The story of the Johnson Brothers

Late one evening, nearing midnight, Tamara Durham received an article by Sam Judy from her half-brother that sent her chills.

“I had never seen a picture of George and Johnny,” she says. “They were killed when I was 6 years old.”

Durham says she had been wondering for decades what the real story was behind her brothers’ deaths. At the time that it happened in the summer of 1974, she recalls her father, Rev. George Alvin Johnson Sr., never talked about it, and the family tried to explain the situation to her the best they could for a little girl.

“The only information I knew growing up was that they were killed by Dallas police officers who accused them of trying to rob a restaurant or something. That was the story I got,” she says. “A restaurant or something, and they had sticks. So when Sam’s article came out, and I read it, it gave me a sense of, ‘OK, finally. Finally, I get a story.’”

What’s the story?

The article “Death of the Reverend’s Sons; The Police Murder of the Johnson Brothers” was first published by Dallas Weekly on Aug. 20, 2024, just five days before the 50th anniversary of the brothers’ deaths.

According to the article, the two brothers, George Johnson Jr., 14, and Johnny Johnson, 13, had gone to play basketball at Kiest Park with four other boys following service at their father’s West Dallas church, the Church of God in Christ. Walking from the park, the boys came across discarded pipes that they picked up and played around with as they headed toward Golden Triangle Shopping Center. There, they stopped at Zip’s Sizzlin’ Steaks around 8:40 p.m. When the other boys left their pipes before entering the restaurant, George and Johnny held onto theirs.

Inside, two policemen in plainclothes on burglary patrol, Officer Fred E. Sexaur and Officer Robert Ross, had stopped to eat at Zip’s. Allegedly, a white woman is heard saying to her husband, “That boy’s got a gun,” referring to either George or Johnny as the pipes started to slip out of their pocket and sleeve.

According to police reports, Ross said from their booth that one of the Johnson brothers displayed nervous behavior and mistook the pipe under clothing for a sawed-off shotgun. Ross told Sexaur to get his gun in preparation for what he suspected to be a hijacking.

Following one of the boys saying, “All right, everybody…,” Ross drew his .38 pistol responding with, “Hold it. Police.” One of the Johnson brothers reaches for the pipes, and Ross shoots, hitting both George and Johnny, and another customer is nicked by a ricochet bullet.

The next day on Aug. 26, George and Johnny were declared dead early in the morning at Parkland Hospital.

Coverage published the day of the boys’ deaths by The Dallas Morning News referenced the brothers as “men,” calling them “two holdup suspects” without indicating that they were teens. Another report from the Dallas Times Herald wrote that the boys were slain in a holdup along with stating they were rushed to the hospital.

Regina “Reggie” Holleman, a cousin of the brothers, remembers differently.

A cousin’s memory

“What they didn’t say was about them throwing their bodies in the back of the police car, and they were there for two hours. See, they didn’t put that in the report, but that’s what happened. They had their bodies in the police car for two hours,” Reggie says. “Well, that’s some of the things that the boys (of the six at Zip’s) said. They said that they shot Johnny first and Junior said, ‘Man, why did you shoot my brother?’ Then they shot him, and he fell on top of Johnny. ‘Man, why did you shoot my brother?’ He just wanted a glass of water, and they shot him. And it’s terrible. Every time I think about it, I get mad.”

Unlike Durham, Holleman heard more details of the circumstances as a college-aged adult at the time.

She learned the news of her cousins’ deaths while attending the University of Oklahoma in ’74. Holleman and sister Jackie received a call from their mother at their Norman apartment that the teens had been killed.

“And we asked her, ‘What?’ And she told us what happened, about the policeman shooting them and this and that,” she says. “We were pretty upset about it.”

Quickly after learning the news, the pair drove to Texas for the funeral. Upon arrival at their Aunt Ruth’s house, all eight of her mother’s kids were there, along with various cousins and aunts and uncles.

“It was chaotic. It was terrible. It was awful,” she says.

