On a hot summer day in Savannah, Tennessee, in the largest Baptist church in this small town, the preacher rose from the middle chair of his pulpit platform like a king from a throne. He began to recite the Bible verse that would be the premise of his Sunday sermon, based on Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

In 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, I was nine years old. My father was the only store owner in Savannah who provided groceries to black people. Back in those days, blacks were not welcomed properly at grocery stores where white people shopped.

My father worked six days a week in the grocery store and preached on Sundays from this very pulpit. Every Saturday, my father would go to the store at six o'clock in the morning and leave at four in the afternoon so he and I could go fishing and so we could have three to four hours of daylight regardless of the season. But on this particular Saturday, business was busier than normal, so my father sent word that he would not be able to go fishing with me and that we would have to do it another time. I was an impatient and mischievous child, so I decided to go fishing alone.

Lake Hope was the only area in Savannah where both blacks and whites could fish, although whites could swim in the waters while we blacks were forbidden to do so. By the time the sun had set, I had no fish to show for my efforts. I fell into a deep sleep on the bank of the lake.

When I awoke, it was pitch black at night, and I was surrounded by ghosts with white-hooded sheets! My bloodshot eyes were stretched by the bright image of the wooden cross that was engulfed in flames. It appeared that I had awakened to a Ku Klux Klan ceremony, and I was not invited.

Ever since I was four years old, my parents and grandparents had told my siblings and me about the horrors of the Ku Klux Klan, so much so that we feared the Klan more than we feared the proverbial boogeyman. I was scared! I was afraid! I was frightened! But I had faith that the Lord would see me through this fiery situation.

As the leader of the group approached me, I became more and more petrified. I assumed he was the leader because his costume was lavender and the other members' costumes were white. You can only imagine how scared I was, being a nine-year-old child and the center of attention at a KKK rally! But my father taught me about Jesus, and he taught me about faith. I had a peace that came over me, and I knew everything would be okay.

The leader asked me what was my name and who were some of my relatives. I told him my name was Albert Johnson and that my father was Henderson Johnson, the owner of the colored grocery store and the pastor of the Mercy Grove Baptist Church.

From a distance, I heard a familiar voice from under the hooded sheets. The man said, "That's Preacher Johnson's son, and I know him! Let the boy go!"

The leader of the Klan asked him, "Do you vouch for this boy?"

The familiar voice said, "I know Preacher Johnson! Let the boy go!"

The leader looked at me and said, "Boy, do you know how to forget the things that you have seen tonight?"

I looked at the leader and said, "Yes, sir!"

The leader of the Klan then said, "Well, you go home, and you better not tell anybody what you have seen or we will hunt you down and string you up to a tree. Do you understand, boy?"

"Yes, sir! I won't tell anyone."

I proceeded to run away from the lake as fast as I could, and I finally made it home.

* * *

The following Monday, I went to my father's store after school to help him make room for new stock food items. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice speaking to my father. It was the same voice I had heard when I awoke to the Klan rally. It turned out that William Bell, a white business owner who supplied my father with some products for this grocery store, was the familiar voice under the hooded sheets. He was the Klansman who vouched for me and saved my life. The Lord works in mysterious ways. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

In 1942, I was seventeen years old. The United States was in World War II with Germany, Japan, and Italy, and I wanted to join the army to defend my country. I passed the military exam with flying colors and was selected to fight in the European theater with an all-black platoon. In those days, the United States Army was not integrated, so black soldiers could not fight alongside white soldiers, although our platoon was commanded by a white lieutenant.

I was one of the youngest in my platoon, and the older soldiers took me under their proverbial wings and taught me how to be a good soldier. Being a country boy from Savannah, Tennessee, I had grown up around guns all of my life and was a pretty good marksman. In World War II, the United States opposed governments that embraced fascism, totalitarianism, and all their deluded racial theories. Yet when the conflict started, the army resisted the rising chorus of black and some white citizens who were demanding that the military be integrated. Unfortunately for those advocates, many generals shared the bias of the majority of Americans and were adamant that it was not the army's duty to engage in a social experiment. So for most of my time in Europe, we black soldiers sat on the sidelines and were relegated to primarily occupying the unglamorous jobs of truck driver and stevedore. As disheartening as this was, I still had faith that one day we would fight side by side with our white brethren in defending the good ole USA. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

* * *

In March 1945, American soldiers were hemmed in on the east bank of the Rhine River, where they were desperately trying to resist the repeated German attempts to break and advance the front lines. The fighting was intense, and throughout the night, sometimes hand to hand, the American soldiers held their positions, firing flares, hurling grenades, and shooting wildly at shadowy figures as the enemy counterattacked.

