy groceries, but to do illegal activities. And there was a lot of fencing that was going on in there, you know, people would bring stolen items in and trade them for other items, so, you know, it was a pretty hectic time, but bottom line on that was that I had to get out because–

In New York City you wore colors. Every day you wore a different color so– that would identify you as being one of the good guys, one of the good– and they would share the colors with the federal agents. However, being a black person in New York City, with a weapon, regardless of what I was doing, I would find that NYPD would probably shoot first and ask questions later. So, uh, I decided for my own health, I probably needed a change of scenery. And, so I took my– I had a friend of mine that ran an executive search firm, and, uh, his interest in me was to do background checks on executors. He knew I had some connections so he– the– the– the, uh, the firm itself was based in Highland Park. It was called Courier, Terari, and Ziegler [unclear].

We were set up on the second floor of the J&J mansion, John Seward Johnson’s former home. It was a beautiful place. As a matter of fact, my office was the office of Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas was born in New Brunswick. He was born at St. Peter’s Hospital and his nursery was set up in the room that became my office. So, uh, it was quite an exciting time. 

15:09

I had a lot of contracts. At that time, affirmative action was being developed. Corporations had some interest at the time of diverse– being diversed and some of– one of my clients included J&J. In fact, one of my first contracts was with Johnson and Johnson. I was hired to find out why African Americans were leaving the company and, uh, what I found out, through my investigations, was that you had a form of, um–

I call it almost like a ghetto where what you would do was– minorities were being specialized and so, if you were an account, you know, you had cost accounting, general accounting, audit, and what we found was, many people of color were locked into many of those assignments, so when a management position came up in another department, they weren’t qualified because they spent too much of their time learning one particular discipline. So, the only way that they could get diversity in their career was to leave and join another company. In another capacity. So, uh, I don’t know, when I presented my report, Johnson and Johnson wasn’t overly happy with my results. They basically said that no one was really complaining. Well, the problem with that was that many of the minorities that were working for J&J had reached some form of management level, so here you are, let’s say a budget manager or an audit manager or cost manager, you weren’t complaining because you were making the money and you had the staff and with that came some form of prestige, but realistically you were locked into that job because you couldn’t transfer to another department. Also in the form of personnel. Many, uh, you know, the so-called paint ghetto. And this was also experienced in other companies too. Where they would put women in certain positions, like in benefits or in compensation. They would never put them in areas like labor. Even in recruitment it was a little bit challenging. So, for them to be a human resource director or manager or a labor manager– Those jobs seemed to not exist for women during that period of time.

And the last part, which I found quite interesting, was that because I was dealing with so many multinational companies– when you talk about the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies, they have a strong European base. And Europeans working in the United States could not understand affirmative action. They couldn’t understand why they had to have a diverse workforce. Uh, you know, if you’re a Ph.D from Germany or from Switzerland or, you know, these companies, it was common to have foreigners in these positions, you know, they just couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get somebody who was German or couldn’t get somebody who was French in their department. They wanted to hire whoever they wanted to hire and that became quite an issue, so, um, so that was my experience in that particular field so I moved back when the economy kind of tanked and I would say, the, a, the temp industry, when the temp industry became a big industry, I started with clerical and moved into management where you could hire any form of a temp even if it’s a manager or vice president and, uh, so we decided that’s not the area we wanted to get into so we pretty much disbanded and I went back into the law enforcement area working for the Union County Prosecutor. I was their community outreach person. In Plainfield they were having a hard time developing programs for the community. The police didn’t really want to be saddled with doing outreach programs, so I came on board and helped to develop those type of programs. 

20:07

National Night Out, dealing with the Police Academy for high school students. That type of– those type of programs. I did that and from there I came here, to work with the Middlesex County Prosecutor. Uh, in my role with the NAACP, back in late 1988 and that range, uh, this county was going through a series of police shootings and, as a result of the police shootings, there was a concern—there were eight African Americans and one Hispanic shot—uh, unarmed and they were kind of concerned that the city would go up in flames. So I headed up a unit that would go out and talk to the churches, go out and talk to various communities to basically keep the pressure down, to, ah, keep it down. I was assigned an assistant prosecutor, Wade Baker, and we went around and tried to, uh, get that done. Eventually, the Department of Justice came in and met with us and wanted to know what out of this, out of this particular committee and we polled and one of the things that, at that time—and this is going back to about 1990—there had not been an African American Superior Court Judge. So, uh, my job was to run the field to find, to identify somebody who fit, who was qualified to take that position, and we found an individual by the name of Travis Francis. Travis Francis was hired. He became the first African American Superior Court Judge in the county. At the time, uh, at the time, we did have Ronald Wright who was the first African American judge, but he was a municipal judge. So, Travis moved up to the ranks where he eventually became the Assignment Judge for the county, which meant that basically he was the top judge in the entire county of Middlesex. So, that’s one of the things that we’ve done. 

[Annotation 2]

Now, in my role with the NAACP, when I joined back in 1985 and became president back in 1988, the first item, complaint, that hit my desk was the profiling. Driving while black on the Turnpike. We were one of the first branches to identify the problem of being African American and driving on the Turnpike. We had a case that I shared much earlier with a young lady that lived out in either Queens or Long Island who was attending school in Washington DC at Howard and she had taken her summer clothes home to pick up her winter clothes, so it was like in the month of November and she was traveling down the Turnpike, in, uh, almost the middle of the night in the middle of November, after Thanksgiving, and she was pulled over by state police. And she said, you know, “Why did you pull me over? I wasn’t speeding.” And the officer basically told her to shut up and mind her business, so, uh, she kept talking. They made her get out the car, then frisked her. They made her remove all of the items that were in her car on the side of the road and they said, “Oh we didn’t find anything.” They basically had just left her with her items on the side of the road, and she had called her father complaining, and her father called us, and I presented the case to the public defender’s office here in Middlesex County. Brad F [unclear] was the deputy, public defender at the time. He was in charge of the unit. And they had created a very sophisticated unit. What they found out was that they were getting a lot of calls, specifically from African Americans saying that they were stopped on the Turnpike.

[Annotation 4]

25:00

So, they started conducting an internal investigation and what they found, at the time, the radios that were used, you could monitor the radios so, uh, terms like porch monkey, terms like the N word were used very randomly over the air. As they were stopping African Americans. And the profile was basic, simple, but what it was was that, if you saw a black person driving a rental car, or a car with an out of state license anywhere between New York City and Philadelphia, you stopped them. Regardless of what the reason was, you stopped them. And it was basically a– a egg hunt. You figured as long as you stopped them, you know, you could find something to pull them over. And what we found was that there were these two officers, state police officers, who were planting drugs on motorists. What they would do was, they would stop you and if they found out you had a prior they would plant drugs on you and have you plead out on a lesser charge just so that they could build up their resume as far as arrests were concerned. And the sad part about it was, state police didn’t pick it up. How they were found out was that other officers were baffled that they would do a search on a vehicle and find nothing and they would come and find something in the vehicle and they started talking among each other and sooner or later they got caught. And these were officers who, for like three years in a row, were named officers of the year. We were very angry, very upset. Soon after was the incident where police officers had shot up a van. On the Turnpike at the New Brunswick exit to a bit south of that and, you know, lawsuits started coming in. The state of New Jersey paid a ton of money to compensate the particular victims of those incidents. All of those cases were thrown out and even as a result of that the state police made some changes, and one of the changes that they made was that they created a different way of communicating to each other. You know, the regular band radios were thrown out. Now they only had radios that they could communicate on. And so that’s what happened there.

