June 15, 2006

BY BEN GOLDBERGER

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES Staff Reporter

Charles "Goolash" Johnson, one of the oldest surviving Negro League baseball players and an activist who successfully challenged the Illinois Central RR's exclusionary hiring practices, died Saturday in his sleep at Manor Care Nursing Home in Oak Lawn. He was 96.

Born in Pine Bluff, Ark., in 1909, Mr. Johnson moved to Chicago in 1925 to care for his ailing mother. Her death left Mr. Johnson alone on the city's South Side, without family or a high school diploma.

But Mr. Johnson had talent on the baseball diamond.

A friendship with legendary Negro League player and impresario Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe helped Mr. Johnson begin his professional career when he joined the Texas Giants in 1930 for the team's barnstorming tour through Canada. Before, and about a decade after, Major League Baseball was integrated in 1947, African-American teams criss-crossed America and Canada taking on all challengers. Mr. Johnson spent much of the 1930s traveling the country as part of these touring outfits.

It was this itinerant lifestyle, friends say, that helped Mr. Johnson acquire his esoteric knowledge and precise sense of direction.

"He was knowledgeable even though he didn't go to high school," said friend and fellow Negro League veteran Johnny Washington. "He knew everything. He knew every street in Chicago. And Michigan and Iowa. Any street in the Midwest, Charlie could tell you exactly where to go."

"MapQuest has nothing on this guy," said friend Gary Crawford.

From 1932 to 1933, Mr. Johnson was a pitcher and outfielder for the famed Chicago American Giants, according to Bob Mitchell, the national coordinator for the Communication Network for Negro League Players, a clearinghouse for Negro League player information. The Giants were a source of pride to black Chicagoans, often winning the Negro National League championship and occasionally outdrawing the all-white Cubs and White Sox, according to Mitchell.

Worked to be part of MLB pension 

But even while playing for such a vaunted team, Mr. Johnson had to take a variety of blue-collar jobs to make ends meet. During the Depression, Mr. Johnson supported his baseball income working in the stockyards, electroplating, shining shoes and as a restaurant cook, which is where he earned the nickname that stuck with him for the rest of his life.

Mr. Johnson quit baseball shortly after his marriage in 1942 and joined the Illinois Central RR as a Pullman porter. When the porters were being phased out due to declining ridership, Mr. Johnson applied to become a special agent investigator. There were no African-American special agents.

"He was a Pullman porter and he said 'I want to be a special agent,' " said Steve Kirby, a friend whose father owned a security company Mr. Johnson worked for. "And they looked at him like he was asking to have another head put on."

With the support of his union, Mr. Johnson filed a discrimination lawsuit against Illinois Central. It was resolved in his favor in 1970, and Mr. Johnson became the railroad's first African-American special agent, according to Kirby.

"I liked Charlie because he overcame a tremendous amount of adversity in his life," said Kirby. "He fought discrimination his whole life. . . . Charlie always had a very good moral center, [a sense] of what was right and wrong."

In his retirement, Mr. Johnson worked to include former Negro League players in a pension fund created by Major League Baseball. Mr. Johnson was never accepted into the program.

A service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at Oak Woods Cemetery, 1035 E. 67th. A memorial is planned for Aug. 7, which would have been Mr. Johnson's 97th birthday, at the Negro League Cafe, 301 E. 43rd.

 June 16, 2006

Charles Johnson took pride in knowing that as a player in the Negro Leagues, he helped open the door for other black players to play professional baseball. Mr. Johnson, who lived on the South Side most of his life, played for the Chicago American Giants as a pitcher and outfielder in the 1930s and early 1940s. One of the oldest surviving Negro Leagues baseball players, Mr. Johnson died Saturday, June 10, at the age of 96 due to complications of prostate cancer. Born in Pine Bluff, Ark., in 1909, Mr. Johnson grew up on baseball and played in Arkansas, Kansas City and St. Louis before moving with his mother to Chicago when he was 15. His mother died the same year, and Mr. Johnson, who was an only child, was on his own.
But Mr. Johnson, who lived down the block from Comiskey Park, found a friend in Negro Leagues legend Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, who helped him get into the leagues.

"Duty lived on the same block as Charlie and really took a liking to him," said friend and former Negro Leagues player Johnny Washington, of Chicago.

Mr. Johnson played during the 1930s for the Chicago American Giants,. But most of the time, Mr. Johnson played on independent barnstorming teams that toured the country, friend Steve Kirby said.

Playing baseball in the Southern states, Mr. Johnson sometimes found himself the object of racial slurs. Though he was a big man and knew how to use his fists, he would rather use words, Washington said.

When someone would say something derogatory, Mr. Johnson would "smile and keep his mouth shut. He would give the other guy a chance to cool down, and then Charlie would go talk to him like a regular person," Washington said. "That was Charlie."

In 1942, Mr. Johnson married his girlfriend, Julia, and the two moved into a home in Chicago's Fuller Park neighborhood, later moving to Chatham.

Mr. Johnson was still playing in the early 1940s when his wife, who worked as a hat maker, persuaded him to quit baseball. In the following years, Mr. Johnson had several different jobs, before taking a position with Illinois Central Railroad in the 1950s as a porter, Kirby said.

In the mid-1960s, Mr. Johnson became the first African-American special agent for Illinois Central Railroad after winning a discrimination lawsuit, Kirby said. His duties there included investigating cargo theft and crimes to passengers.

He retired from the railroad in the early '70s and worked for a private security firm for about six years after that.

Time never dulled Mr. Johnson's intellect, and he was as sharp in his 90s as he was in his youth, friends said.

"He had a memory out of sight. Charlie was like an encyclopedia," Washington said.

Mr. Johnson could navigate the Midwest using side streets because he spent so many days on the road traveling to games before the many highways were built, Washington said.

Not always being able to use the same water fountains or bathrooms as white players did not make Mr. Johnson bitter, Washington said.

And despite being part of a generation of African-American men who paved the way for professional baseball's integration, Mr. Johnson remained humble to the end about his achievements.

About five years ago, Kirby traveled with Mr. Johnson to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., and pointed out a guy who looked like Mr. Johnson in a team picture hanging on the wall.

"Charles just smiled and said, `Yeah, that's me.' He never made a big deal about it," Kirby said.

In the last two decades Mr. Johnson spent much of his time at home reading books and newspapers and watching televised baseball games and programs on PBS in equal amounts, friend Gary Crawford said.

"He was much loved. If you met him, you never forgot him," Crawford said.

Mr. Johnson's wife died in 1999. A memorial service for Mr. Johnson will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at Oak Woods Cemetery, 1035 E. 67th St.

Another memorial service is planned for Aug. 7 at the Negro League Cafe, 301 E. 43rd St.
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