Suspect in Alabama School Arson Pleads Not Guilty

The son of a black activist pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he burned down a racially troubled high school in the town of Wedowee, Ala.

Christopher Johnson, 25, of Ashland, Ala., wore a black suit to his arraignment before U.S. Magistrate John Carroll and sat quietly in front of a small crowd that included his wife, Jeanette, and his mother, Mary Frances.

The suspect’s father, the Rev. Emmett Johnson, a Black Panther Militia commander and Baptist minister who claims his son has been framed by the FBI, did not attend the hearing.

Carroll set a July 24 trial date for Johnson, who faces up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines if convicted on federal charges of arson and illegal possession of a firearm.

Ron Wise, Johnson’s court-appointed attorney, said he will challenge the validity of the federal indictment against his client.

Johnson is accused of setting fire to the Randolph County High School building in August, 1994, after months of racial turmoil involving the school’s former principal, Hulond Humphries.

Federal officials say Johnson, who remains under house arrest on a $100,000 bond, confessed to setting the blaze after being taken into custody.

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Humphries, who is white, had ignited a national controversy the preceding February by threatening to cancel the spring prom if interracial couples showed up. He also was accused of telling a mixed-race girl, then the junior class president, that she was “a mistake.”

After the Depression-era school building burned to the ground, news teams flooded into Wedowee, a textile town of about 900. Local residents placed flowers at the site and held open-air prayer vigils while local and federal officials struggled to head off new unrest.

In the end, the Randolph County School Board was forced into a $25,000 out-of-court settlement with the offended student, Humphries was reassigned to an administrative post and the U.S. Justice Department forced the school to revise its curricular and hiring policies to meet federal desegregation rulings.