[Annotation 3]

During that time I had helped set up the– I was contacted by the Jewish Federation and the National Conference of Christians and Jews and what they– their idea, their dream was to create a great group of nonprofits and civil rights to do human relations work, uh, Middlesex County was experiencing a great influx of Asians and Latinos and we found that they, coming into this county– there were a lot of issues as a result of that, so the idea was to set up a human relations at the local level, then develop them at the county level. So, each of the twenty-five municipalities would have their own human relations commission. And we were successful. At the time we set up nineteen of them. Which, today, I think there are twelve of them that are left. This was done back in 1990 and we had a strong bond with many of these organizations. Matter of fact, I have an interesting story. 

We were trying to get BET into Central Jersey. At the time, TKR was the cable company and we were trying to, I think, a lot of people, BET stands for Black Entertainment Television, but for certain people who didn’t know that, might have thought it stood for a betting station. And I think consciously, the company, TKR, advertised it as BET instead of spelling it out so they knew they would get resistance. What was happening was, stations were at a premium so they wanted to increase the amount of stations for companies like HBO or, you know, those types because they felt that that’s where the money is, you know.

30:00

The more types of those stations you have, the more money they could make. But because the cable company is a service to the community, there’s certain things they have to do. They have to have a public access station and then they at least have to cater to some of the other groups that are there. They should have stations that are primarily Spanish speaking and those that cater to the African American community. They weren’t doing that. So, I was at a council meeting lobbying for that and one of the reporters said to me, “Well, what happens if you don’t get the station?” Because they found out that TKR had some more stations added to their service. So, I said, “Well, we’ll probably go, uh, march.” Now, the following day in the newspaper, this was a Tuesday, the said–the headlines were “NAACP March Against TKR Cable”. I didn’t say that, I mean, I said it but more as in gest, but now I was in trouble because daggone, well, that means I said that because they even picked the day. They said they were going to do it on Thursday. I don’t know where that came from, but I got on the phone and started calling people that were calling me up complaining that they didn’t get BET and everybody had an excuse as to why they couldn’t show up on Thursday and march. So, I said, “Oh my god, am I going to be the only one that’s going to be there with a sign that says bring BET?” God looked down on us. They had just cancelled [unclear] contract. They had cancelled it on Wednesday, so I called up Peter Kitari who was a businessman in Woodbridge who headed up the Indian Business Association and I said, “Peter are you mad of the fact–” and he said, “Yeah, I’m really hot.” I said, “What are you doing tomorrow,” which was Thursday. He said, “Nothing.” I said, “Can you get some people to this place? Yeah. How many do you need?”

There must have been a thousand people that showed up in Piscataway at the TKR. Today it’s the Cablevision, but then it was TKR cable. About a thousand people showed up, so what I did was, I took all the dark-skinned Asian Indians they went in and represented the NAACP. They couldn’t tell the difference. [laughter] And whoever the rest was left, went in and I mean there were only like two African Americans and the rest were Asian Indians, but [laughter] as far as they were concerned, they were all African American and they were going to pounce on them. There was so much activity as a result of that. The fire department came and the police came because they wanted to know what was going on over there, you know? But they– not only did we get it, but they– we didn’t have to pay for it, it was part of your basic cable company, so, you know, those were kind of the heartwarming stories that came out of that. And it was– and then we went on to do some other things. We had minority transit officers come to our, uh, our location and they were being discriminated against by New Jersey Transit and part of the problem was that they had a chief who was discriminating against on as far as who he wanted in management at New Jersey Transit. So, he had a Black female sergeant who he was encouraging to develop negative information on many of the minority officers there. Because then what they would do, if anyone wanted to get promoted, they would have that information in their folder and say, “Oh you might have been late a couple of days in a week or we noticed that you weren’t dressed properly when you went out.” You know, all of that nitpicky. Well, she refused to do that. 

But what happened was, they placed her on the midnight tour in Newark at some of the most dangerous places in Newark and when the other officers found out that that’s what they did to her, that was a form of punishment, in their time off they went to back her up. Because anything could have happened to her. She was there by herself. So, we– we had to– had a case and we took it and we were able to– Nancy Erica Smith, the attorney out of Montclair, took the case and won the case. We won it and they settled it out of court to the tune of 5.8 million dollars, which they paid the ten officers

[Annotation 9]

35:00

And two of them had already been terminated and they were able to get their jobs back. The chief was fired. They created an ombudsman to handle any complaint separate from the company, so you could sit and talk to somebody and not have it reported and they, uh, they, they even paid the attorney fees. So, that didn’t come out of the settlement. So, it was a happy day. It wasn’t so much happy for us, for the NAACP, because we wanted to have this big press conference and the officers said hell no because if we do this press conference everybody will know that we have this money. And they’ll be bugging us for part of it, you know? So we want this done [laughter] in secret, in secrecy, so we never really benefited from that. 

We’ve done other things. We’ve helped de-populate the youth and the correctional facility. I was appointed by Travis Francis, the assignment judge to head up the [unintelligible] committee on minority concerns for the county. What we did was, we looked at ways to make the court user-friendly to the community. So, you have per se, type of assignments where you want to change your name or you want to get a divorce, you want an expungement, meaning you want to remove negative information, criminal information, you can do it without an attorney. So, we were developing those types of models and what I found coming out of the police reports, on the police reports coming out of that area– we were trying to figure out why the correctional facility in North Brunswick, the juvenile facility, was primarily black and Latino. And, uh, so nobody could come up with any idea as to why, so the first thing I thought of was that, where are the bulk of these individuals coming from? And they were coming from areas like Woodbridge and Edison and I put two and two together and it dawned on me, when looking at the charges, that, when juveniles were being picked up for theft in stores–

What do you have in Woodbridge? What do you have in Edison? You have the Woodbridge shopping mall. You have the Edison shopping mall. So, if juveniles were stealing, shoplifting, what we found was, if white students were caught they would send them home and tell them that, “Don’t you ever come back to the store again.” However, minorities were being caught and they would automatically be sent to the workhouse. And the reports that the police filled out race was never on the report, so the desk sergeant or the chief had no idea what the numbers were going to the workhouse because no one was tallying that data. Well, I demanded it and the children services of the county accepted our recommendation and started doing that and overnight those numbers dropped significantly because, if you were the chief of police and you were looking at your morning report and finding out that ten minorities were picked up for shoplifting or doing whatever, you know, maybe, doing whatever, and only one white, you would know there was something of a problem. 

