Johnny Hunter Sr., longtime publisher of Newtown’s Tempo News, dies at 75 in Sarasota
In 1985, following his release on good behavior after serving 8 ½ years in prison for dealing drugs, Johnny Hunter Sr. met with James Taylor, a lender with Barnett Bank, to ask for a vehicle loan. Hunter had begun selling advertising on commission for The Weekly Bulletin, a newspaper owned by Fred William “Flick” Jackson that served the Black community in Sarasota and Manatee counties, and he needed reliable transportation to reach prospective clients.
“He had no qualifications for the loan, no money in the bank, no work history and no assets,” recalled Taylor, one of the first Black professionals in the region. “But at that initial meeting he demonstrated his spirituality and the power of God in his life and he persuaded me to take a risk. I gave him that loan over a 30-month period and he never missed a payment.”
Five years later Hunter would take over Tempo Magazine, which Jackson created as a monthly insert in the Bulletin. With the eventual help of his son, Johnny Hunter Jr. who joined him in 1994 after serving in the military as his father had -- the publication went from monthly, to bi-weekly, to weekly, ultimately forcing The Bulletin’s closure.
For the next nearly four decades Hunter Sr.’s mission remained the same as Jackson’s: To document life in the local Black community in a positive way that white-owned newspapers didn’t -- or wouldn’t -- with a focus on positive stories and accomplishments rather than crime.
“We always understood there was a need to tell our own stories and it was the Black newspaper that the community turned to,” said Vicki Oldham, a Newtown native who has turned up many yellowed Tempo clippings during her work documenting the community’s history through the Newtown Alive project. “For a time, the other newspaper was only interested in ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ Tempo gave a fuller picture of Black life here.”
Hunter Sr., owner and publisher of Newtown’s Tempo News for 37 years, died on May 10, the result of increasing ill health that included congestive heart failure, kidney failure and dementia. He was 75.
His son continues to publish Tempo with just a handful of unpaid contributors, as he has since his father became ill and the paper came close to shutting down due to advertising losses during the pandemic. The dementia that robbed Hunter Sr. of his astonishing ability to remember dates and story details from long ago makes his son “glad that he is at peace.”
“My dad had this persona that looked tough and mean, but oh man, he was funny, and his faith was so strong,” said Hunter Jr., who first got to know his father at age 4 on prison visits with his grandmother. “He would want to be remembered as a person who pushed the envelope and advocated for change, no matter if he had to burn bridges.”
Indeed, Hunter Sr.’s editorial stances as Tempo’s publisher often put him at odds with many of Newtown’s other Black leaders, almost exclusively Democrats. He was the first head of the Florida Black Republicans Club and maintained an enduring friendship with Florida Congressman Vern Buchanan, whose Sarasota Ford business bought the full back advertising page of Tempo for his entire tenure.
“He was fearless,” said Taylor, who briefly served on Tempo’s editorial board in the hope of bending Hunter’s mind, but quickly resigned when he realized that was futile. “Some of the things he wrote that I vehemently disagreed with I told him would hurt him in the community. He was so naïve about life, but maybe because of his time in prison, thought he was on top of it. He believed in a biblical country of second chances and so he thought if he admitted his mistakes and asked someone to forgive him, he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t.”
Hunter Sr. remained a lifelong Republican but, after an incident in which he believed he was snubbed and treated as a “token” Black man by the party, he was less outspoken in his support. The first Black President did not make him change his party, but it did change his tune, Taylor recalled.
“When Obama was elected he was going around with an Obama license plate and someone from the Republican Party asked him why,” Taylor recalled. “And he said, ‘This is bigger than the Republican party.’ He was behind Obama 100 percent.”
Cynthia Howard, who began contributing stories to the Bulletin under Jackson and continued throughout Hunter Sr.’s tenure, said the publisher was never anything but supportive and appreciative of her work.
“Johnny let me do whatever storyline I took to him,” said Howard, who writes under the byline C.S. Howard and published Hunter’s obituary in last week’s Tempo. “I learned from him the importance of community and I felt the same way he did. He had things happen to him, but he didn’t let any of that stop him. He continued to fight for the betterment of the community and to make Newtown and Sarasota as a whole a better place to live. And Tempo did just that.”
A native of Sarasota, Hunter Sr.’s early life was spent in the home at 3006 Goodrich Ave. his mother purchased when he was 9 years old. It was the same home he returned to after serving four years in the military at MacDill Air Force base after high school, to open an auto body shop. It was then, according to his son, that Hunter Sr., an only child without a strong mentor, fell in with some “bad company that corrupts good morals” and ended up being sentenced to prison for 105 years after being set up as a “drug kingpin.”
While in prison, Hunter Sr. found God and set up a prison ministry as well as a law library to help other inmates work on their release. Thereafter, his faith was foremost and Tempo remained his chosen vehicle for delivering service to his community. He continued to live in and publish Tempo from the home on Goodrich for the remainder of his life.
“We used to bump heads about Tempo,” said Hunter Jr. “I’m a family person and we used to go at it because I used to tell him I’d rather have my father than a paper. But he believed in Tempo coming first. His idea was to speak for our people and help close the racial gap. His mission was to bring equality to the Black community.”
About 10 years ago, Hunter Jr. got “burned out” on the newspaper and threatened to quit. His father asked, “What else you gonna do?” and after thinking long and hard, he realized he needed to stay. His father’s passing has done nothing to alter that plan, though he does hope to get some of his grandchildren interested (as his own children never have) in becoming involved.
“Ever since I come out the womb I was in love with my father,” he said. “So this is his legacy and I just have to keep it going.”
Hunter Sr. is survived by his six children, 30 grandchildren and “I can’t tell you how many great-grands, I got 30 (grandchildren) myself with two on the way,” his son said. A service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 25, at Light of the World International Church in Sarasota, with burial to follow at the Sarasota National Cemetery at 10 a.m. Monday, May 27.
Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Publisher of Newtown’s Tempo News Johnny Hunter Sr. dies at 75
