Charles Johnson walked into his parents’ bedroom in the summer of 2007 to express grief over a friend who was just killed in their Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood. That friend was one of nine neighborhood kids Charles and his brother knew who were killed that year. At that moment, his mother knew the family needed to make a change.
“Up until that point, we had made a conscious decision to stay in Southwest, even when I could afford to leave,” Movita Johnson-Harrell, Charles Johnson’s mother, said. “We were that house where all the kids came; we took people’s kids to the beach, we went up to the Poconos. When my sons left my bedroom, I turned to my husband and I said, ‘it’s time to go.’”
Movita moved her family to Lansdowne, only a short drive from their Philadelphia home but a place that was meant to make a world of difference for her family. On January 15, 2008, the Johnson family moved out of Philadelphia. Three years later, on January 15, 2011, Movita buried her 18-year-old son Charles, who was named after Movita’s own brother, who also was murdered.
“What I tell people is, ‘you can’t move away from the problem,'” Movita said. “None of these kids should be killed.”
In a case of mistaken identity, Charles was killed while picking up his sister in Southwest Philadelphia on January 13, 2011. The 18-year-old was engaged to be married, had a baby on the way and had plans to move back to the home his family had fled three years prior.
“I left Philadelphia to protect my children. I left that house, but I never sold it,” Movita said. “Charles made me promise not to sell it because that was his childhood house, he loved that house. We still owned it and that was supposed to be his house.” 
Less than a month after Charles’ death, his son Kalif was born. While Charles never met him, the tight-knit family continues to share memories and videos of his life, allowing Charles’ son to see the funny-yet-shy personality, his love of dancing and his caring nature for friends, family and animals.
“I was always such a corny mom and videotaped everything, and now it’s helping my grandson through his grief. We knew he was going to grieve someday, we knew as soon as his concrete thinking came in… He knows him from pictures… so when he was having a really tough time, I pulled out the videos.”
One of Movita’s favorite videos of her son is from a family trip to Reno, Nevada. The family made a bet to see who could stay on the mechanical bull the longest. Charles, of course, won the bet.
“My kids, they still talk about Charles in the present tense,” Movita said. “There’s always dinner at my house, and we’ll be sitting around and we’ll just start telling stories.”
The funny family man was always popular due to his “easy” personality.
“You didn’t have to work to be around him, you didn’t have to prove anything.”
After his passing, all of his friends lined up on the family’s lawn to pay their respects, but those were not the only people whose lives Charles impacted.
Charles worked in the family business, which involved assisting more than 100 adults with chronic mental illnesses at a facility in Germantown. After his death, the patients in the facility mourned Charles, someone who showed compassion and love towards them on a daily basis.
“He loved them and they loved him,” Movita said. “[After his death,] it was like a dark cloud, everybody was so sad because my son had passed. They were concerned for my son and concerned for me because that’s where we worked for the past two years.”
While he cared so much for the work he was doing for those with mental illnesses, Charles saw a future in engineering. Throughout his life, he always enjoyed working with his hands, whether he was fixing bikes and electronics for fun, or helping to lay tiles.
Before his passing, he had been accepted to his technical school of choice to pursue a degree in engineering. He had hopes and dreams for his life, but most of all wanted to raise his own family.
“There’s a hole where Charles should be,” Movita said.
To make a change in Philadelphia’s cycle of violence, Movita founded The CHARLES Foundation in honor of her son, and works for the District Attorney’s Office in the Victims Services division.
Charles is survived by his loving family, including a mother and father, three siblings, a son and his fiancé.
