ABOUT US

Cracker Johnson House, Inc., is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration of the historic 1926 home, and the Freshwater Project, which aims to document a wealthy African American community established during segregation across the bridge from the island of Palm Beach.

James Jerome “Cracker” Johnson (1877-1946) was a wealthy numbers-runner, bootlegger and club and real estate owner who was a Robin Hood figure crowned “King of Black West Palm Beach.” At a time when banks refused to loan money to black people, Cracker Johnson did. When the city of West Palm Beach went broke during the Depression, he loaned the city $50,000 to balance his budget. He was a wealthy ladies man who was killed by the mob outside one of his nightclubs in the 1940s. His memory still looms large in the West Palm Beach community.

The Cracker Johnson House is a contributing structure to the Northwest neighborhood’s status as a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. Located  located less than a mile from the glitzy island of Palm Beach, this rich African American history is often overlooked. At the turn of the 19th century, black labor was imported to build up fancy resort hotels. A vibrant black community lived in a tent city known as “The Styx” located on the island. Once the major hotels were complete, that community was burned to the ground, and the black residents were sent across the bridge to segregated neighborhoods in the city of West Palm Beach, which Henry Flagler established for “my help.”

The story of Cracker Johnson is one of making a way out of no way–and doing it in high style. Members of the community still recall when Johnson had parrots in the mango trees, which talked to passersby. Others remember running numbers for Cracker Johnson. Since the Hopkinson/McGann family bought the house in 2005 we have set about restoring it to its former glory, documenting his legacy, and sharing this uniquely American story.

CJI STAFF

Serena Hopkinson is a former corporate accountant and the longtime former business manager at the historic Madame C.J. Walker Theatre Center near downtown Indianapolis, she is now a licensed Florida real estate agent.

Dr. Natalie Hopkinson splits her time between West Palm Beach and Washington, D.C. where she was a founding editor of The Root, an African American Web magazine owned by the Washington Post/ Slate Group and edited by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard.  A graduate of Howard University,  Hopkinson holds a Ph.D from the University of Maryland-College Park and lectures on the journalism faculty at Georgetown University. She is the author of “Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.” Her next book “Go-Go Live,” an ethnography of Washington, D.C.’s funk-based music, is forthcoming on Duke University Press.

To contact us, please email CrackerJohnsonHouse@gmail.com