From a family tragedy to City Hall, how Kenyatta Johnson rose to power before his corruption trial

When a cousin of City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson was killed outside Childs Elementary School in 1998, some members of the family wanted revenge.

But Johnson took a different path, becoming an antiviolence activist whose efforts to keep the community calm carried added credibility.

“At one point in life, he had been part of the problem,” said State Sen. Tony Williams, a close friend who recounted Johnson’s story. “He was a guy with rough edges who had to make decisions early in life on what to do.”

Johnson founded a grassroots program called Peace Not Guns and became involved with local politics, rising from staffer to state representative to Council member for much of South and Southwest Philadelphia.

But now he and his wife, Dawn Chavous, Williams’ former chief of staff, find themselves in federal court, accused of very different crimes from the ones Johnson sought to avoid becoming entangled with when he turned his back on the streets after his cousin was killed.

A federal jury this week will begin hearing evidence from prosecutors accusing Johnson of accepting $66,000 in bribes in the form of consulting work for Chavous in exchange for taking actions that benefited the real estate holdings of Universal Companies, a South Philadelphia community development organization and nonprofit organizer.

Johnson and Chavous, who have two sons, declined comment as they arrived at the federal courthouse Monday morning for jury selection. They spent most of the day cloistered behind closed doors as they sat with their lawyers and prosecutors as they all privately interviewed a panel of roughly 80 potential jurors.

By day’s end, half of that group had been dismissed, and U.S. District Judge Gerald A. McHugh told the rest to return Tuesday as the group is whittled down to the final 12 men and women and four alternate jurors. Opening arguments could begin as early as Tuesday afternoon.

For Johnson’s critics, the case is a symptom of the way Johnson has long handled land-use decisions, allegedly arranging favors for allies while punishing adversaries with property interests in his 2nd District.

It’s also become a flashpoint in the debate over the parochial and opaque manner in which Council handles all land-use decisions, known as “councilmanic prerogative,” under which each district Council member wields effective veto power over land-use decisions in their district. Johnson’s district has seen intense development pressure, and the gentrification of Point Breeze has caused a series of controversies between some developers and Black neighborhood leaders who see Johnson as a bulwark against their community’s displacement.

In 2014, developer Ori Feibush sued Johnson, accusing him of abusing his power to block Feibush from purchasing city-owned land. A federal jury awarded Feibush a $34,000 judgment, and the case cost the city much more in legal fees. In 2016, The Inquirer and Daily News reported that Johnson had helped a childhood friend, Felton Hayman, secure properties in his district that Hayman later flipped for significant profits in sales of units that went for $400,000 and up.

Johnson grew up in Point Breeze, raised in a religious family by his mother and grandmother. He was named after Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, and is known by many in his neighborhood as “Yatt.”

Johnson likes to say that in his early years he had one foot in school and one foot in the street, according to Williams. As Johnson wrote in an op/ed article in the Philadelphia Tribune last year, he was charged with illegal gun possession at the age of 16.

After the death of his cousin, Sultan “Chick” Chandler, Johnson started volunteering with the powerful political organization led by Williams’ father, the late State Sen. Hardy Williams, which has launched the careers of many Black elected officials in South and Southwest Philadelphia. The elder Williams became a mentor, and Johnson ended up working as a constituent services representative for the younger Williams.

Along the way he earned a bachelor’s degree from Mansfield University, a small college near Pennsylvania’s border with New York, and a master’s in government administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Through Williams’ office, he met Chavous, his boss at the time. They got together while working on the side to help with the unsuccessful 2007 mayoral run of U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), said Williams, who found out about the relationship when one of them accidentally left the senator a voice mail intended for the other.

Johnson left Williams’ office to become his colleague in Harrisburg, defeating incumbent State Rep. Harold James (D., Phila.) in 2008.

A few years later, Williams and a group of friends of his late father recruited Johnson to run for the seat being vacated by then-City Council President Anna C. Verna, who was stepping down after 37 years on council.

“Verna was retiring, and we knew Kenyatta was popular, so a bunch of us went to him, including me,” Williams said. “He said, ‘No, I’m comfortable here.’ I said, ‘Well, we’re not comfortable with you being here.’ We actually drafted him.”

Johnson has become known as a constant presence at community events. But in his early years on Council after taking office in 2012, he was less visible in City Hall, rarely taking a lead on policy and sometimes missing meetings or arriving late.

He has become more involved with Council’s work over time, and has seen outside forces — gentrification sweeping through his neighborhood over the last decade, and gun violence surging since the start of the pandemic — put him front and center on some debates.

Johnson has faced two serious reelection challenges in Democratic primaries, a rarity in a Council long dominated by veteran members who seldom face threats to their seats. Developer Feibush challenged him in a bitter 2015 campaign, and attorney Lauren Vidas ran unsuccessfully in 2019.

Bishop James Darrell Robinson of Yesha Ministries in South Philadelphia said Johnson is successful because he is visible in the district, attending funerals, block parties, and other community events. Robinson said he views the prosecution as a misguided attempt to besmirch an honest politician at a time when the city is facing dire challenges.

“We’re in a city full of murder right now. Our energy is just put in the wrong places so much, and so we can’t stop the real issues that need attention,” Robinson said. “We are always concentrating on the wrong stuff for the wrong reasons.”

Staff writers Jeremy Roebuck and Oona Goodin-Smith contributed to this report.