The Good Interred With His Bones
WPBF 25 senior producer Desiree Malkey and cameraman Joel Waldmann on the hunt for Cracker Johnson.
Today two journalists from the local ABC affiliate WPBF 25 came by the house to film a segment on the CJH restoration project as part of their ongoing series “Palm Beach County: A Century of Change.” The journalists were incredibly thorough. By the end of the day, we put much more flesh around the legend of the man who built the 1926 house; We literally found Cracker Johnson. (WATCH THE VIDEO of the program that premiered Sunday Aug. 16 at 11 p.m.)
But let’s start from the beginning. Monday morning, WPBF filmed the CJH architecture and unique features like the secret room where they say the wealthy entrepreneur James Jerome “Cracker” Johnson stashed booze during prohibition. Serena and Natalie gave interviews about trying to restore the house back to its former glory. They filmed Derrell Outler, handyman extraordinaire, as he busted up the yucky ceramic tiles throughout the main floor of the house were recently discovered to cover gorgeous oak floors (!)
James Jimenez Johnson, the grandson of Cracker Johnson (who looked just like him) also came by the house to share stories he heard about his grandfather growing up. He told the crew that his grandfather did a lot of things, “some legal, some illegal” but that at that time as a black man, “not everyone could go to Harvard, Yale or MIT.” He said his grandfather never kept money in banks but in safes. So the day the white mob murdered his grandfather in 1946, it set off a gold rush in all of his vast holdings to find where he hid the piles of money. Read more…
Division Avenue’s Finest
Willie firing up his latest catch....
Some have remarked on the “sadly named” Division Avenue where the Cracker Johnson House is located in West Palm Beach, because it has made a certain kind of headline in the past. But on Friday nights on the 1400 block there’s only one Division to speak of: either you “family” or you ain’t. If you family, as fisherman and cook extraordinaire Willie so defines it, you are entitled to partake in his Friday night ritual. Willie gathers up the week’s catch. “I do a looooot of fishing,” he explained. This Friday it was bluefish, barracuda, sand perch and of course catfish.
Welcoming the tour bus
Natalie and Serena show the tour group this year's crop of mangos
Dr. Natalie Hopkinson (black cardigan) and Serena Hopkinson (white shirt), welcome a tour bus full of historic preservationist in Palm Beach for Florida’s annual statewide conference in 2009. A special thanks to Kimberly Fairall, Gwen Ferguson and Caroline Weiss at the Florida Preservation Trust for adding the house as a stop on the African American Heritage trail. We had an amazing time at the conference, met many supportive people committed to helping us with getting funding for our project. The final gala at Donald Trump’s Palm Beach country club Mar-A-Lago was fabulous as well.
Here are some shots of the preservationist group visit.
Florida Preservation Trust, Here We Come!
We are really honored to be able to showcase the Cracker Johnson House this weekend at the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation‘s annual meeting that is taking place in 
Palm Beach this year. Serena is a bit nervous about showing the house in its less than perfect state of rehab. But we’ve done a slideshow of before photos that will make the “reveal” even more impressive. We still have a long way to go, but we’re proud of our progress.
We are hoping attending the trust’s annual conference this weekend will allow us to network and find out more about resources are available to help us complete this project, as well as to develop programs to be able to open the house up to the local community for all to enjoy. We signed up too late to get tickets to the big gala at Donald Trump’s chi-chi Mar-a-Lago Club. But we are on a waiting list. Serena and Natalie told the director of the Trust that we have already gone shopping for this black-tie event, so we simply MUST get in!