[Annotation 5]

We tried to work on some other things. We tried to work on the idea that profiling locally, in the communities, where, if you go to municipal court– Municipal court is a very interesting place to go because that is where people are first introduced to the criminal justice system. You know, you have a parking ticket. You have this and that. Rarely your first experience in court is going to superior court. So, when you go to municipal court, you see the disparity as far as who is sitting in front of the judge. So, we tried to find ways to balance that too because we found, obviously, some form of profiling going on with municipalities. And we had an idea that we would take the percentage–the racial percentage of the community–and determine whether or not the court reflected that. So, if you take an area like Metuchen which they only have four percent African American population, but on any given night you go before the judge, you see a twenty percent minority discrepancy then, you know, it would trigger some kind of investigation just to see if profiling is existing. 

40:20

Of course, that idea was canned, because they, you know, no one wanted to, they felt that was a hot potato, but that was one of the things that came out of our committee. But, today I’m happy to say that the juvenile population now, the juvenile population is so small that we have four or five different municipalities– I’m sorry, counties– that now share the same facility. So, like Monmouth, Mercer, Somerset now send all of their kids to this particular facility. So, uh, where at the time each one had one and really, what was happening, because of the high numbers– those kids were not– they were being warehoused and they were learning new trades and the trades that they were learning were trades that we didn’t really want them to learn. While they were incarcerated. So, this way we place them on ankle bracelets and we bring them out. We have other forms of, you know, having them blend back into society. So, you know, we, uh, we do have some fun too. We have a Juneteenth celebration each year. We lobbied and we got not only the state, but the federal government to give Juneteenth the distinction as a federal holiday and a state holiday. So, these are some of the things that we, uh, kind of lobbied on. 

So, I don’t know if you have any questions, or if I am missing anything, but, uh–

Do you mind sharing a little bit about the membership community of the NAACP?

Yeah. Our membership is a diverse membership. I have on my– what we have at the local level is what we call an executive committee as opposed to a board. Or a national– we’re part of a national organization so the national organization has the board; they call our board committees. So, the executive board committee, we have very diverse people. We have– my executive board, my committee is half African American, half everything else. And we love that particular interaction. 

You know, the NAACP was founded by white– white Jews. And, um, during that period of time, back in 1919, um, they had, uh, in New York City, lynching was really much of the issue, the lynching and what was going on down south. So, a group from New York City– as I said primarily Jews had formed a group to figure out how to stop– to lobby to get lynching laws and they invited a group that was meeting on the Canadian/US border, Niagara. They called it the Niagara Movement because they could then meet in Niagara on the Canadian side and so black and white could meet. Eventually they were invited to be a part of this and W.E.B. DuBois came on board with his group—he headed that group up—and became president and the rest is pretty much history. We’ve been going pretty much strong from that point on. 

Our organization started back in, well, 1942. That’s my branch. And we’ve had a number of issues in the Metuchen area. Dealing with redlining. You know, if you– certain sections of town you weren’t allowed to buy a house in, and it’s interesting with the state and county because where you buy your house is how you build up financial equity. So, if you buy a house on one side of town it will probably peak and never rise to the level of what it is across town. So, you know we had to deal with that.

45:00

We had to deal with diversity in the police department. Back then there were very few, if any, African Americans at any of the municipalities, you know. We helped– our branch of the NAACP helped integrate South Plainfield Police Department. Because there were no–

No women. No African Americans. As a matter of fact, Woodbridge, no women. Well, there were women in Woodbridge, but no blacks and no Latinos. They were using surnames, you know, so you may have a– you may have, you know, a man with a Hispanic last name, but realistically he’s not really Hispanic, but his name sounds Hispanic. They would add his name to the list as a minority individual. You know, they played around with that. And so we went in there and started stopping a lot of that from happening. Because law enforcement, you know the deal– that’s always been an issue in our community. We love law enforcement. We want our streets safe. But the harassment piece because quite an issue, so, you know, today I am happy to say that my role with the prosecutor as the bias crime agent–

My job now is to look at all bias crime in this in the county and encourage people to report any form of bias, discrimination bias representing any of the protected groups. So, that keeps me busy. It keeps me very busy because, today, my caseload is three times the size that it used to be. Generally, in Middlesex County, you get about, maybe ninety incidents a year. Uh, as of today I have over a hundred and the year’s not halfway over yet. And a lot of that is because of the influx of– you know now we have– Middlesex still has created contained communities. You talk about the county; it’s never been a melting pot. It’s always been like a salad bowl. But what you find is you go to sections of town and you can still see a Polish section of town, a Portuguese section of town, definitely an Asian Indian. You’re talking about the Oak Tree section, the Little India section of Woodbridge that spills over into part of Edison. There’s still an African American community in and around the Piscataway area. So, we are not as diverse as people think we are and, as a result of that, we still have these types of incidents. 

[Annotation 6]

With road rage. And today, I just did the statistics: the African American is still the most targeted group. And part of that is due to appearance. You know, if you’re mad at somebody because they cut you off or you’re mad at somebody because they bumped into you, you may call them a name, but if you can identify what they are, you can add an extra adjective to that name, so, uh, you know, that’s what’s going on with road rage, with people fighting over a parking space. That’s what’s going on with people not wearing masks. If they can identify what you are: Jewish, Spanish, black, Italian, they can add a name to it and these are reported as incidents. But what we try to do when we monitor whether it rises to the level of hate crime because, if it does, then that individual could then be arrested and could get anything from seven to twenty years added to a sentence just on the basis of that. 

50:00

I was just curious, when it comes to– when it comes to bringing a case to trial, with the NAACP, um, how do you approve in terms of that?

We, sad to say, pro bono is almost out the window. Pro bono twenty years ago is so much different than it is today. The law firms, you know, maybe it’s because of the climate of civil rights and how civil rights have changed and now with the Me Too Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement things have become kind of intertwined. When I first came on board we had seven great attorneys. Matter of fact one of the attorneys, she was Mary Alban, who is now with the New Jersey Supreme Court. We had the who’s who of attorneys willing to do the pro bono work for us, but attorneys have to make money, especially if they are in private practice, and what ended up happening was, because we were winning so many cases, they then switched sides. You know, they became the attorney for the school board. They became the attorney for the police department, for PBA, so one by one we started to lose all the attorneys that represented us on pro bono. Law today is extremely expensive to initiate a case. What we do with cases on discrimination of employment, we try– if we can’t find a pro bono attorney, which is almost impossible in that field, we try to direct them to EEOC, you know, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Division on Civil Rights. 

