In February 1934, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson walked alone and unarmed into a warehouse in Harlem where 25 Ku Klux Klan members had gathered to plan a campaign of terror against the neighborhood. Roughly eight minutes later, a dozen of those men lay broken on the ground outside. The rest had fled or were still inside a building that had become an inferno. The confrontation did not begin that night.
It began earlier the same day, when the home of Thomas Johnson, a porter, and his family was firebombed. Thomas, his wife Sarah, and their seven-year-old daughter Grace died in the blaze. Witnesses reported seeing two white men in a truck leaving the scene, and fire investigators found gasoline had been poured under the door and ignited. The fire marshal privately warned that nothing would come of the case, and suggested some police officers may have been involved or sympathetic to the attackers.
Bumpy Johnson, then 28, had grown up in Harlem after arriving from South Carolina as a child. He had run numbers and worked as an enforcer before building his own operations in gambling, numbers, and protection. He openly protected tenants from eviction and was widely known as a figure who, though a criminal, kept order and gave back to his community. He was a man Harlem understood.
By 1934, the Klan had moved north. In Harlem, they could not march openly, so they operated in the shadows: threats slipped under doors, crosses burned on rooftops, Black-owned businesses vandalized. Over three months, the transcript claims 12 buildings were burned, five people killed, and dozens injured. The NYPD, according to the narrative, largely failed to respond, and some officers were alleged to be Klan members themselves.
After the Johnson fire, Bumpy Johnson sent an associate named Marcus, a light-skinned Black man who could pass for white, to gather intelligence. Marcus tracked a Klan member for three days and learned of a meeting planned at an abandoned warehouse near the Harlem River. He also identified key figures, including Robert Garrison, the Grand Dragon for the tri-state region, a Bronx police captain, and a Connecticut senator. Marcus later claimed he had been feeding the Klan false information for months, playing the role of an informant to manipulate their movements.
Johnson rejected an offer to bring 30 armed men. He argued that a gang war would bring police and FBI attention and frame the fight as criminals versus criminals. Instead, he chose to go alone, carrying only a straight razor and a box of matches. He told his lieutenants that terror could not be answered with numbers but with a message.
Before the confrontation, Marcus secretly entered the warehouse and removed ammunition from every weapon inside. When Johnson arrived, he identified the men in the room by name, address, and personal details, including their families, careers, and extramarital affairs. He called out each of them, demonstrating that the hooded anonymity they relied on had never been real. Garrison tried to order his men to shoot Johnson, but their guns were empty.
Johnson then lit the room with burning kerosene, threw a wooden cross into the smoke as a weapon, and engaged the men one by one. During the fight, Garrison retrieved a small backup pistol and shot Johnson in the left shoulder. Garrison had only two bullets, and when he fired again, the gun was empty. Marcus then burst in and overpowered Garrison.
As the warehouse burned, Johnson and Marcus forced survivors outside. Twelve men emerged alive but badly injured. Johnson selected five, including the senator, the police captain, and a young man who admitted to setting the Johnson family fire, and forced them to remove their hoods. Marcus photographed them kneeling, beaten, and exposed.
Johnson gave the senator a photograph of Grace Johnson, the seven-year-old killed in the fire, and instructed him to introduce anti-terror legislation. He warned that the photograph of the five men would be sent to newspapers if he did not. The senator reportedly kept the girl’s picture on his desk and continued pushing civil rights legislation for years, although the 1934 act he proposed did not pass. When police and firefighters arrived, the wounded men gave the same account: the fire was an accident, and they had done it to themselves.
Detectives closed the case with no charges. Garrison, unrecognizable with permanent burns, refused to say anything else. According to the narrative, the Klan’s presence in Harlem evaporated within two weeks. Word of what happened spread across the country, and the photograph circulated in Black newspapers, churches, and union halls.
The Klan reportedly never regained credibility in the North. In 1964, a young reporter interviewed Johnson, then 58. When asked if he regretted the violence, Johnson said he regretted that it had been necessary and that Grace Johnson had to die before justice happened.
He told the reporter that fear works both ways and that powerless people are the most dangerous because fear means nothing when you have already lost everything.