FIGHTS TO END RACIAL INEQUALITY REGGIEJOHNSON

BY KATHY CHANG

Growing up, Reginald “Reggie”

Johnson, an African American, did not really understand the Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation in the southern states set forth until 1965.

Johnson grew up in Metuchen, away from the states enforcing the laws. In ways, his parents – father, George Yancy Johnson and mother, Phyllis Thompson Johnson – did their best to shield their children – who also included sisters Diane and Claryce and

He attended Metuchen schools – Edgar, Roosevelt and Metuchen High School –never missing a day.

“My mother made me attend school the day after prom night to protect my record. My high school principal marked me present and sent me home after lunch. Because my father was in the military, I also attended school in Fort Knox, Ky.,” he said.

After high school, Johnson said he wanted to attend an all Black College, but his mother felt the temptation “to party and not learn” was too great.

He attended Ricker College in Houlton,

“The school was isolated on the Maine/ Canadian border, however I was not homesick because several other Metuchen stu-

There were instances outside of and even in Metuchen where racial segregation reared

The instance when his family traveled by car when his father was stationed at a military base on the West Coast during

“I couldn’t understand traveling down south why we could not stay at [the] Howard Johnson [hotel] or why all of our food came from a basket and not a restaurant or why the secluded areas were our rest rooms,”

Or why Black motorists followed a motorists find friendly hotels, restaurants, bars and gas stations.

“I was told that when we could not find what we needed from our copy of the Green Book, we had to drive to a depot and wait for a train to stop to get answers from the Pullman Porters (African American men hired to work on the railroad sleeping cars),” he said.

The instance at a Jersey Shore beach where his family was asked to leave a section of a beach because they were Black.

“It was the last time our family went to the New Jersey shore,” Johnson recalled. “We went to the beaches in New York and had no problems.”

The instance when he and his brother looked out their bedroom window in Metuchen and saw a cross burning on their front lawn.

Those instances and his upbringing have led to what Johnson does today.

After college, Johnson said he did not have trouble finding work. He began his career as a federal agent for the U.S. Postal Inspection Services and moved on to serve as an assistant to the warden at the Federal House of Detention, a federal prison in New York City.

He was promoted to vice president of Curry, Telleri Group Inc., a technical recruitment and management search firm and then managed the Outreach, Admissions please see REGGIE, page 5 08840 and Placement Department for the Edison Job Corps Academy, a federally funded institution designed to provide vocational, educational and social training to high school graduates lacking permanent careers. There’s a quote by Poet John Paul Moore: “And may I never be too busy to help others bear their loads, then I’ll keep drinking from my saucer, cause my cup has overflowed.”

Johnson takes the quote to heart with the many advocacy roles he has taken on since the 1980s.

He currently is the president of the Metuchen-Edison NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), a role he has serviced since 1987, and is a bias crime agent with the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.

He served on the Middlesex County Human Relations Commission and Middlesex County Vicinage Committee on Minority Affairs.

With the NAACP, Johnson’s work led to significant attention to racial profiling.

“Many people believe that the ‘Driving While Black’ episode happened when four young men of color in a van were shot at by New Jersey state troopers [in 1998]. But it happened almost 10 years earlier when I was receiving calls from African American parkway drivers stating that they were stopped and ticketed for no apparent reason,” Johnson said.

Over the years, the Metuchen-Edison NAACP has helped reverse discrimination cases, promote diversity in police departments, and provide legal representation to four Rutgers University students protesting comments made by former Rutgers President Francis L. Lawrence on racial standardized scores.

“We helped Middlesex County select their first African American Superior Court Judge Travis Francis,” Johnson said, noting more than 26 African Americans have been added to the Superior Court throughout the state.

In 1990, Johnson was approached by the National Conference of Christian and Jews and the Jewish Federation to address the number of bias incidents in Middlesex County.

“We created commissions in 21 of the 25 municipalities and four counties (Union, Bergen, Somerset, and Mercer). We acted as liaisons to protect the Asian Indian population in Woodbridge (Middlesex County) who were victimized by racism,” he said.

In 1994, Johnson was selected by Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Robert Longhi to chair the Middlesex County Vicinage Advisory Committee on Minority Concerns.

“This committee focuses on the criminal court system and its relationship with minority populations; other issues to be addressed including language barriers and misconceptions about the system,” he said.

His work has led to many, many awards.

Johnson also has had an opportunity to lecture at Rutgers University, Rider College, Widener University, and the National Black M.B.A. Association Conference and Exposition on several topics, including hiring and retaining minority professionals, career planning and race relations.

As Johnson reflects on his advocacy work, he said the early teachings of his mother and the later relationship/learnings with his father has shaped him into the man he is today.

“My mother taught me to be grateful and positive, work hard and follow your dream, be understanding and help other people without seeking reward,” he said.

Since his father was a lifetime soldier who fought in World War II, the Korean War and worked for the Secret Service after retirement, Johnson said he, along with his siblings, did not see much of him until they were adults.

“I got to know him later in life,” he said. “I learned the trials and tribulations he had to go through being a Black man in America.”