Because they will investigate these cases for free and they will come up with a– a– a discovery which is the facts of the case and then if they feel as if you’ve been discriminated against they will provide you with a letter saying you were wrong and you could take that to an attorney and perhaps the attorney will give you a consideration as far as fees are concerned. So, that’s on that end. 

Any other case, we sometimes do get bombed. It’s kind of hard because of liability issues. Because we can be sued. So, we have to be very careful how we walk through the process, especially if you– we will not take a case if you already have an attorney. Because we don’t want to be accused of muddying the water or–

We’re not attorneys. At all. We tell people we’re not attorneys. We don’t want to say something to the person and then the person says to the attorney, “Well, NAACP said this,” you know? And have them say, “Well, they’re not attorneys.” So, we try not to get in the middle of that, but simple cases where–

We had a case where a young lady, a teenager, had applied for a job—and I won’t mention the name of the place because it’s local—but applied for a cashier’s job at a drugstore and was hired. She was replacing a woman who was pregnant and was going on maternity leave. So, what she did was, she went home and she came back on Monday, that was when she was supposed to start– she had her hair dyed purple and it kind of freaked out the manager and the assistant manager. Now what are you going to do with her? You told her she could come. You told her you would train her on the cash register. But she’s walking around with purple hair. Well, you know, that’s really her right, but it’s whether or not they want her in that position so they pulled her in the office and basically told her they didn’t need her anymore. They had told her the woman was coming back. Of course that wasn’t true. But that’s what they told her. 

So, she went home. She was sad. She told her mom and her mom couldn’t understand. They were wrong. So, her mother called the NAACP. And we were able to get an attorney to go down there and find out what the story was, but the attorney did something that was interesting. He didn’t say we were going to sue. What he said was, well, a lot of your customers are African American and you don’t want the bad publicity that you terminated an African American based on hair color. So, they said, “Oh geez, you know, we don’t want that type of–”

So, they ended up hiring her. And she turned out to be a great employee. So, these are the things, as I said, you need some feel good stories especially because you hear so many not so good, especially with some of these endings. 

55:18

Can you talk a little bit about your childhood? Where were you born?

I was born in Mulenberg Hospital in Plainfield, back in 1949 and, uh, and, you know, as I mentioned, my family was from Metuchen. As a matter of fact, we could link our family back to the 1800s. If you drive down Route 27 in Metuchen, you see those big homes on the side. My family were domestics, they would work those homes as, you know, they would do the cooking, they would do the cooking, they cut the lawn, they kept those houses really well-manicured. And back them, what would happen was, if you had one of those– and I’ve been in a number of those big homes because my grandma worked in those homes and by the way my grandmother graduated from Metuchen High School so even before Metuchen was a borough or around the time they became–

Because Metuchen, I believe, was incorporated in 1900. So, they had a high school before they were actually incorporated as a borough and my grandmother graduated from there, so we used to have fun running around in the big homes, and when the owners died and they didn’t have any next of kin, they had first dibs on things like the chinaware, and I remember on special occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas stuff like that, the parents would bring out the China. Well, this was China that was owned by those who owned those big old homes. So, they were really nice, so we had a good time doing that. 

I think Metuchen High was quite interesting because we had a situation there where, you know, we’re talking about the 60s so interracial relationships were being developed during that period of time. Might have been before that time, but definitely around that time, and we had an issue with one of our athletes who was dating– an African American athlete dating a white cheerleader, so, uh, prom time came and the mother asked her daughter who are you taking to the prom and the daughter was very vague saying, you know,  “I have somebody,” hoping the mother wouldn’t get into more details. Well, while at school, the mother happened to go through the drawer in her bedroom and found these Coney Island pictures, you know, these pictures of people being snapshot in a booth and stuff like that, seeing her with her black boyfriend. Well, she called the school and complained. This was back in 1967, so the school went on, you know, you had the PA system started saying all these names. “Reggie Johnson report to the office.” So, just to show you how we were, we were in the principal’s office and there were no one but African Americans in that office, but no one thought about why there were just African Americans, not one ever even thought about it. 

Now, when you went into the principal’s office, you went in one way and they had a backdoor so whenever you went out, whatever he would discuss with you, you wouldn’t know because you were sitting here and the person would leave. So, he came to me. I went, the principal says, “Reggie, how you doing?” I said, “Fine,” and he says, “Who are you taking to the prom?” So, fortunately, my cousin had a girl– my cousin was a year older than I was and she was at Hampton Institute at the time, it’s now Hampton University. And so her girlfriend was staying with her at break time, it was summer break, and so I had asked her as my date. So, here I am a senior in high school taking out a freshman in college, so, you know, my stuff was great. So, I said, “I’m taking out so and so,” and the principal said, “Who is she? I don’t recognize the name.” 

1:00:00

Because, you know, he was thinking of people in the school. So I said, }Oh, she’s a student at Hampton Institute,” so he says, “Oh, good, good, here’s your invitation to go to the prom.” Little did I know that they were deciding that if this was going to be an issue, you weren’t going to get your ticket to the prom. So, what ended up happening was we had two proms. The group that was disenfranchised because it wasn’t just we had a couple of interracial couples that didn’t go to prom, but they went to the second prom. And we made an appearance at the first prom and then went to the second prom, so that was quite an interesting case. 

You know, Metuchen was quite a, you know, I never had really any problems graduating or go to Metuchen High. I didn’t really participate in much until the end because then I was told, hey, you didn’t participate in much. And when you go to college, they’re going to ask you what your activities were, so I kind of joined everything at the end. But it was a great feeling. And I ended up, even though I moved away for a while, especially when I worked for the federal government, but I did come back and purchased my mother’s home, so I haven’t really moved that far away. 

My childhood has been half and half. Half– my sister was born in Germany. My brother was born in Kentucky. My other sister was born in California. My father was born in Pennsylvania. My mother and I were the only ones who were born in New Jersey, so there were six of us and we were all born, with the exception of my mother and I, just to show you how much traveling we did. My sister went to Germany, came back, couldn’t speak any English, so we sent her to another school so she could get that back. Unfortunately today my sister and brother have passed so it’s–

And I’m the oldest and you– you’re kind of thinking about the old days, you know, but you move on. And even now I have the opportunity to retire, but I say to myself what am I going to do at home so I still continue. I like the work that I do with the prosecutor’s office, so I’ll continue to do that even though, hopefully by the time people will hear this, I will relinquish my position as NAACP President because I am so happy to report that I have a younger crew coming in and they’re starting to call me–

It was fine when they called me daddy, but now they’re calling me grandpa so you know that once you are being referred to as grandpa it’s time to move on. 

How was your relationship with your mom?