While all of this was happening, we black soldiers were still sitting on the sidelines and waiting to get involved in the action. We wanted to prove that we were just as good as the white soldiers, and surprisingly, we felt no fear of being killed or injured.

We just wanted to fight!

For the men in my company, the situation had become more and more dire, but we had faith that we would be all right. Then, at that very moment, our commander asked us black soldiers to get ready to help out our white American brothers to thwart the German enemy.

As we approached our American soldier-brothers, they were shocked to see blacks coming to assist them. The Germans were such a formidable enemy that the shock soon wore off, and each man fought side by side to hold off the Germans.

* * *

On that day in 1945, on a ridge next to the Rhine, fighting with our white brothers seemed small in the struggle for equality, but it was significant in breaking down racial barriers. The white GIs of my company were mostly from the Jim Crow South, so even from their racist and white supremacist viewpoint, for that brief time, they accepted us as equals.

For the next two weeks, we black soldiers fought side by side with our white brothers, and we would not only defeat the enemy, but we were able to capture a large part of their platoon and hold them as prisoners of war.

But what became the pinnacle of my experience as a soldier suddenly turned into one of the most humiliating experiences. When we were transporting the German POWs back to our barracks, they were allowed to sit at the front of the army bus with the white American soldiers while we black soldiers were separated from them and forced to sit in the back of the bus. The explanation given to us black soldiers was simply that the prisoners might be Germans, but their faces were still white!

Even though I was angry, I had faith that one day things would get better. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

After returning from Europe, I was so happy to be home! We had defeated Hitler and Tojo, and we had eliminated the spread of fascism and totalitarianism.

I was sitting at the bus station after being dropped off in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and waiting for my last stop before arriving back in Savannah. When I became hungry, I walked over to the café beside the bus station, and there I was reminded of the worst ideals of the country I had just finished fighting for: The café was for whites only. The staff would not serve a black man, even though I was wearing my army uniform and they knew I had just returned from the war. The white soldiers, however, were ushered into the café; and many of their meals were free or at the very least discounted.

Though greatly discouraged, I still had faith that things would get better.

Upon my arrival back to Savannah, I married my high school sweetheart, worked at my father's store, and helped him on his farm selling timber wood as well cotton and tobacco. I did this for a few years until I decided go to college to become a minister like my father. I applied for my GI Bill but was denied. The GI Bill was supposed to be for every veteran from the war, but the United States Department of Veterans Affairs became a formidable foe to many blacks in search of an education because it had the power to deny or grant claims of black GIs. Also, banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the GI Bill worthless to black veterans from the war.

Fortunately for me, I was blessed to pay for my own college with the help of my father. The best theology program in the state of Tennessee happened to be at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I applied and initially got accepted because I refused to answer the question about whether I was white, black, or other. Once it was discovered that I was black, my application was denied. In 1950, black students were not allowed to go to any state university where white students attended. This was four years prior to the landmark court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation in state universities against the law.

I was discouraged and upset, but I had faith that things would get better. I applied to the historically black Tennessee State University in Nashville and was accepted, and on the day I received my letter of acceptance, my wife Rosetta told me that she was pregnant. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

I graduated from college in three years with a dual degree in theology and business. At this time, I had my degrees, and my wife Rosetta and I had two sons, my oldest Peter and the younger one, Dean. Over the years, my wife and I had four more kids: Linda, Mary, Ruth, and Tony.

In 1964, Savannah was feeling the pressure of the growing civil rights movement and the subsequent pressures of integrating the public school systems. I was approached by the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP. He wanted me to allow my son Peter to be the first black student to integrate Savannah's public high school. Savannah High School was the name of the public school were the white students attended, and Central High School was the name of the high school were the black students attended.

