Joan Johnson and her husband, George, co-founded Johnson Products Co. in 1954, bringing hair care products Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen to a previously unserved market of African Americans, and in 1971 making their firm the first black-owned company to be listed on the American Stock Exchange.
“They made incredible hair care products for African Americans, products that had never been available,” said Dori Wilson, a friend since the 1970s. “These products were used by people of color all over the world. They were used everywhere that had a population of dark-skinned people with kinky hair.”
Johnson Products, started by the couple in 1954 with a $250 investment, was sold in 1993 to Miami-based holding company Ivax Corp. for $67 million in Ivax stock, the Tribune reported at the time. Joan Johnson was reported to control 54% of the stock at the time of the sale.
The Johnson family no longer has any interest in the company, which has been sold several times since.
Joan Johnson, 89, died Sept. 6 in her North Michigan Avenue home of natural causes complicated by lingering effects of an auto accident a dozen years ago, according to a granddaughter, Cara Hughes.
The former Joan Betty Henderson was born in Chicago in 1929 and attended what is now Phillips Academy High School.
She married George Johnson Sr., a former door-to-door salesman who became a production chemist for a beauty products company. George Johnson teamed up with a hairstylist who had an idea for a hair straightener. The couple eventually founded Johnson Products with what was described as a $250 vacation loan.
By 1964, the company hit $1 million in revenue. In 1970, sales were at $12 million, and a year later it became the first black-owned company to trade on the American Stock Exchange.
“She was the culture of that company and also a savvy business woman,” Hughes said.
Also in the early 1970s, the company became a sponsor of the television music and dance show “Soul Train,” later helping the show move to wider syndication from a Los Angeles base.
Johnson was a member of women’s boards at University of Chicago and Northwestern, and was a trustee at Spelman College in Atlanta starting in 1982.
In an email, Spelman President Mary Schmidt Campbell said Johnson’s support for the college was demonstrated through generous financial contributions, as well as a donation of a portrait collection titled “The Great Beautiful Black Women” to the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
“She was an awesome community servant,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. said. “A lady of glamour, style, substance and business.”
Jackson said when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966, “the Johnsons stood with Dr. King,” even as some other businesses shied away from the civil rights activist.
Linda Johnson Rice, CEO of Johnson Publishing Co., said the two Johnson families were unrelated, but were family friends and respected business peers.
“I always found her to be an elegant, whip-smart woman I always admired and respected,” Rice said.
Johnson, the mother of four, set a strong example of accomplishment for her family, Hughes said.
“We talked about how you just have to juggle it all,” Hughes said. “She would say, ‘Don’t complain about it, just do it.’”
In addition to her husband and granddaughter, she is survived by her daughter, Joan; sons Eric, John and George Jr.; a sister, Gwendolyn Ford; nine other grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
RIP ma’am