The relationship with my mother was good. You know, my mother pretty much raised us. One of the things I didn’t share with you, because I didn’t know how much time I had, was my father was away quite a bit. My father, while he was in the service, was one of the first American soldiers to set foot in the Dachau concentration camp. What was happening was, the American soldiers didn’t like the idea of cleaning up, going into the concentration camps. For several reasons: what you would see, the smell as you approached the concentration camp. I mean, you could smell it for miles. You knew where all the concentration camps were because you had like a five mile radius around. What they would do in Dachau was send the colored troops in. My father, then, was assigned to a colored regiment. To so-called sanitize it. So, when he went in, because the white soldiers said, “We’re not going in there, send the colored soldiers in,” so they went in there. There job was to take all of the furniture out of the building and put it in the cinder because they were going to burn it for disease purposes. Go in and see who’s alive, who’s not alive. 

[Annotation 7]

1:05:09

Maybe even take some of the ashes out. You know, anything that we needed to do. They were making themselves available. And my father was in a building and they were moving a desk down the steps and a drawer opened and he got hit with all these pellets. So, he was trying to figure out what all these pellets were, well, they were the gold teeth, the gold teeth of all the prisoners. They would go in and check your teeth. If you had any gold teeth, they would use pliers and pull it out. And, so he had a whole, you know, he was depressed as a result of that. And he had a bit of psychological problems. 

He almost froze to death. If you ever look upon the war in Korea, it just seemed like the whole war was fought in the winter time. It was the coldest war of all, you know. As far as the soldiers were concerned. My father had, you know, his hands were frostbitten. His feet were frostbitten. He was in charge of a regiment that had trucks, you know, maybe forty-five or fifty trucks and almost everybody died because they kept–

Even thought they were told not to– the exhaust, carbon monoxide poisoning– because what they would do, they felt that as long as they got the heat from the exhaust coming in and the windows were slightly open, they would be warm. But, you know, carbon monoxide poisoning. Unless the windows were completely open and the door was open, they would fall victim and I mean, overnight they lost a ton of people just from that alone. 

And, uh, so you know, this was the stuff that was on his mind. He fell in love with a German woman. He wasn’t married at that time. He met my mother later on. But he had proposed and they were supposed to get married. This was soon after the war. And, of course, he was denied of that. And so he came home and he met my mother over here at Camp Kilmer. It’s now part of Livingston campus of Rutgers, but back then it was a military base that I lived at. Matter of fact the barracks that we lived at as dependents is now the library for the Livingston campus. But he met my mother at the post exchange store, he was purchasing something there. 

Are you ready for this? My mother– it was– my father and mother were married for two years and then he got a letter from the command post saying it was okay to marry the woman he wasn’t allowed to marry if he was still interested in doing so. But it was–

But, yeah, my mother, heavily in the church, the Baptist church. It was a church that my grandfather founded and that’s on Hampton Street in Metuchen. And, you know, the church is almost approaching a hundred years as far as– as far as being there. We’ve been able to do quite a bit because of that church as far as keeping our family together, keeping our history together. Other than that my mother was pretty much down to earth, didn’t talk much. My mother wasn’t a touchy feely person. You came to her with a problem and she would say basically figure it out yourself. She did work at Fort Monmouth for a number of years and that’s where she retired. She worked at Fort Monmouth. She was in the inventory department at Fort Monmouth. 

How was your relationship with your siblings?

Pretty good. There’s a five year difference between me and the next sibling, my sister. 

1:10:00

My sister was very quiet. You know, I would talk among my relatives about our family and my sister was the one that would just stay by herself. Whereas the other one– she’s the next one in the chain, my other sister– she was, like, all up in your business. So, she was completely opposite of my, you know, the younger of the two sisters, and same with my brother. My brother was pretty outgoing too, so–

Unfortunately, my brother succumbed to oxycontin (oxycodone).  Became dependent on that. He would have headaches and then would take painkillers and became quite addicted to that. Eventually that’s what killed him. That’s before lawsuits developed and all of that came out. But he had, uh, ended up on the streets of New York and, uh, you know, he would bounce from my place to my father’s place, you know? And they were going to bury him in a pauper’s grave, but somebody said at the last minute, I mean, they had actually dug a hole, to put him in there when they found him on the streets of New York and somebody said, well, let’s get a fingerprint, let’s check on that and he had been arrested for jumping over the gates, you know, on the subways and they were able to track down my father. They didn’t tell my father; they asked the superintendent because they knew my father at the time was in his late seventies so they called me up too. So, I had to tell my father, you know. 

You know, your son is gone. My sister had sickle cell so she was always in pain and as a result we always protected her. We built this little protection around her. It’s a very painful disease where the [unintelligible] become sickle and as they go through the veins, they create pain. So, we shipped her off. Her boyfriend ended up moving her down to South Florida. So, the heat was a pretty good way of keeping her going. She did eventually pass. She did have a daughter. And so her daughter is completely free– of disease, so you trade one for the other almost, you know? They say it that way. So, that’s pretty much–

My brother and I, we bonded earlier on. But we kind of– he was a nine years age difference that I, so– but we had completely separate interests. The only time we got together was when he needed something. Especially– my mother died– well, my sister died first, and when my mother died that pretty much did him in. My mother enabled him. If he wanted to go somewhere because my mother was retired she would go. She would drive him wherever he wanted to go. If he needed something, she would buy it for him. So, we would have fights about that, you know, but her attitude was that, I’m sitting around, not doing anything, might as well take him around and do something. But when she died, that was it. He pretty much– he lived two years after she died. Yeah.

1:15:00

Are there any from your childhood that you want to share?

I don’t– you know, other than moving from school to school. One distinction is, I went from kindergarten to high school and not missed a day due to illness. When the school called me in, the day before the prom, no the day after the prom, because there’s this thing about prom is on a Thursday so they know that everyone who went to the prom isn’t going to go to school on Friday. That’s an automatic absence. Well, my mother made me go to school on Friday [laughter]. So, about halfway through the day they said to me, “What are you doing here? Didn’t you go to the prom?” I said, “yeah,” so they said, “We’ll send you home, but we’ll mark you present for the whole day.” But I spent half the day at school, so it was only like two hours. 

But, my childhood, it was kind of lonely, to a degree, because moving from school to school– one story is that I was introduced to gangs here in New Brunswick because living at Camp Kilmer I went to Roosevelt school, I went to Lincoln. I went to Lincoln and I went to Roosevelt. From the military. The military would bring a bus. And military folks, when you went to school, you always wore a shirt and tie, so when I went to public school, they always made me wear a shirt and tie. Well, of course that angered the locals. Who the heck this guy is, wearing a shirt and tie? So, we had one person who was bullying me. I was really frail and skinny at that time. And he would be. He would start hitting you on the arm– that’s where they always hit you and then he would start pushing you around. Well, what I would do was, I was over at Roosevelt and I would hide in the locker room. For the bus to leave. And when the bus would leave—because these bullies would stand on the steps—you know where Roosevelt is? 

You see those steps going down? They would stand on both sides so when the military kids would go down the steps to go to the bus, they would hit you. So, I got tired of being hit so. 

