Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz 241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu AAHP 499A Rafe Johnson Interviewed by Ryan Thompson on June 26, 2017 3hours and 1 minutes | 93 pages Abstract: In this interview Rafe Johnson gives and account of growing up in Jonesville, Florida with his grandparents. He talks about his encounter with the Ku Klux Klan as a young child with his grandparents. Once his grandparents died he went on to live with his mother in Gainesville, Florida and went to school with to A.Quinn Jones Elementary School and Lincoln High School. At an early age he became involve in the numbers system which is also known as cubing. He also shares his experiences of growing up as a black man within the city of Gainesville. At the age of nineteen, Johnson joins the United States Navy and recalls his experiences within the military system. Once out of the military, Johnson settles again in Gainesville, Florida. Keywords: [Gainesville, Florida; Jonesville, Florida; United States Navy; A. Quinn Jones; Lincoln High School] AAHP 499A Interviewer: Ryan Thompson Interviewee: Rafe Johnson Date: June 26th, 2017 T: Today is Friday, June 26th, 2017. My name is Ryan Thompson from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. I’m here at the home of Rafe Johnson in East Gainesville. If you could just say and spell your name please. J: Yeah, my name is Rafe Johnson spelled R-A-F-E, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. That name is my father’s name also. My mother is Emma Beatrice Fisher. We lived in – I was born into a midwife here in Gainesville, Florida. As I grew up and got around the age of three or four, maybe five years old, I went to live with my grandmother in Jonesville, Florida. Soon after moving to Jonesville with my grandmother and grandfather, she passed away. My grandfather was doing what I’m doing today. He was raising me pretty much by himself. My mother left me out there because my granddaddy needed some company. Him and I, we did some great things together. He had a big farm. He was share cropping with the local farm persons around that area. Didn’t make a whole lot of money. We got some of the crops and some of the vegetables and stuff that was attributed from doing the farming. But anyway, my grandfather was a really good man. He took time out to give me some insights on sometimes some social issues that I didn’t recognize at the time because I had no insights about society. Through some of the experiences of being with him, I particularly learned about racists acts. During that time, this was the early… well the late [19]50s, early [19]60s and I was out there. Persons hadn’t yet – segregation was still a real prominent thing. Through traveling about AAHP 499A; Johnson, Page 2 the rural neighborhoods, we would encounter incidents of sometime mild racist conditions, but my granddaddy always managed to work through it without persons getting hurt. Called upon an occasion, a couple of them, where we were traveling and it was a bridge. We didn’t have a car. We used a horse and wagon. As we were crossing the bridge, we got about halfway a guy pulls up in a car, White guy. He told my granddaddy. He says, “Back that wagon up, nigger.” My granddaddy he didn’t get insulted or get off the handle about that. He just told the man say, “I think it would be easier for you to back that car up than it is to back all these, this team of horses and this wagon. So this man didn’t not take stock in that at all. He was adamant about making sure my granddaddy backed up the wagon. Well, here’s where sometimes you have to take things in your own hands. My granddaddy always had a four-ten shotgun, a riffle. He had a derringer with the trigger guard cut out and hang it in his back overall pockets and a .44 pistol under the seat. Well I knew that because he taught me what these weapons was hunting and doing different adventures. So the guy ran up to the wagon. My granddaddy pulled that big .44 out. He told him. He say, “Open your mouth.” [Laughter]. He put the barrel of the gun in the man mouth. The man eyes – his face got flushed. His eyes got big. He ran back to that car [Laughter]. He hurried and backed that car. Well you know, that was just an incident that it worked out well. No one got hurt. We had another occasion to where some of our relatives and they were stealing chickens and watermelons. It wasn’t like today where you can steal all these valuable things. They were stealing chickens and rustling cows, which was still a bad thing. Anyway, the Klan came and they put a AAHP 499A; Johnson, Page 3 big cross in our yard and lit it. My grandma had passed, so nobody was but me and my granddaddy. He was sitting in the yard. The horses came thundering up. They done lit the cross up. It was burning. My granddaddy say, “Son, close all those shutters.” Our house, the widows were held out by stick, but he had gun ports in each little window. Ran through the house knocking the sticks out the window closing them up. I got back to the door I’m like “Wow.” These people got hoods on. They on horses and they circling the house like wow, wow. I’m excited. I’m like overwhelmed by this. I never seen nothing like that in my life. So my granddaddy said, “Boy, hand me that rifle out here.” I gave my granddaddy the rife. He laid it across his lap. Then, the one guy came up and he said, “Albert” – that was my granddaddy name – “You know where those boys are that’s been wrestling my cows, stealing my chickens and watermelons?” Gran said, “I have no idea. What you talking about? The only person I got here is too young to do any stuff like that.” He said, “Well Mr. Bob if you really looking for them.” How my granddaddy knew who this man was on that horse. I come to know that as I got older. It’s voice recognition. He said, “Mr. Bob, I got nothing to with it and nobody taking nothing. I don’t take nothing. The key to the whole thing was Mr. Bob and the rest of the crew knew my grandfather was a crack shot. When I heard my granddaddy say, “Now, two things can happen here. You can leave my property and go on about your business or somebody can die here today. Now y’all choose which one of y’all want it to be first.” Everybody really pulling up on the horse reigns. The horses stumbling back a little bit [Laughter]. I’m standing in the door. They went to stumbling back a little bit. So finally, they made a good AAHP 499A; Johnson, Page 4 decision. It wasn’t no need for nobody to die that day. Even though, this was not something that they should’ve been doing to us. You know, they shouldn’t have been doing that, but it was that era. It was that time. That went on and happened. But as I grew, I learned, you know, how to somewhat set myself with what society had to build. I just hadn’t had other than those realistic instances of what how overt this was. I did not realize how in place racist acts was until I grew and got older. Then, my grandfather passed. Then I moved back to Gainesville with my mother. Well, my daddy left. He was gone. He was a great guy. He worked for Joe Peters Glass Company which is now Shay’s Glass Company which was - I think they probably moved, but it was right there behind Krispy Kreme off 13th Street. They were there for years. I even went in at one point as an adult and talked to the guy. One of the guys, the owner of Shay’s, he remembered my daddy. That was years down the road. Coming back to Gainesville…need to go to school, so I went to A. Quinn Jones Elementary. We lived right across the street from the school. T: This was right near the campus of the University of Florida? J: A. Quinn is close to… well, it’s not that far. T: Okay. It’s off 8th? J: It’s off 10th Street and 7th Avenue. So it’s relatively close. You could, you know, they done built all kinds of apartments over that now that you could walk from there to the University of Florida or either ride a bike. It’s just like right around the corner. But anyway, growing up there, we were definitely impoverished. We were AAHP 499A; Johnson, Page 5 definitely broke. I used to always ask my mama. I would say, “Mama…” You know, there was this… I think they got offices there now. Some of the buildings been torn down. They replaced our, what we called the “Smith quarters” has been replaced with a professional center there now right on the corner of 10th St and 8th Avenue.