George E. Johnson

George Ellis Johnson was born on June 16, 1927, in Richton, Mississippi, to Charles and Priscilla Johnson. His family moved to Chicago when he was two, and he grew up near Bronzeville on the South Side. He began working around age six collecting milk bottles, and as a boy and teenager he shined shoes, delivered newspapers, waited tables and set pins at a bowling alley.

He described himself as industrious and a little unusual for his time and place. "I took my riding lessons in Washington Park. I went to the theater. I went to the opera. I dressed up for school every day. And I made money. I was never unemployed," he told the Chicago Tribune in 2025.

Johnson attended Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago but left as a junior to work. His real training came on the job at Fuller Products, where he moved from the sales force into the laboratory and became head production chemist. There he learned to formulate lipstick, foundation, cologne and hair products, the skills that made Johnson Products possible. He later received nine honorary doctorates.

After a year selling Fuller Products door to door alongside his brother, Johnson joined Samuel B. Fuller's laboratory staff and spent about a decade there. At the request of hair stylist Orville Nelson, whose clients included Nat King Cole, he developed a lye and petroleum hair straightener for men. Nelson's verdict, "This is it. Don't touch it," convinced him to start his own company.

In 1954 he founded Johnson Products Company in Chicago with his wife Joan and a barber, using a $250 bank loan. The first product, Ultra Wave Hair Culture, was made in the back room of a friend's store at 517 E. 63rd St., rented for $35 a month. By 1958 the company also sold women's products and filled the second floor of a South Side warehouse; two years later it bought a three-story building. It passed $1 million in yearly revenue in 1964, then introduced Afro Sheen and the Ultra Sheen no-base creme relaxer.

Sales reached about $12 million in 1970 and $37 million by 1975. In 1971 Johnson Products became the first Black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange, and it began sponsoring Soul Train, a partnership that brought the show's production to Chicago and made Afro Sheen commercials part of Black popular culture. In 1985 the company signed Michael Jordan, then a young Chicago Bulls player, and his mother Deloris to endorsement deals.

Johnson also helped found Independence Bank of Chicago in 1964 and chaired it and its holding company, Indecorp, until the 1995 sale to Shorebank. He served on the U.S. Postal Service board of governors from 1971 and was the first Black director of Commonwealth Edison.

Johnson married Joan Betty Henderson, whom he met in high school, in 1950. She co-founded Johnson Products with him. They had four children: Eric, John, George Jr. and Joan Marie. Joan filed for divorce in 1988, and the settlement gave her control of the company. Johnson was briefly married to Renee Derem in the 1990s, then remarried Joan in 1995; they stayed together until her death in September 2019. On March 30, 2022, he married Madeline Murphy Rabb. He lived for many years at Water Tower Place in Chicago's Gold Coast and earlier in Glencoe. His granddaughter Olivia Galli is listed as a relative on his Wikipedia page.

Johnson credited Samuel B. Fuller with shaping his outlook. "I spent 10 years with Fuller, and his philosophy was the 'Golden Rule' and I absorbed it," he told the Tribune. He saw Black ownership as the point of his work, which is why the 1993 sale of Johnson Products to Ivax hurt him so deeply: "Never in my wildest dreams when I was building this company did I believe it would wind up out of the Black community." He also argued that regulators had treated his company more harshly than white-owned competitors over lye warnings in the 1970s.

Johnson Products was for decades the largest maker of hair and cosmetic products for African Americans and was seen as proof that Black business leaders could build national companies. Its 1971 American Stock Exchange listing was a first for a Black-owned firm, and its sponsorship of Soul Train helped carry the show to a national audience. Afro Sheen became shorthand for an era of Black style and pride. Johnson's board service at Commonwealth Edison, the Postal Service, the Chicago Urban League, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Lyric Opera of Chicago opened doors that had been closed to Black executives.

Horatio Alger Award (1981). Babson Medal from Babson College (1983). Nine honorary doctorates.

In 2025 Little, Brown and Company published his memoir, Afro Sheen: How I Revolutionized an Industry, from Soul Train to Wall Street, co-written with Philadelphia author Hilary Beard. He promoted it in interviews with outlets including Good Morning America and WGN News. He also recorded a long oral history interview held by Penn Libraries.

In 1975 the Federal Trade Commission required Johnson Products to expand the warning on one of its hair relaxers to five paragraphs explaining that it contained lye. Johnson said rival products made by white-owned companies were not held to the same rule right away, and that the long label cost the company the trust of Black beauticians. The episode, along with tougher competition, weakened the company in the late 1970s and 1980s.

George E. Johnson died on July 6, 2026, at his condominium in Chicago, at the age of 99. His family confirmed the death in a statement; the Chicago Sun-Times and Reuters reported that he died of a respiratory illness. A funeral service was held in July 2026. His resting place has not been made public.