One thing that was good about the school was that it was half days. So, if I would hide in the locker room and the bus would leave and I would come in say, after 12:00 and I could walk from Roosevelt to Camp Kilmer. I mean, it was a heck of a walk, but I did it. Several times. Just to avoid getting hit, Then winter started coming and I said to myself, you know, getting hit can’t be any worse than walking. All the way over there and crossing the bridge in Highland Park and walking on river road and going all the way down to Cedar and all of that. I said, no, no, I’m just going to have to get beaten up, so I came out and the kid saw me, and I mean, he was big, and he said, “Oh, here you are [unintelligible mumbling].” So, back then they had, what do you call those things? The lunch boxes were made out of metal because you had a thermostat in there. So, it had– if you dropped your box at least your thermostat wouldn’t break because thermostats were always breaking, you know? So, what happened was he eventually approached me and was like, “You think you’re bad,” and he grabbed me like this. So, my natural– I thought he was going to hit me so I put the lunch box up to protect me, but in doing so and him– the natural momentum of him coming forward, the box smashed his face and knocked a tooth out and he went falling down the steps. So, shocking to me, started crying. And everybody was looking at me and I’m like daggone what happened? So, they thought I hit him, you know, like a karate punch or something like that. It was so funny. They suspended me. I got suspended for two days and my father was mad because he had to take off time from work to go and then he patted me on the back and said, “You go boy.” [laughter] After that it was kind of like the parting of the water. Every time I walked to school, people just kind of moved away from me. [laughter]

Little did they know, thanks to my lunchbox that saved my life, but that was a true story. I guess I was in like sixth grade or something like that. I–  when I started coming back to work I came here, that might have been about eleven years ago– I parked over at the public parking space and I was getting ready, you know, to get out, for the gate to go up so that I can pay it and this guy looked at me and said, “Are you Reggie Johnson?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You don’t know who I am?” I said, “No.” His name was Larry Ben. And he said, “My name is Larry Ben,” and you kind of remember the names of guys who– so I said, oh my god, what is this guy going to do, pull a gun out and shoot me now because of? And he smiled and that tooth was still missing [laughter]. It was still gone.

1:20:00

So, I said Holy Smokes! I guess he would remember who I am, but I don’t look anything like I did back then. I’m fat and bald, but he knew who I was and after he smiled I knew who he was. Yeah, so, but those are kind of the stories that you can’t make them up. 

Can you speak to– how was New Brunswick different [unintelligible due to crosstalk]

Well, one of the many positions I’ve had–

As you know, I was also a commissioner with the Cultural Arts and History Commission. And I– one of the things– when 9/11 hit, I just saw a change in New Brunswick. And it was a positive change. Because what I realized was that, somebody woke up and said, “Hey people are just not going to go into New York. Maybe not anymore. So, let’s kind of create a cultural center that people could get that New York feel.” And, you know, we could provide the same type of plays, entertainment, get big names and stuff like that. And that was cool, that was cool. They pumped a lot of money into crossroads. They saved the life of the George Street Playhouse, which was being subsidized on a regular basis because it wasn’t generating much of a profit. And, of course, the State Theater was a white elephant. I mean, it was really losing money, you know? And it was old. It was unattractive, so they started pumping money into the services. 

Now, where I am having the problem was that, back in the day, you could park, you know, over here by the bank. You could park behind certain buildings. Matter of fact, even then, you could park behind city hall, after hours. So, you wouldn’t have to pay for parking. You had a larger array of medium-sized restaurants, you know, in this area and you could see a play or [attend] a function really inexpensive. So, you could, maybe fifty bucks per person have a really good time in New Brunswick. Gone!

They started putting these meters up on Livingston Avenue. They started putting these signs up saying if you park here, you’re going to get towed. They started to raise the prices of the venues. And the medium restaurants couldn’t afford to stay here and we started losing them one by one. Now, they need to keep the fast food for two reasons. They need to keep the fast food for the people serving on the jury. Because they weren’t going to eat at Frog and the Peach or Left Stage, you know, for lunch. So they needed the fast food. Also for the help. The people who work here. The executors who work at these places couldn’t eat there because they would write it off. So, New Brunswick today has become extremely expensive. It probably will survive because of the population of Middlesex County. You have over 2,458 people per square mile. In this county. That’s a packed county. That’s more per square foot than China and India. When you stretch it out. So, they’ll get the foot traffic coming in and out of the area. I just hope that it won’t price itself out because we don’t really have the industries that we used to. We’ve lost some of the oomph, you know, with Bristol-Meyers Squibb doing a little downsizing. Even J&J doing a little. You know, I’m certain that they don’t have the amount of employees that they used to You had merging companies. The University of Medicine and Dentistry, which had their offices here. Merging. Rutgers merging, you know, a lot of that. But they found money to build the high rises because, you know, I’m always suspicious of a city that places their high school so far from the midtown area. What’s that saying? And they’ve done that, you know, the expansions that are taking place. Lincoln School is going to be taken over by Robert Wood, the expansion of Robert Wood. So, it’s become a corporate city. So, we’ll see what the future holds, where the future lies. I think there are certain things that are holding it together.

1:26:00

I think that the investment in the arts have really helped. Of course, having Rutgers here has been a great way of balancing, you know, the city so it will survive. 

I also wanted to ask about the future of the branch of the NAACP that you mentioned. I was just curious if anything generationally–

Well, the historical– the history of the Civil Rights Act of 64 and 65, 1964 the act signed by Lyndon Johnson was to desegregate the country. Separate but equal went goodbye because of that. 1965 gave protection as far as [unintelligible]. Back then there were about seven or eight civil rights organizations. We had SCLC, run by Dr. Martin Luther King. You had SNICK, [run by] John Lewis, who passed away recently. You had CORE, you know, Roy Anis passed away a while ago. His son took it over, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be. And so you had all of these civil rights organizations [unintelligible] before the NAACP that were there strong. All individually strong. All individually handling their own business. Today there’s only two left. And that’s the NAACP and the Urban Aid. All of those other organizations, the SCLC that Dr. Martin Luther King started, all those other organizations are pretty much gone. Even when you go with the Panther organization. I never really thought that the Panther organization, I mean, the only real, when you really look into their history, a violent organization, what we see as a violent organization. Some of these citizen groups around here now are much more violent. The Black Panthers, really their claim to fame was really breakfasts that they held and the educational schools that they held in the major cities. But they were demonized and infiltrated and so they’re gone. So, with that in mind, you’re seeing a struggle as far as in the Americanization of everybody. For instance, as a commissioner, one of the concerns I always had was that, when people gave events– Let’s say the Asian Indians gave events or the Hungarians gave an event: would the event be inclusive or exclusive? And that’s a pretty interesting way of looking at things because what we found was the grandparents and great-grandparents didn’t want individuals to lose their culture. Think about it. My father, during the Hungarian Revolution and the Depression period, when they came to this country and when they were housed at Camp Kilmer, all those–

Of course, now they’ve torn those barracks down, but back in the mid-fifties that whole area was populated by Hungarians. 

