Following emancipation, Jack Johnson had one major goal: to reunite his family. Johnson had been enslaved in North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, and had 10 children with JoAnna, his first wife, and another 10 with Hettie Brown, his second wife after enslavement.
Though Johnson managed to find nine of the 10 children he had with JoAnna, the family fruitlessly tried to locate the last child, Rufus. Johnson eventually learned that Rufus had been sold with two other enslaved people to a plantation in Texas. But to this day, Johnson’s descendants continue to search for Rufus’s living relatives.
