The Johnston brothers have stories to tell: in art, history, and connecting food to the city

Ken, Haile, and Keir Johnston are brothers who live and work in Philadelphia. Each has made his mark in community-oriented projects in different ways.

Ken Johnston is a walking artist who has made dozens of long-distance walks to illustrate the struggle for freedom Black Americans endured “freeing themselves” from enslavement.

Haile Johnston and his wife, Tatiana Garcia-Granados, cofounded the Common Market, a nonprofit wholesale food distributor. They help farmers in nearby rural areas sell their produce to schools, universities, hospitals, grocers, and workplaces in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

Keir Johnston is an artist who, with the Amber Art and Design collaborative, recently completed two murals at the renovated basketball courts and playground of the Tanner Duckrey School in North Philadelphia.

His next project will be a mural of the Sun Ra Arkestra at the SEPTA train station in Germantown. He’s also been tapped to complete a mural at Philadelphia International Airport as part of the Philadelphia 250th celebration in 2026.

We interviewed the brothers about their influences.

In March, Ken Johnston flew to Texas to take part in another “Walk to Freedom.”

Johnston, who lives in Cobbs Creek, has made several walks exploring the northbound routes that formerly enslaved Black Americans followed from the South to escape to northern states and Canada.

He has retraced the paths Harriet Tubman took to escape enslavement in Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia. And in 2022, he walked from New York City to St. Catharines, Ontario, the Canadian town where Tubman lived for about 10 years before the American Civil War. He writes a blog called “Our Walk to Freedom.”

This time, Johnston, 64, flew to McAllen, Texas, to join a group that had begun “Walking the Southern Road to Freedom” a few days earlier.

The group was organized by Roseann Bacha-Garza, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley — and program director of CHAPS, which stands for Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools — and Linda Harris, director of programming at the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center in Cambridge, Md.

The walkers started on March 3 to make the 65-mile, seven-day trek from Edinburg, Texas, to Reynosa, Mexico, and back across the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge to conclude the walk at Bethel Garden Park, a historic African American site in McAllen.

Johnston joined for the last three days. When the walkers arrived in Mexico on March 8, they were welcomed by the local tourism board and descendants of a Mexican family who defended a Black woman who had fled slavery in the 1850s.

The family’s ancestors helped to chase the white “slave catchers” back across the border into Texas.

“The goal was to increase awareness of the resilience and resolve of freedom-seekers of African ancestry who took part in Underground Railroad activities from south Texas into Mexico,” Johnston said.

The walkers visited the Webber Ranch Cemetery and the Jackson Ranch Church, two Texas sites that were part of the Underground Railroad into Mexico.

Jackson Ranch Church was founded by Nathaniel Jackson, a white man who married Matilda Hicks Jackson, a formerly enslaved Black woman on his family’s Alabama farm. They had nine children and moved with most of their adult children to Texas. They settled near another interracial couple, Silvia and John Webber. Both couples helped Black people escape to Mexico.

Today, the Jackson family descendants, who took part in celebrating the end of the walk, have assimilated into the local population and now identify as “a proud Mexican American family.”

Haile Johnston met Tatiana Garcia-Granados as undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania; they were friends and classmates. Years later, they began dating after Tatiana enrolled in an MBA program at Wharton. They married and bought a house in Strawberry Mansion.

The couple soon realized that many of their neighbors were unhealthy and suffering from chronic conditions due to a lack of access to high-quality food.

In 2008, they teamed with Bob Pierson, founder of Farm to City, to open the Common Market, a nonprofit regional wholesale food distributor that connects farmers in rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey with institutions like Aramark, Sodexo, the Bon Appétit Management Company, and charter schools.

They have a 73,000-square-foot warehouse in Juniata Park. The Common Market has expanded and now operates in Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston.

Johnston, Garcia-Granados, and their family live in Roxborough.

“We also do a lot of training for farmers to help them build capacity and understand what the market is looking for,” said Haile Johnston, 51. Common Market also has a no-interest loan program to lend money when farmers need to buy seed, hire labor, or harvest their goods.

“That’s part of the capacity-building we do. We help them work with land-grant university and agricultural extension agents. We partner with them to provide services so they are best equipped to succeed.”

Keir Johnston and members of the Amber Art and Design collaborative completed the 16th Street Murals at the Tanner G. Duckrey School last month.

The basketball courts, at 16th and Susquehanna, are legendary in Philadelphia as a place where greats like Hank Gathers, Doug Overton, Dawn Staley, and others played to packed crowds.

The two murals will be dedicated on May 30, said Lois Brink, chief strategy officer of the Big SandBox, a nonprofit working to renovate several North Philly school playgrounds.

Johnston is in talks to work on a new mural in celebration of the Sun Ra Arkestra in Germantown next. He’s also excited about plans to work on a mural on the exterior of the Philadelphia International Airport later this summer.

“The choice of being an artist is made for you,” said Johnston, 45, who shares a house in Cobbs Creek with his brother Ken. Originally, Keir Johnston was accepted into college at California State University, Northridge, to study engineering. But he only took art classes.

“I knew the gravity of that decision. It was not to be taken lightly. It’s almost a life-or-death situation. If I wasn’t all-in in my investment to study art, it wasn’t going to be something that would make it possible to provide for myself. It’s that difficult to be a professional in any of the arts.”

He said he has always gravitated to making public art.

“I didn’t want to be somebody who chases the elites and tries to commodify my artwork so that it can be a point of showcase in some foyer or something for only a certain type of class to experience.

“I felt that art should be available and open to everyone. I do public work, and I work with young artists and young students of color.”

Supporting other artists is one reason Johnston co-founded Amber Art and Design. He said it is important for artists to support one another.

The brothers have an older sister, Cathy Johnston, who lives in Atlanta and is the keeper of the family records, one brother said.

Their oldest brother, Ellwood “Woody” Johnston Jr., who died in 2015, was a concert tour manager who worked with Patti LaBelle, Sister Sledge, Eddie Murphy, and Mary J. Blige.

Cathy, Woody, and Ken were born to Ellwood M. Johnston Sr., a businessman, and his first wife, Betty Jean Mauney, a social worker. After they divorced, Johnston Sr. married Olivia Otto Johnston, a social worker from an old Philadelphia Quaker family. She later became a family law attorney. Haile and Keir Johnston were born to Johnston Sr. and Olivia.

Olivia Johnston, who is retired and living in New Mexico, helped to rear her stepson Ken, along with Haile and Keir, in Massachusetts. Ken Johnston said he moved to live with them when he was about 12.

“I think she’s proud of all of us, finding our own calling and continuing to work in the service of the community,” Haile Johnston said.

Their father was an entrepreneur who provided social services to schools.

Years later, after he moved back to Philadelphia, he started a side-hustle. He bought a truck and got Ken, Haile, and Keir up at 5 a.m. to accompany him to the Food Distribution Center in South Philly. There, they loaded the truck with fresh produce and brought healthy food to sell to North Philadelphia residents.

While their father died years before Haile and Garcia-Granados launched the Common Market, which is also about reducing food insecurity, Haile Johnston said, “He’s definitely always with us. I feel like his spirit is guiding us in a lot of ways.”