1:30:00

And Germans too. We brought Germans in. It was kind of strange because we never thought of Germans as enemies when they were house over there they could run freely and my father’s job was, because he in charge of the motor pool, was to provide transportation for them to bond in the community. So, you had certain communities where you had Hungarian communities and you had certain communities where you had German communities so we, you know, and when you have that, people want to maintain their identity. Some may say I am American first and then Italian and this and this and then some may say well, I’m Italian American and then this and this. But when you’re giving money to the arts and your event is in Chinese or your event is in Filipino language or your event is Asian Indian. And, you know, if either one of us goes to those events, we’re not necessarily going to understand what’s going on and the point is is that’s public money so you somehow have to figure that out a way of doing that and that’s the challenge that we face today because as people become, we’ll call them Americanized, with the conflict is where they’ve come from and you’re seeing that now even with the violence of some of these military groups that are coming in that strongly feel that the country is being taken away from them. And they’re not going anywhere. The military trains a number of folks and once they finish their term, they can continue their membership. 

You saw part of that January 6th at our capitol, but that’s somewhat what our future is going to look like. As the future goes on. It’s kind of sad to say that, but we’re still that salad bowl. We’re not that melting pot. 

I think that one thing that has happened is the youth. We always go back to the youth and I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen with Black Lives Matter. In fact, if it didn’t have that title, it would almost seem like it was White Lives Matter because when you look at who’s there you are probably looking at 5/6 white and 1/6 black, but, and that’s good, that’s encouraging. But you have to remember too, that I was part of the war in Vietnam back in the 60s and yet those people grew up and they started working for Wall Street and they started working for a lot of these major corporations and what happens? They become conservative now. They were the, you know, the pot smoking, drunken kids that have grown up and, I’m not the stereotypical term, but Republican and their whole life now is to the right. 

How did you get involved with [unintelligible]?

Because I–

When I was first approached to work with the political piece in this county, Sam Thompson, who represents our bridge over there, the senator, he had always tried to push me and Judge Daly, a superior court judge, he retired, got involved into politics, he ran, he was a freeholder. They were always concerned that there were few, if any, Black Republicans. You could name them on one hand. We lucked out getting Travis Francis in because Travis Francis was a registered Republican. So, the fact that he was Black– he checked off two boxes, he was Republican and he was Black, so that made his transformation into that role quite easy. But I had made up my mind that I would look at the alternate piece. Not that I became a cold-blooded Republican or any of that, but I tried not to put all of my eggs in one basket as far as the Democratic Party was concerned because I have seen what they’ve done and in communities. You know, see who we are and we’re the enemies. So, it has been, I mean, right now it’s pretty easy to decide which side of the fence you’re on because of what has happened recently. 

[Annotation 8]

You see, I could have been a Tom Kaine republican. Before we were able to vote, we had a governor named Tom Kaine. Tom Kaine, he won a very narrow first election, but the first thing he did was, he went to the Black community, he said “Look, I know none of you voted for me, but I want you to know that I have an open door–”

1:36:00

“And I will listen to anything you say,” and he, uh, he appointed a fair number of African Americans in his, uh, in his cabinet. And as a result, he won overwhelmingly. Over what happened with our– not our last governor, but our– Governor Christie and his push with the George Washington Gate and all of that mess. Had to do with some of the fact that he was trying to top the popularity of Tom Kaine. Because Tom Kaine almost won every single municipality and he ran for a second term. And he got almost all the Black vote, so you know, so, he was progressive Republican. And, you know, unfortunately, not all Republicans think the way that he thought. And there hasn’t really been anybody that you–

One thing– I have met with every governor in thirty some odd years that we’ve had. Because of my role with the NAACP. So, one of the things we do is that we always meet with the sitting governor. Surprisingly, the governor we sat with the most is Christie. Generally, we have two meetings with the governor, while the governor is in term. For some reason we had three with Christie. Not that we were able to get anything out of him, but we did have three meetings with him. And Corzine, the good meeting that happened with him was, we were able to place twenty-two– twenty-four African Americans on the superior court bench. I headed up committee to find judges to put on the superior court bench because, if you looked at the numbers, the numbers were horrifying, you know, as far as that was concerned so– he gave us carte blanche. And I have fun basically presenting candidates to him, which his committee appointed to be on the bench, so that was probably our most successful encounter with the governor. Christie was the best salesman. He could sell you snow in the winter time. He’d shake your hand. Offer you coffee, tea, milk, whatever, you know? He was great at that. And yet, you knew that when you left there, you would never hear from him again. I mean, you knew it [laughter]. And sure enough, you didn’t. So that was my– I try to keep my political piece limited because I’ve been around so many politicians that, whewww, you know, they gotta do things that– they have to do things that they feel uncomfortable doing, but they have to do it for the party, so. Fortunately, I haven’t had to do any of that. 

How did you get to be a commissioner for the Arts and Cultural Committee?

I was chosen through, here we go, through my connection with the National Conference of Christians and Jews here in this building where I’m speaking to you at, where we had our meetings. One of the people who was in charge of the Arts Commission was Marjorie Lee. Marjorie Lee was a Chinese American and her husband worked– they both worked– at Rutgers. I know she was in the library. I can’t remember exactly what his role was. But, she, you know, it was love at first sight. So, what we did was we decided was that we were going to send a message to this area that we could work together. 

So, what we did was, we put on– we sponsored three events. Over here at Douglas. The auditorium at Douglas. We did a choral presentation. They brought in people from China; I brought in local people and they– because choral groups are very big in China, so they sang, our group sang, basically negro spirituals and then we sang each other’s music. We found a common ground to do that. Then the next thing was Jazz. Because they love Jazz in China and, of course, we’re part of the Jazz originators. 

1:41:00

Of it. So they performed their jazz and we performed their jazz and we combined it again. And then came dance and the same thing we did with dance. So, we had a very good time and we packed the place. Unfortunately, they retired from Rutgers and moved to San Francisco because they wanted to be closer to their relatives and we lost that momentum. Because what happened in Middlesex County was, you had schools being built. Just like how I was sharing with you how people want to maintain their identity, then you had Chinese schools being built, you had Asian Indian schools being built. And taking kids out of the public education and putting them into these schools and what happened back then initially was that they were after-school programs. So, they would rent a building and then you would go to your public school during the day and then you would go out and then come back and go to that. Well the emphasis shifted from togetherness to individuality to well, we want it maintaining and keep our culture in tact. So, we don’t want to mix it with anything else. And that’s where the breakdown happened. There were no future collaborations as a result of that part. And the organization that she headed up, along with her husband, basically went away, you know? And there was no one to take their place. 

And she was already a commissioner?

She was. She was the head of the commission. 