My son Peter's first year at the all-white high school was tumultuous at best. Not a day went by when he was not spat on and called a "nigger." These actions continued for the first two years of his high school career but subsided his junior and senior years. Despite the impediments, his demeanor was calm, and he persevered and excelled academically, so much so that in 1968, he graduated from Savannah High School as an honor student and was accepted at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The very school I was denied entrance to in 1950 because they didn't allow black students, my son was accepted to. The faith of a mustard seed can move mountains! This was the culmination of my faith. My son Peter graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The church congregation rose to their feet as the Reverend Albert Johnson brought this sermon to a crescendo. The sermon Rev. Johnson preached was a personal, joyful, painful sermon because it was a synopsis of his life growing up in the small town of Savannah, Tennessee. Although, revealing and honest, it was only a microcosm of his experience living in this town.

The Reverend Albert Johnson and his wife Rosetta Johnson were blessed with six kids: three boys, Peter, Dean, and Tony, and three girls, Linda, Ruth, and Mary. Rev. Johnson loved all his kids equally but differently. Each one of his kids grew up knowing his struggles and knowing that there was pride in being part of the Johnson clan. The Johnson kids came from one of the few black families in Savannah that had financial means. Rev. Johnson's grandfather, Henderson Johnson Sr., was born a slave and was freed as a teenager shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was in enforced in 1863. He started off as a sharecropper and learned to read and write. He studied how to build houses and how to buy and sell merchandise in a capitalistic society. He built a small building where he started a small store. He passed this store and land down to his son Henderson Jr., who became a farmer, store owner, and founder and minister of the Mercer Grove Baptist Church. He left his church, land, and store to his son, Reverend Albert Johnson.

This was exceptionally rare in the time of segregation in the Jim Crow South, where life was unfair for blacks, especially during the Great Depression, when both black and white families struggled to survive. If a white family was struggling and knew of a black family close by that had food or material things that they didn't have, some whites would audaciously walk onto the blacks' property and take whatever they wanted without any retribution from the law.

Law enforcement was always on the side of whites in the Jim Crow South. The blatant racism and pervasive disrespect for blacks was apparent and ubiquitous, but one by-product of segregation was that blacks had to eat and shop primarily at their own restaurants and stores. Rev. Johnson's businesses benefited from this, but his passion was his ministry and farming. He made sure that his kids worked in the fields with the hired farm hands so they knew what hard work was all about and that work ethic was important.

Rev. Johnson didn't shelter his kids from the harsh realities of racism. He explained to them in graphic details what to expect out in the world. He stressed to them that they had to work twice as hard and be twice as smart as their white counterparts to get the same things out of life. The older kids — Peter, Dean, Linda, and Ruth — would work until the crops were harvested. Many times they would miss the beginning of the school year, but it wouldn't matter because they still would catch up and be straight A students.

The Johnson family was known for being a smart family, and Peter Johnson was known to be the brightest of the bunch. Being the first black student to integrate Savannah High School and being the first black student from Savannah, Tennessee, to be accepted to the University of Tennessee made him a legend in the town.

Rev. Johnson always preached to his kids that white society would always have a superiority complex and perceive blacks to be inferior. There was nothing they could do to change that, so he stressed to them to not even worry about that. He expected them to be successful despite racial barriers. Rev. Johnson's determination was that his kids had to be twice as good as their white counterparts if they wanted the same opportunities. If they were merely equal to them, they would not get chosen because they were black. That was just the way of life in the small towns in the Jim Crow South. Working harder and being smarter were the only ways to overcome it.

"Why can't you be like your brother Peter?" These are the words that haunted Dean for most of his adolescent life. Dean was just as smart as Peter, but he had a propensity for being mischievous and sometimes downright mean! He was a habitual underachiever academically. He was the quintessential real life example of the "prodigal son" of the biblical parable. He despised working on the farm and dreamed of one day moving to a big city.

His wish came true sooner rather than later, not because of anything good he did but because of his affiliation with a local gang in Savannah. The gang was called the Farm Boys, and with Dean's charisma and audacity, he quickly rose to be one of the gang's leaders. The gang was an intimidating presence in the Bible Belt Southern town of Savannah, Tennessee. In the early seventies, the drug of choice was marijuana (or "Mary Jane" as they called it on the street). The Farm Boys were supplying everyone in the town of Savannah with weed and became the talk of the town with their money and their violent nature.