CHICAGO — The man who built an empire on black hair care products and was the bedrock for one of the television shows that shaped a generation has died.
George E. Johnson was 99.
Johnson was born in a sharecropper’s cabin and made a fortune selling products such as Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen, becoming one of the country’s wealthiest African Americans.
He died at his Chicago home on July 6 of respiratory illness, his wife Madeline Murphy Rabb said, according to The New York Times.
His family released a statement that celebrated his “extraordinary legacy of entrepreneurship, faith, perseverance, philanthropy and family,” ABC News reported.
Hair care products weren’t his only business. He also founded one of the first and largest Black-owned banks, the Independence Bank of Chicago, and served as its chairman until it was sold in 1995.
He got his start in the lab of Samuel Fuller, a Black cosmetics entrepreneur, working there after dropping out of high school.
Johnson was a salesman selling items such as pomade and face powder in areas where people were struggling.
“I had a problem with it unless I really needed money. Then I would sell like hell,” he told the Times in an interview before his death.
He then asked to work inside and went on to create the Ultra Wave relaxer. Fuller gave Johnson his blessing to work with his wife and a barber to start Johnson Products in 1954.
One bank declined to back him, but another gave him $250 in seed money when he told the bankers he needed it to take his wife on vacation. The problems he faced getting the much-needed money inspired him to start his own bank.
When the partnership with the barber went south, Johnson took his products on the road, selling them to barbers from the Midwest to Harlem.
But he noted that barbers weren’t loyal to any one product and set his sights on beauty shops, rebranding Ultra Wave as Ultra Sheen as another option for straightening women’s hair, rather than the traditional hot combs and mineral oil.
In the 1960s, his company had 60% of the Black hair-care market, and in the 1970s, it had annual sales of $12.6 million, which equates to more than $100 million today.
The company was the first Black-owned business listed and traded on the American Stock Exchange, ABC News reported.
Johnson got the word out about his hair care line through advertising and sponsorship of “Soul Train,” which aired each week for nearly 35 years.
He was born in 1927 in Richton, Mississippi, but moved to Chicago at the age of 2 with his mother. He left school in 11th grade but went on to be awarded nine honorary doctorates.
Johnson lost control of the company when he and his first wife divorced. She eventually ended up selling it to Ivax Corporation in 1993 for $32 million or about $75 million today.
“George was a visionary business leader who built a haircare empire, broke barriers on Wall Street, and helped fuel the fight for civil rights,” his family said, according to ABC News. “Above all, he was a devoted family man whose example inspired generations and whose legacy of entrepreneurship, community leadership, and philanthropy continues through his descendants today.”
They remarried in 1995, and she died in 2019. He married Rabb in 2022. He leaves behind Rabb, his three sons, a daughter, 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, the Times reported.
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