John H. Johnson - The Forbes 400 List's First Black Entrepreneur & Businessman

If you grew up during the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, chances are you are familiar with publications such as Negro Digest, Ebony Magazine, or Jet Magazine. These publications were staples in most of our lives and primary sources of exposure to the multifaceted Black culture across the country. Although these publications have made decades of impact across the world, many of their readers are unaware that these are just a few publishing efforts successfully executed by Arkansas City’s own John Harold Johnson. He is the grandson of slaves and the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company – the United States’ largest Black-owned publishing business – which is still generationally empowering Black people worldwide.

On January 19, 1918, Johnny Johnson was born in Arkansas City – the Arkansas Delta – to Leroy and Gertrude Jenkins Johnson. His father was killed in a sawmill accident in 1924 when Johnny was six years old. He had a half-sister, 14 years older than him, named Beulah, his mother’s child from her previous marriage to Richard Lewis. After Johnny’s father died, his mother married James Williams, who helped raise Johnny in Arkansas City. The Great Flood of 1927 forced the three to live on the Mississippi River levee for six weeks before they were able to return to their home.

Johnny attended the town’s segregated elementary school through the eighth grade at the Arkansas City Colored School. His mother was very aware of the unlikelihood that her son would be educated beyond eighth grade in the Delta since there was no high school available to Black students. So she internally decided to move to Chicago, Illinois, immediately after his graduation. Unfortunately, she had not saved enough money by that time, so she made him repeat the 8th grade until she did.

The neighborhood, as well as her husband, was unsupportive of her decision. And although she loved her husband, she courageously acted upon her desire for her son to have freedom, education, and better opportunities. She left Arkansas City in 1933 with no intention of returning as a resident with her son in tow. Johnny was 15 years old.

CHICAGO

Once he and his mother arrived in Chicago at the Illinois Central Station, Johnny stood transfixed on the street by the traffic, tall buildings, and sea of Black people. The mother and son took a taxi to 422 East Forty-fourth Street, where his mother’s friend, and immigrant from Arkansas City, Mamie Jonson, greeted them into a three-story building. She made a bedroom out of the third-floor attic for them – Mrs. Gertrude slept in the bed, and Johnny slept on a rollaway bed.

In the months that followed, Johnny was introduced to city life, academic opportunities, Black politics, Black politicians, Black businessmen, and Black middle class. He was amazed and had no desire to return to the Delta, referring to Chicago as “my kind of town.”

Johnny’s half-sister moved to Chicago before he and Mrs. Gertrude, and the three moved into an apartment together shortly after the mother-son duo arrived with Johnny’s stepfather, eventually making the migration, as well. Unfortunately, the residuals of the Great Depression in Black America went from bad to worse on the heels of Mr. Williams’ arrival, and the family had to receive welfare from 1934 until 1936. Johnny was not proud of this and used it as a constant motivation to progress for the rest of his life.

He attended the New Wendell Phillips High School – a virtually all-Black school named after a white abolitionist – with a student population larger than the total population of Arkansas City. The name was later changed in 1936 to Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable High School after Chicago’s first permanent non-native settler.