“I am convinced that the only way to get ahead in this world is to live and sell dangerously. You’ve got to commit yourself to an act or vision that pulls you further than you want to go, and forces you to use your hidden strengths.”
"Very often when you try to see things in their largest form, you get discouraged and feel that it’s impossible. If you can somehow think and dream of success in small steps, every time you make a step, every time you accomplish a small goal, it gives you confidence to go on from there.”
- John H. Johnson
John H. Johnson
John H. Johnson was born into poverty in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas on January 19,1918. His boyhood home (pictured here) has been re
stored and will soon become the centerpiece of the John H. Johnson Learning Center in Arkansas City; a branch of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
His father Leroy Johnson was killed in a sawmill accident when "young Johnny" was eight years of age. His mother, Gertrude Jenkins Johnson, drew upon her faith and hope to save her meager earnings as a cook and washerwoman for years until she could afford to move her family in 1933 from their impoverished condition in rural Arkansas to Chicago.
from rural arkansas poverty
to top of his chicago class
Once in Chicago, Johnson attended and then in 1936 graduated at the top of his class (grad. pic shown here) from DuSable High School, an all black high
school. He distinguished himself as junior and senior class president and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, among other accolades. During graduation week, Johnson was invited to speak at a dinner held by the Urban League. The President of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, Harry Pace, was so impressed with Johnson's speech that he offered him a job and a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago part-time. In 1939 at 21 years of age, Johnson became the editor of Pace's in-house magazine, collecting articles culled from national publications ... and Johnson realized that he struck gold!
"Striking gold"
... with a lot of help from his friends
In 1942, he founded Johnson Publishing Co. with a $500 loan secured by his mother’s furniture. Johnson used Supreme Life's
mailing list to offer discount charter subscriptions of the company’s first magazine, NEGRO DIGEST, a journal that condensed articles of interest to blacks and published the poems and short stories of black writers. To persuade a distributor to take the magazine, he got co-workers to ask for it at newsstands on Chicago's South Side. Friends bought most of the copies, convincing dealers the magazine was in demand, while Johnson reimbursed the friends and resold the copies they had bought. Then, he mimicked the tactic in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and within a year, NEGRO DIGEST was selling 50,000 copies a month.
the johnson publishing enterprise takes off
... one idea after another
In November of 1945, Johnson launched EBONY, building it from an initial circulation of 25,000 to 1.9 million in 1997. Named by his wife Eunice, EBONY
was created to counter stereotypical portrayals of blacks in white-owned newspapers, magazines and broadcast media. And in 1951, Johnson started JET magazine, a pocket-sized weekly that highlighted news of African-Americans in the social limelight, political arena, entertainment business, and the sports world. Both EBONY and JET broke new ground by bringing positive images of African Americans into mass-market publication.
In 1958, Johnson’s business acumen gave birth to yet another successful venture –– the Ebony Fashion Fair Show. The wife
of the president of Dillard University in New Orleans called Johnson for help finding Black models for a charity fashion show. Johnson worked out a plan to put on the show for the woman’s organization in exchange for including a $3 EBONY subscription in the cost of the show ticket. That fundraising strategy has raised more than $58 million for charities around the country, and produced some 300,000 new subscribers for EBONY and JET.
As always with Johnson, this venture, too, spawned another idea. Johnson
watched the Ebony Fashion Fair models mixing different make-up shades together to get one that worked with their skin tones, and decided to do something about the beauty industry’s refusal to market a make-up line for Black women. Fashion Fair Cosmetics started in 1969 as a special mail-order package, and was a full-fledged company by 1973. Thirty-two years later, Fashion Fair is sold in more than 2,500 stores worldwide.
Today, Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. employs
more than 2,600 people and is the world's largest African-American-owned and-operated publishing company. With established businesses in publishing, cosmetics, television production and fashion, JPC brands, which include EBONY, JET and ESSENCE magazines and Fashion Fair Cosmetics, are household names and, more importantly, trusted sources to African-Americans around the globe.
his legacy:
succeeding against all the odds
In 1993 Johnson published his autobiography, Succeeding 
Against All The Odds. In it, Johnson recounts with simplicity, zest and humorous anecdotes how, as a 24-year-old from a small Mississippi River town, he parlayed a $500 loan into a publishing, cosmetics and insurance empire.
Credited by some with "inventing" the black consumer market, in the book Johnson says he's proudest of his role in reporting and encouraging the crusade of Martin Luther King Jr.
John H. Johnson rose in one generation from a short stint on the welfare rolls to immense influence and wealth, becoming the first African-American on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 Richest Americans. Throughout his long and distinguished career Johnson aimed at increasing African-Americans' pride in themselves by presenting their past and present achievements to America and the world. His is one of the great "American dream" success stories of all time.