Zachary’s first Black police officer, William “Bill” Johnson, has passed away at the age of 75 and will be laid to rest today. A trailblazer in local law enforcement, Johnson broke barriers and paved the way for future generations serving on the ZPD from 1973-1994. Johnson’s story captured national attention in 2022 when his long-lost daughter Zindy Johnson, who is a famous pop star, found him, bringing their incredible journey full circle.

Dr. Gwendolyn Perry Honore shared this series of interviews with us in memoriam of Bill. “The interviews were informative and delightful. Unfortunately, we were not able to continue this history. Hopefully, you will enjoy this short biography and capture the remarkable, fulfilling, and unintimidated life of William Henry Johnson.”

Early Life

William Johnson admired his dad, Frank Johnson, a church going man, a deacon and treasurer for the old family church, Irondale Baptist. He worked at Waskey Bridges Construction, in Baton Rouge, and he came home on weekends. William was born in Woodville, Mississippi, but grew up in Laurel Hill, Louisiana, where he attended Afton Village Elementary School. Afton had only two teachers, and one of the teachers was the principal.  There were about twenty students in his class.

In 1955, his father purchased an incomplete house in Zachary on Avenue D, which had only an outer wall, but it was made into a comfortable home. Some neighbors pitched in to help them with food and rides, which helped to minimize some of the struggle. He didn’t grow up in a strict household and he was spoiled by his mom and grandmother.  He did most of the things he wanted because he was the only boy in the house.  

In September 1958, his dad passed at the age of 45. He had cancer, but he doesn’t know the type of cancer.  “The sting of my father’s death still haunts me,” he said. He misses his father and it hurts that he had never seen him excel in high school sports.  There were 6 girls and two boys, and his mom, Lizzie Johnson, became a single mom. Through the years, he has had six siblings to pass, and each died of some type of cancer (two are still living): Olivia Johnson (deceased), Dorothy Johnson Armwood, Doretha Johnson (deceased), Irma Johnson Brown (deceased), Daisy Johnson Carson, and Georgia Mae Johnson (deceased), Georgia Davis (deceased/half-sister). He had one brother, Frank Johnson (deceased).  His greatest influence was from his sister Olivia. “She always pushed me in the right direction,” he said.  

The Simple Life & Regrets

William started the 4th grade at Northwestern High School in Zachary when he was nine years old. During the lunch period, he said it was the first time he had observed students eating with a fork, because he had always eaten with a spoon.  

In this new environment, he had to learn people all over again, and he knew nothing about Zachary.

His mom was easy going and always wanted the best for her kids, but she was frustrated because they were poor. He played football, baseball and ran a little track and played basketball. He excelled in baseball and football, but like his dad, she also had never seen him play sports in high school. “She did see me play football across the fence with kids from the neighborhood,” he added.

In reflection, there were things he regretted not doing, like becoming a teacher and a mechanic. His brother-in-law and brother were constantly working on cars, and he stayed close around them. It became a habit for him to wash the cars and drive them around the block. This experience helped him to perfect his driving skills.  

As a teacher, he believed he could have reached out to more young people coming up in his era.  

He had planned to go back to college after the military and study to be a teacher, but he ended up in law enforcement.

In high school, he was determined to play sports and became very good at the games he played. 

His favorite coaches were the late Albert Richardson (also a biology teacher) and the late Quince Williams (also a science teacher). “They were fair and they believed in teaching techniques and skills, instead of forcing it on you,” he said.

William played defensive end, sometimes offensive, but his specialty was defense. He received awards for offensive player of the week, sponsored by a local network, and Letterman jackets for baseball and football. “In those days, not many awards were given out, but there were other advantages. Playing sports helped to attract girls, including my first girlfriend,” he smiled.

The Military

After graduating from Northwestern High School, William enrolled at Southern University in Baton Rouge, but that was cut short when he was drafted into the U. S. Army during the war against Viet Nam.  

He left Louisiana on a plane, which landed in Fort Worth, Texas. There he saw other recruits who boarded the plane. Then, he got on a second plane with a group headed to Seattle, Washington. At 2:30 a.m., they lined up and marched to a barber shop. From there, they were flown from Seattle to Alaska, which he thought was Viet Nam. “I couldn’t ask anyone where we were, because nobody talked and none of us knew where we were going.”  

He said, “The plane refueled in Japan, and we were given a chance to eat. The food was good, but no one told us we were eating frog legs, something I hadn’t had before.”

When they arrived in Viet Nam, it was smoky and hot. “It was the first time I had seen an egg fried on the top of a building at 110 degrees.” 

He made his twentieth birthday in Viet Nam. “Once in the military, you belonged to them. Being there, I became a man and the military made a believer out of me that I could do almost anything I wanted if I set my mind to it.” He decided that he had to make a change. The things he used to do, he couldn’t do them anymore. “I learned discipline and I learned to do what someone told me to do." 

Making a Bold Move

He did his years of service in the military and came home to unemployment. He did odd jobs but wanted more. He decided he wanted to become a policeman and he wanted to serve within the Zachary Police Department. The ironic thing was that there were no Black policemen nor a history of a black man being on the Zachary force. “When I had walked in, I asked if they wanted to hire a Black police officer. I wasn’t offered an application; instead, I was told to write my own application, and they would go from there.”

Present on that day were: John Womack, Marshall Amerhein (grandfather of Zachary’s former mayor David Amerhein), Ted Dunaway, A. W. Montague, Pryor Browning and Frank Rollins. He felt the stacks were against him.

It was difficult to get the job in Zachary. “I came to the police department in search of a job seven times, but I didn’t give up because seven was a sign of completion.”  

