Remembering John H. Johnson, 1918-2005

Abstract

John Harold Johnson, the founder and Chairman of Johnson Publishing Company, died at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Monday, 8 August 2005. With Johnson's passing the national African American community lost a major advocate for civil and human rights, and the Association for African American Life and History (ASALH) lost a staunch supporter. Born into poverty in Arkansas City, Arkansas, on 19 January 1918, he was the son of Leroy and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson. In 1926 his life was further impoverished following the death of his father, however, his mother, who believed passionately in education, saw to it that her son attended school. Johnson received his early education in Arkansas City public schools, but because the system provided no public high school for African Americans, his mother moved the family to Chicago in 1933. Despite the hardships imposed by the Great Depression, in 1936 John H. Johnson graduated from DuSable High School with honors, received a partial scholarship to the University of Chicago, and secured a job at the Supreme Life Insurance Company. In 1939 he became the editor of the Supreme Life's in-house magazine and by 1941 held a full-time position with the company. Using his mother's furniture as collateral for a $500 loan, and $6,000 raised from charter subscriptions, Johnson obtained office space in the Supreme Life Insurance Company building and in 1942 began publishing the Negro Digest (later Black World), modeled after Readers' Digest. In 1945 he launched Ebony Magazine and followed with the pocket size news weekly, Jet Magazine in 1951. Johnson Publishing Company became, and remained so for the next sixty years, the largest black-owned publishing company in the world. In addition to publishing magazines and books, over the years John H. Johnson expanded his company's holdings in various directions, including radio stations, television production, cosmetics, and traveling fashion shows. In 1982, forty-nine years after his youthful arrival in Chicago, John H. Johnson made Forbes Magazine's list of wealthiest Americans. Johnson was a member of the board of directors of numerous Fortune 500 corporations, and a trustee of several national organizations and institutions. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including over thirty-five honorary doctoral degrees from colleges and universities around the country. Johnson also received half a dozen presidential appointments from three different U.S. Presidents, and in 1996 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian commendation, by William Jefferson Clinton. John Harold Johnson's legacy is extensive and multifaceted, but can be broadly categorized in terms of his professional achievements, his successful publications, and the mentoring and assistance he provided to others. …