And she invited you to be a part of it?

She invited me to be part of that. 

And Anna [unintelligible] was the county person. The county director. She was in charge of– but if you have a county director, that’s paid staff. And then you have the volunteer piece. Our job is primarily to review the grants, make recommendations, and, you know, help secure places for these grants to be implemented. 

And what was the– tell me about the group that you put together that was about diversity.

This was the Middlesex County Human Relations Committee that met in here. And what we did was, we set up a board. We did have a board. And our board consisted of heads of the various government agencies here. So, Allan Rockoff was the prosecutor at the time, so he was head of the law enforcement piece. We had the school superintendent on. We had the president of Middlesex County at that time. We had the police PBA rep on board. So, we tried to capitalize, or touch, every single industry. Education. All of that. All those different agencies who were here, who would meet in here. The head of a– one of the vice presidents of JFK was here. A gentleman who was my mentor– there was two– Harry Russell, who was vice president at JFK hospital and Martin Spritzer, who is an attorney in town. And they were two tremendous people. I mean, you could beat both of them up and they wouldn’t complain. I mean, their disposition was great and that’s what we needed to fuel the organization because they would never take no for an answer. We would have our meeting, we would have our executive board meeting here. We would have our general meetings with the other branches of the human relations commission over at Middlesex County College and sad to say both Martin Spritzer and Harry Russell have passed on, but, uh, their legacy is still there and you know, I miss them, we miss them. We miss them because–

Matter of fact, I’ll tell you a real quick story. The ELKS of, over here, in New Brunswick. They had– We were having a– we had invited the commission to come, well, the public, and they were going to have me speak to address the history of the human relations commission at the ELKS. So, I park the car across the street, go into the ELKS, and this man comes to me, he says, “Where are you going?” I say, “Oh, I’m the speaker tonight.” He says, “Oh, you’re in the wrong place.” So, I said, “What do you mean? Isn’t this the ELKS?” And he says, “Well, yeah, this is the ELKS, but you want the ELKS on the other side of town.” See you had two ELKS. You had the Black ELKS and you had the White ELKS. I said, “Are you sure?” Because I had a piece of paper with address on there. And he said, yeah, so I said okay. I scratched my head and started walking out the building. And Martin Spritzer, the attorney I was telling you about came out and said, “Hey Reggie, how are you doing?” I said, “Fine. How are you?” Then he said, “Well, where are you going?” And I said, “Well, they told me I’m at the wrong place.” 

1:47:00

He said, “Hell no! You’re at the right place.” So, I explain what had happened. He was so mad that I’m certain if he had a weapon in hand, he would have used it on this particular individual. He came into the place looking specifically for the person who approached me, cussed them out in all different languages and words, and told the board of the ELKS that if any of this bullcrap happens again, he’s not only going to cancel his membership, but he’ll make sure that others will do the same thing. 

So, I went over there and I gave my speech [laughter] Yes. Those were the days. 

When we first spoke you mentioned Reverend Dale?

Oh yes. Reverend Dale was a very– in my earlier days– because my father was off with the military being scheduled everywhere– the church was my foundation. Reverend Dale was the pastor. He would take me places that– I call it a mentorship– he– I never thought of him as a replacement for my father, but he basically took me places that you think a father would take his son. You know, he would take us to baseball games. And he was pretty good at making sure that we didn’t have too many one-on-one excursions. He would always make sure to bring another person so it would be three, maybe four of us, and we would travel down to Philadelphia. We would travel to New York. 

One thing I learned about Reverend Dale, which was interesting because, you know, as a pastor he always had to dress in a suit, but he always shared one important thing with me that went down in life.  He said the most important accessory in a suit is– what do you think would be the most important accessory in a suit? The best accessory for the suit. I mean, is it the shirt? Is it the suit? Is it the tie? Well, he said to me, he said that, don’t spend any money on the shirt. You can buy a shirt for $70, you can buy a shirt for $5. Believe it or not, both will wear out at the same time. The collar gets dirty; you’ll discard the shirt. A good shirt doesn’t last any more than a bad shirt. The suit, nobody really pays attention to the suit. If you want to spend your money, you spend it on the tie. Because when people walk in and they see you, the first thing they are going to look at, other than your face, is the tie. They don’t care if the suit, if the pants are too short or the pants are drooping down. Or the jacket is too loose or the jacket is too tight. They’re looking at the tie. 

1:50:00

So, that was very [laughter], you would get those interesting things out of him. And he was very– whereas pastors today generally look at the church as a cash cow, one of the things– I’m generalizing on that, so, even though that’s being recorded– I am generalizing on that. He never looked at it as that. He would, uh, he always accepted the minimal. If the church gave him the minimal, that’s what he would, he never rallied to get, you know, anymore. 

One funny story about him– he had a niece by the name of Clema Dale. She was out of Philadelphia. She was an opera singer and she had– a relatively renowned opera singer. She had gone nationwide singer– Porgie in Porgie and Bess. In the musical, the opera, so she was playing at Madison Square Garden. So, Reverend Dale was very excited about his niece playing at the Garden. Now, he had been estranged from his family, but when he heard that she was performing, he had two buses and we went to go see her perform. So, you know, it was after the performance he goes backstage because I guess he wanted to showcase her and introduce her to us, you know? Guy said forget about it. She doesn’t want to see you. She’s tired and just wants to drink and go to bed. So it was kind of embarrassing a little bit because we’re all anticipating going and seeing this magnificent individual who sang all those notes and everything. I think he was hurt. I think he was more hurt than we were. We didn’t really care, but you can tell it hurt. His behavior, driving back, he was really quiet so–

This was the church that your grandfather had founded?

This was the church that my grandfather had founded, yeah. 

Is there anything else you want to share about him?

I didn’t know my grandfather. My grandfather had died before. My grandmother I knew her for maybe, you know, I might have been maybe about nine when she passed. I mean, what I remember about my grandmother was, she spoiled us. I used to like Paladin, you know, Have Gun — Will Travel and those were old westerns in black and white by the way and she gave me my first Christmas gift that I remembered, probably the only one I kind of remembered until I became an adult, was a Have Gun — Will Travel holster with the little derringer right by your belly and you could poke your belly out and the derringer would come out and shoot. 

And she would always have gingerbread. I was infatuated with gingerbread men. And gingerbread women. So she would. It wouldn’t be like gingerbread cut like regular cornbread, you know, stacked like that. It would always be in characters, so she would take the time to make them. And it’s kind of a dying art, you know, because you don’t really get those kind of baked items and part of it was probably because it was filled with lard and, uh, the type of stuff that with cholesterol would kill you today, but there was nothing like the taste of that stuff back in the day. You remember that. 

Reggie, is there anything else you want to share?

No. I think– tomorrow I’ll probably think of a whole line of other stuff, but for right now, you pretty much got everything out of me. 

Thank you. 

1:54:24