Holleman remembers the state of her Aunt Betty was utter devastation, so much so she believed they were going to have to put her in the hospital. Her uncle, Johnson Sr., was in a state of “just trying” along with being upset, searching to find out why it happened.

“They were good kids,” she says. “Johnny was the one that was mischievous, the younger one … and Junior was a little bit more subdued.”

In the summer, Holleman remembers that George and Johnny would often come up to Oklahoma City for weeks at a time.

“They were part of the family, and then the next summer, we would go and spend weeks with them at their house,” she says. “We were more like siblings than cousins.”

Holleman says she recalls the brothers joining her at the local recreation center and at church services.

According to a 2024 article from The Dallas Morning News, prior reports credited the Dallas police chief at the time, Don Bryd, for calling the shooting “defensible,” and a Dallas County grand jury no-billed the case.

Holleman recalls the discussions among the adults on outlets referring to the teens as men and other contemplations of suing the department for wrongful death. To her memory, the family didn’t follow through with it.

However, the West Dallas Ministerial Alliance called for an investigation into the shooting, according to an article from The Post Tribune, along with the Committee for the Unification of the People (CUP) and the NAACP. The Black Panther Party publication The Panther also reported that the Dallas Chapter supported an investigation.

CUP helped plan a student boycott in Dallas ISD schools for Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1974. However, the protest was called off the Monday afternoon prior.

Although Holleman had to return to her own classes at OU after just a few days in Texas, her mother would often call with these updates.

“She was saying that my uncle said that the police department said that the shootings were justified,” she says. “And they kept telling them they needed to do something about those two officers. So they put them on leave, and they sent them to, I think it was Hawaii for a week on vacation, and they never did anything to them. They basically got away with murder.”

Over 50 years since

After coming across the Dallas Weekly article, Durham contacted Judy to let him know there were other relatives still alive and learned about an event honoring George and Johnny’s memory coming up just two days later.

A vigil and protest was held at the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department to commemorate the 50th anniversary with 40-50 people in attendance. Durham joined two of her siblings, Cedric Jones and Donna Woods, that evening, sharing their memories and highlighting that still to this day, the brothers lay in an unmarked grave.

But this hasn’t been the only effort made to share their story through community action. Activist Olinka Green told Durham that the story of the Johnson brothers called out to her when their image flashed on a jumbotron in the Dallas Public Library.

“She said that there George and Johnny spoke to her, saying, ‘Come find us,’” Durham says.

With the help of Judy and veteran reporter Dick Reavis, she did just that.

“They have been incredible in pulling that information out and making it public,” Durham says. “My family and I are thrilled that George and Johnny’s story is finally out there.”

Durham highlighted how community action has gone above and beyond any expectations in order to continue not only telling their story, but supporting beyond the words.

“When I was talking to Sam, he said, ‘We want to make sure that the family doesn’t have to pay for the headstone. We want to do this for you guys,’ he said. ‘So what we’ll do, we’ll work on maybe doing a fundraiser to make up the difference in paying for the headstone,’” Durham says. “And so next thing I know, they’re working on additional fundraisers, and we did another GoFundMe.”

In August 2025, Dallas Nomad (the culture magazine and populist newsroom that Judy co-founded with Marlissa Collier) shared the GoFundMe to raise funds for that headstone. A month later, the newsroom collaborated with DFW Art House for a Sept. 6 exhibit honoring the brothers that also continued to raise those funds.

“Olinka presented artwork that she created regarding remembering like Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor and those women. There was a variety of artwork there, and I was just pleased that all of these artists had it in their hearts to contribute to this exhibit as a fundraiser to help pay for the headstones of George and Johnny,” Durham says.

With another fundraiser at the Pan-African Connection Bookstore and Resource Center, the headstone creation is now officially in the works. Durham says they hope to hold a memorial service to finally deliver the completed headstone in the coming months.

“When I talk about the compassion and the passion from strangers who did not know them,” Durham says, “but they have a heart for wanting to make sure that George and Johnny get this headstone … we’re grateful. I’ll say that we are very grateful.”