Johnson will be inducted into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame in May.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville man with a storied life steeped in the local Civil Rights movement and Black golf history, 80, is fighting to save his home.
Arthur Leroy Johnson attended Professional Golfers’ Association tour qualifier school in the early 1980s and played on the United Golfers Association tour in the 1970s and 1980s. The UGA was founded in 1925 by Black golfers as a parallel institution to the then all-white PGA.
Johnson will be inducted into the African American Golfers Hall of Fame in May.
Johnson took part in local marches associated with the 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest, an infamous incident where a St. Augustine hotel owner James Brock poured muriatic acid into a pool where Black and white activists had jumped in to protest the lodge’s white’s only policy for swimmers.
He has lived in Riverside for nearly 40 years and is now struggling to hold onto his two-bedroom home.
“My father worked two blocks from where I live today,” Johnson said. “At 5 o’clock in that neighborhood, all the Black people had to be out. There was a whistle that would blow. If you worked in that area, as a Black person you had to be leaving. The whistle was called Big Jim.”
In 1986, Johnson, who is now 80, became a homeowner in that neighborhood when he bought a 1,100-square-foot home.
He eventually ran into financial difficulties when prostate cancer and other health problems sidelined him from his job as director of First Tee – North Florida, a program that integrates golf with a life skills curriculum to assist youth.
According to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, he took out a reverse mortgage on the 1912 home, initially borrowing just $24,000, but had trouble making needed repairs to his home on $941 a month in Social Security. Johnson defaulted on his reverse mortgage and ended up owing $140,000.
In 1988, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development got the authority to insure reverse mortgages through the FHA when President Ronald Reagan signed the reverse mortgage bill into law, establishing the reverse mortgage government insured loan, according to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. No payments are required with reverse mortgages, but homeowners frequently have to deal with unannounced changes in their mortgage requirements and sloppy servicing of their loans, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid said.
“The amount of Black people that have lost their property is incredible,” Johnson said. “It’s a good program, but you’ve got to stay on top of your responsibility to pay your taxes and insurance. As you get older, you’re not going to be able to keep up with that.”
One of Johnson’s mentors was Frank Hampton, who was among four golfers whose case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to integrate Jacksonville’s golf courses in the late 1950s, when Black golfers were only allowed to play on one day a week at the only public course at that time: Brentwood Golf Club.
“We couldn’t even go into the clubhouse to order a hot dog or a hamburger. We had to order through a window at Brentwood,” Johnson said. “They had a special side window set up, and we would have to go to that side window. I am 80 years old, but some things I can remember like yesterday.”
Legal Aid attorney Lynn Drysdale and Housing Counselor Marissa Vetter are working to make the payments more manageable, according to the organization, working to get a City of Jacksonville Foreclosure Intervention Program grant. A March 19 foreclosure sale date is fast approaching.
“First, she had to see if we could use the money in this way, then she had to make sure Mr. Johnson met each of the requirements,” Drysdale said of Vetter. “She was working with many moving parts and only one of her.”
Jacksonville Area Legal Aid is close to temporarily saving Johnson’s home. However, his property taxes and insurance will take up more than 60% of his Social Security income, the organization said.
Attorneys wanting to volunteer with probate and heirs property issues, contact Pro Bono Director Aaron Irving at (904) 356-8371 or Aaron.Irving@jaxlegalaid.org.
