Johnson mistaken for white by National Guardsmen
The National Guard set up security checkpoints between the two major black neighborhoods in Columbia to keep unsuspecting white visitors away. They mistook Johnson for a white soldier and tried to keep him from entering the neighborhood.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Lyman Johnson, July 12, 1990. Interview A-0351. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOHN EGERTON:
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And where your father lived, that was the only black residence in that
neighborhood, wasn't it?
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
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That's right. They said, "Well, where they live?" And
when I told them out here on East Ninth Street, well, these out of town
guards had been given a map, here was the Negro neighborhood over here,
here's a Negro neighborhood over here, here is a corridor going all the
way out here to the next town. Now, from this courthouse way on out
there to the next town, for five miles out that way, we're the only the
black on that side. So when I said I was going out to East Ninth Street,
they didn't know any better. They just assumed only white people out
there.
- JOHN EGERTON:
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So you didn't tell them anything?
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
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No, it wasn't my business. So then I got through. But when I got to the
last checkpoint, these people said-this was about 2:30 in the
morning-they said, "Now look, fellow, you
better stay here with us until daylight because some of the.
. . ." Now, this is the way I surmised what was going on in the
white mind. These were white people telling me. . . .
- JOHN EGERTON:
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Whom they thought was a white person?
- LYMAN JOHNSON:
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I assume that they thought I was white, and this next point actually
makes me think that they actually believed I was white. "Look
man, you better stay right here with us until sunrise, because there's
one bunch of damn niggers over here and one neighborhood of niggers over
here. And they come down almost to this highway going out this way. And
they swear that for every Negro we kill, they're going to kill two
whites. They don't care who they are. They're going to kill two whites
for any Negro."