Efforts being made to preserve the Johnson family home

A Lawton family that gave the community two generations of educators wants to preserve the house that started it all.

Cameron University history professor Sarah Janda helped explain plans to place the Johnson family house at 202 E. Gore on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house was the home of James and Lucille Johnson, the parents of the late Albert Johnson Sr., a noted educator who was the last principal of Douglass School before joining Lawton Public Schools to continue working with students until his retirement as deputy superintendent (although he continued to work with youth for years afterward).

“It’s my grandparent’s house,” said Albert Johnson Jr., who followed his grandfather into the U.S. Army and served for 28 years before retiring and returning home to Lawton, where today he is vice president for university advancement at Cameron University.

Janda said the house is an important part of the Vernon Addition, an area of Lawton important to history because of how it came to be. The housing addition was created by the Lawton City Council, whose members worked with the African-American community to create the definition and deeds specific to the area. Janda said what makes the addition special — and historic — was the way those deeds were written. They specified that no white person could live in what was an all-black neighborhood, she said, explaining most neighborhoods of the era were just the opposite — black home owners could not live in white neighborhoods.

Johnson said the house also is connected to the historic Douglass School, an all-black school that educated generations black youth before it was closed at the end of the 1966 school year as part of Lawton’s desegregation efforts, before being reopened as part of the Lawton Public Schools District. Johnson’s father was its last principal and help guide efforts to move Douglass students from their school to other schools throughout Lawton, action that Johnson Sr. credited to the sage advice of his father.

Johnson said the house has remained part of the family’s history.

“It looks the same way as it did when my grandmother died,” he said.

Ward 7 Councilwoman Sherene L. Williams said the historic home is in Ward 7.

Oklahoma Historic Register Review Committee approved a request Thursday to give historical designation to the structure, meaning the request now will go to the National Register of Historic Places.