Johnson, George Ellis Sr.

Impact on the world

Co-founded Johnson Products Company in 1954 with a $250 loan after a chance encounter with a barber seeking a gentler hair relaxer, building it into the company behind Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen, the latter created specifically to serve the natural-hair 'Black is beautiful' movement of the late 1960s; in 1971 Johnson Products became the first African American-owned company listed on a major U.S. stock exchange, and Johnson became the primary sponsor of 'Soul Train,' helping the show grow into the first nationally syndicated television program backed by a Black-owned company.

Life & background

Born in a three-room sharecropper's shack in Richton, Mississippi, Johnson moved to Chicago with his mother at age two after his parents separated, working as a shoeshine boy at eight and dropping out of high school to support himself as a busboy and bowling-alley pinsetter. In 1944 he became a production chemist for Black-owned cosmetics firm Fuller Products, where he developed the technical foundation for his own venture; a decade later, after a chance elevator meeting with a barber struggling to find a gentler hair relaxer, Johnson founded Johnson Products with his wife Joan and $250 in combined loans, since banks initially refused him financing. The company's Ultra Sheen and later Afro Sheen, the latter developed deliberately to serve the rising natural-hair 'Black is beautiful' movement, grew the business into the largest African American-owned corporation in the country by the early 1970s, with manufacturing reaching Nigeria, the West Indies, and Latin America; in 1971 it became the first African American-owned company listed on a major U.S. stock exchange. Johnson also founded Independence Bank in 1964, which became the largest Black-owned bank in the country by the 1980s, and became the primary sponsor of 'Soul Train,' helping it grow from a local Chicago program into the first nationally syndicated television show backed by a Black-owned company; he documented his full life story in his 2025 memoir 'Afro Sheen.'

Sources

1. Johnson Products Company); BlackPast.org; Block Club Chicago; Chicago Sun-Times