Tales from Dave's Bar: The Home Going of Howard Lee Johnson

This is the story of a young, black man, Howard Lee Johnson, who was born to unwed parents in Selma, Alabama during the turbulent mid-sixties, when many embittered whites believed that blacks should be restricted to low-paying jobs, and denied the right to vote. His father, a young civil-right worker sent to Selma, Alabama to instruct blacks in voter registration, impregnated his teenager mother and then vanished before he was born. His mother, aunt, and grandmother raised him in a God-fearing manner with all the love they could muster but it was not enough. He agonized over why his father abandoned him. Left alone at age 20, after the death of his mother - who told him on her deathbed his father's identity and whereabouts. "He's a minister living in Atlanta," she said. Seething with rage, he fled Selma, Alabama and went to Atlanta in search of his biological father. He located his father in the Fulton County Jail where he had been arrested on bigamy charges. The defrocked pastor embraced his long lost son and urged church members to help him find a job and housing. In Atlanta, Howard Lee soon found the love and respect he had sought all of his life. At age 21, he fell in love and married a young, Christian girl, named, Charlotte. During the next ten years they had two wonderful kids and he lived the life of Riley. They saved their money to buy a house in the suburbs and appeared to have a head start on life. However, he began having an affair with Naomi, a bartender and former prostitute. Charlotte kicked him out and his life began a blinding downward spiral culminating in his death.