Ellsworth Raymond "Bumpy" Johnson (July 1906–1968) was an American gangster in Harlem in the early 20th century. He was from Charleston, S.C. and moved to Harlem with his parents as a small boy. He was given the nickname "Bumpy" because of a large bump on the back of his head. Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation). ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... Charleston is an American city located in Charleston County, South Carolina. ...

Johnson was a former associate of mob boss Stephanie St. Clair. Johnson was one of the leading organized criminals in Harlem to fight an unsuccessful war against Dutch Schultz, who incorporated the city's organized crime into the Jewish and Italian mobs of the day. He was later hired as an enforcer by the Genovese crime family to protect Mafia operations in Black neighborhoods against local Harlem criminals. Johnson was arrested more than 40 times and would eventually serve three prison terms for narcotics-related charges before dying of a heart attack in 1968 in a Harlem appliance shop. At the time of his death, his case was pending for another narcotics violation that could have earned him a possible fourth prison term. While in prison Johnson studied philosophy and history. Johnson also wrote poetry, some of which was later published during the Harlem Renaissance. For other uses, see Mafia (disambiguation). ... Stephanie St. ... Dutch Schultz (August 6, 1902 – October 24, 1935) was a New York City-area gangster of the 1920s and 30s. ... The Genovese crime family is one of the Five Families that controls organized crime activities in New York City, USA, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia (or Cosa Nostra). ... This article is about the criminal society. ... The term narcotic, derived from the Greek word for stupor, originally referred to a variety of substances that induced sleep (such state is narcosis). ... The Harlem Renaissance(also known as the Black Literary Renaissance and The New Negro Movement) refers to the flowering of African American cultural and intellectual life during the 1920s and 1930s. ...

Once in December 1965, Johnson staged a sit-down strike in a police station, refusing to leave, as a protest against their continued surveillance. He was charged with "refusal to leave a police station" but was acquitted by a judge.^[1] A sitdown strike is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by sitting down at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with scab labor or, in some cases...

Popular culture

Johnson has been portrayed by actor Laurence Fishburne in The Cotton Club and Hoodlum. He was portrayed by Clarence Williams III in American Gangster. Actor John Amos portrayed him in the television special Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story. Laurence John Fishburne III[1] (born July 30, 1961) is an American Academy Award-nominated, Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actor of screen and stage, as well as playwright, director, and producer. ... The Cotton Club is a movie, released in 1984, centered around a popular real-life Harlem jazz club in the 1930s, the Cotton Club. ... Hoodlum is a 1997 United Artists film that gives a partially fictional account of the gang war between the Italian/Jewish mafia alliance and the black gangsters of Harlem that took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s. ... Clarence Williams III (born August 21, 1939) is an American actor. ... American Gangster is a 2007 crime film written by Steve Zaillian and directed by Ridley Scott. ... John Amos (born John Amos Jr. ...

The Moses Gunn character of "Bumpy Jonas" in Shaft and Shaft's Big Score seems to be based on Johnson. A shaft can be Look up shaft in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Shafts Big Score, released in 1972, is the second film in the trilogy in which actor Richard Roundtree starred as the private-eye, John Shaft. ...

A more factually correct story is told in The Mafia Encyclopedia from Accardo to Zwillman, by Carl Sifakis, (1987).

On page 168, Mr. Sifkas writes of Bumpy: “It has become vogue in recent years to speak of a “Black Mafia,” a group emerging with a Cuban or Latin look, eventually to supplant the 50 year reign of the Italian-Jewish syndicate. But African American criminals who advance the furthest today are those who cooperate with rather than oppose the Mafia. Harlem’s Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, an African American millionaire, was very cooperative.

A virtual folk hero for four decades, Bumpy was famous for flashing his large amounts of cash as he strode through Harlem. His status was acknowledged by the New York Crime Families, too. When an African-American in Harlem objected to white control of the rackets, Bumpy got an enforcement contract to handle the problem.

In that sense Bumpy Johnson was, as sited by Nicholas Gage in The Mafia is Not an Equal Opportunity Employer, an exception to the title of the book. Like a true member of organized crime, Johnson paid his dues, serving three prison terms for selling narcotics and facing a fourth conviction when he dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 62. In prison, Bumpy had become a scholar in philosophy and history. He wrote poetry and saw several of his poems published in a review dedicated to the African American Freedom Movement.

Freedom movement or no, Bumpy Johnson, as Gage noted, “Took the only safe road open for an African-American gangster – exploitation of fellow African-Americans-and he still managed to die of natural causes.”

References

External links

• "The real rap on Bumpy", Philadelphia Daily News, November 5, 2007
• Harlemgodfather.com, biographical info by Johnson's widow, Mayme Hatcher Johnson
• Walter Bell, "Queenie and Bumpy", Crime Library
• Jared Hohlt, "Hoodlum", movie review in Slate, August 30, 1997