While he was working at Balms Bakery, he received the news that he would be hired. The council had voted in favor of him. He was asked his condition for taking the job, and he said his only condition was that he would be able to arrest whites and blacks. "Jack Breaux, the mayor at the time, said I could arrest anyone who broke the law. It made me nervous, because I had been keeping up with information on this parish and East Feliciana. The information I found was that blacks couldn’t arrest Whites." 

Decisions! Decisions!

“The first white person I arrested was a white man who had stolen his girlfriend’s car. He resisted at first and I had to call for back up from my supervisor. When I made the call, I didn’t know the codes, but I had been studying. I knew how to go in service and out service, but they were using different codes. After that call, there was an announcement made that officers should head to Zachary because a black man had stolen a police car. I knew they were talking about me. Before they got there, I put one handcuff on him and the door, because he was bigger than me.”  

In the beginning, Johnson covered Chaneyville, Port Hudson, and Zachary. “If I was primarily working in Zachary, they told me that if a white person called me to a white person’s home, to get back in the car and call one of the white officers out, if I was working alone.”

His training officer, when he came out of the academy, was A. W. Montague. “Some people thought A. W. was the officer who shot George Payne, a Black teenager, who was shot while he was running, but it wasn’t him. Still, people were angry at him.

After the killing, a group was organized in Zachary by Blacks and they met at the now defunct Masonic Hall on Old Slaughter Road (where the new Zachary Police Department is now located). The group came to protest the killing of Payne. “The NAACP came, but the organizer didn’t show up. George was killed because the guys said he was cheating in a game of dice, and they began to fight.  

Money was involved so one of the guys called the police.”

Johnson said the meeting was not publicized, but there were blacks reporting to the mayor at the time, about what was going on in Zachary. “These Blacks told almost everything that was going on in the black neighborhoods.” he said.

“Two weeks after I was on the job, I was let loose on the streets. “Once a complaint was lodged against me because I patrolled a white neighborhood.  A call came in saying to get that “N” out of our neighborhood.”

Other arrests in his early days included the then clerk of court who was dumping trash. He had said I couldn’t arrest him. He also broke up a white group’s confrontation at the park one day. The white reserve officer decided he would write the ticket, but he reminded him that he was a reserve officer and he was a regular.

“The late Roosevelt Haney was the first black man I arrested. I knew how to handle situations.  At first, Haney resisted the white officers. At the time, these officers seemed to be fearful of going into the black community. The biggest problem I had was Abe Butler’s Sweet Shop or Club. They had a commotion and the officers went back to the car. I was called in, and I was called a Black Uncle Tom. Abe and I got along fine, and he knew I would shut him down.”

Johnson had a very good relationship with the whites in Zachary, but that didn’t happen overnight. “I had to establish their trust. Some started calling me instead of the white officers.  One night I had to go to Kenner to identify a body. The family of the prospective victim sent me, and the mayor came along. He thought that once we got there, they were going to let him identify the body. They told him no, because I was the officer and he was the mayor.”

The black community sometimes resisted Johnson from coming to their homes or where there was a conflict. “I heard it from someone that they didn’t want their business out, but I was there to protect all the people. To be honest, out of the 25 years working on the force, none of the officers showed prejudice, and I never had a white to resist me from coming to their home."

"There were times when some white parents brought their children to talk to me.” William said he grew up with a lot of the blacks in the City of Zachary, but they didn’t understand how he “policed." It all reflected on how whites had treated us in the past, he said. “Blacks were often picked up by the police and accused them of throwing rocks at the train. Once a person got in the police car, whether you were black or white, you had to bow on your knees.

Apparently, there was not much knowledge at the time about law enforcement, because they had their own rules. The mayor would be the judge and the jury.

I learned a lot when I was in school. I attended Louisiana State University Management and Supervision school, then the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, which was the top law enforcement school for police officers. If you didn’t pass, you were out. I also attended several seminars.

In 1994, Johnson retired as an officer from the Zachary Police Department.

A Surprising, Yet Lovely Discovery!

For years, William believed he had no children, except for stepchildren, which he regarded as his own. Then on January 26, 2022, he met his only daughter, Zindy Johnson (stage name Laursen), for the first time.  

Up until this time, Zindy, an actress, singer, and songwriter had no knowledge of him. During her childhood, Zindy said she was teased and bullied a lot, which almost destroyed her self-esteem. She had grown up in a “fisherman type” town. “My brother Mark and I were some of the only type people in the whole city that looked different. Some of them told me to go back to Africa.”

During the pandemic, she met an Asian American genealogist, who had heard she was looking for her biological dad. He said he might be able to help her. She took an Ancestry DNA test, which took almost 3-5 months for her to get results back. It revealed that she had a cousin, Randolph, who was her dad’s nephew. She contacted “Randy” and asked if anyone in his family had gone to Vietnam. He said his uncle, William, had been there.

She said that while interviewing Randy, she had an opportunity to ask William (her dad) a few questions.

William said when he got off the phone call, he thought it was a scam. He said he told them he had “no shoes, no socks, no nothing, so they didn’t need to call him,” he laughed. “I told them they had the wrong man. I was just a country boy.”

He did a DNA, which gave results of 99.9 percent, but he was still uncertain. He requested another test, and again the test results returned with 99.9 percent. He was her dad, and he was happy. During his waiting process, he had been listening to her songs, and he fell in love with “Butterfly.”

Zindy said the discovery of her dad has been life-changing. “I’m in awe that I’m part of him.”  She came to the United States to do a concert for him at his birthday celebration in September 2022 at the Baker Municipal Auditorium and has returned to this country many more times. “I recognize him! That’s my dad!” she said.

William said, “Now that I have met my daughter, I’m happier.” 

He was married for 19 years to the former Gloria Harrison. He said, “This is my happiest marriage ever.”