Around the same time, the calculated bandit met William “Bub” Hewlett, a gangster who took a liking to Johnson’s dedication to the street life. He was committing armed robberies with gangs across the city and extorting everything and anyone in sight.īy 17, Johnson was locked up at the Elmira Reformatory. By age 15, Johsnon was heavily entrenched in a life of crime. Sadly, Johnson’s father’s dreams of a grandiose life for his son never came true. Johnson was constantly in fights with the “hostile white kids” at school, a situation that could turn dangerous for a young black child living in the deeply segregated South. According to a New York Postinterview with Chris Brancato, one of the creators behind the hit show Godfather of Harlem, which is based on Johnson’s life, the bigtime drug lord was sent up north by his father who feared “that his inability to be subservient would eventually get him lynched.” He moved to Harlem with his family as a child in 1919. Johnson may have earned his street cred in Harlem, but he was actually a native of Charleston, South Carolina.
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