{"id":2337,"date":"2026-07-07T07:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trustedmovinggroups.com\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2026-07-07T07:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:37:15","slug":"george-e-johnson-founder-of-pioneering-black-hair-products-company-dies-at-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trustedmovinggroups.com\/?p=2337","title":{"rendered":"George E. Johnson, founder of pioneering Black hair products company, dies at 99"},"content":{"rendered":"
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George E. Johnson, the pioneering Chicago entrepreneur whose eponymous company transformed Black hair care in the United States with brands \u200bincluding Afro Sheen, Ultra Wave and Classy Curl, died on Monday at age 99, according to a family statement.<\/p>\n

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The family said Johnson, \u201cpassed away peacefully at home at the age of 99, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of entrepreneurship, faith, perseverance, philanthropy, and family.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The New York Times, citing his second wife, Madeline Murphy Rabb, reported that \u200bJohnson died of a respiratory illness. <\/p>\n

The Johnson Products Company was founded in 1954, catering to African Americans\u2019 evolving tastes in hairstyles, \u200bfashion and cosmetics in an era when U.S. companies and advertisers paid little attention to Black consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe truly believed business could be a force for good, creating opportunity, strengthening communities, opening doors for others, and demonstrating that success carries with it a responsibility to serve,\u201d the family statement said. <\/p>\n

The \u2060business, which Johnson co-founded with his first wife, Joan Johnson, who died in 2019, grew to command nearly 80% of the \u200bBlack hair care market by 1960, and in 1971 became the first Black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange, now known as NYSE American.<\/p>\n

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With \u200ba marketing campaign echoing slogans and imagery of the era\u2019s Black Pride and Black Power movements, the company became the exclusive sponsor of the television music show \u201cSoul Train,\u201d helping the Chicago-based weekly program grow from a local broadcast into a nationally syndicated hit.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s own business roots illustrated the difficulties \u200bminority entrepreneurs faced at the dawn of the civil rights movement. <\/p>\n

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Johnson, who was born in a sharecropper\u2019s shack in Mississippi in 1927 moved to Chicago with his mother at age 2. He later worked as a door-to-door cosmetics salesman after dropping out of \u200bhigh school, launched his own venture with a bank loan of just $250 he secured by telling a white loan officer he wanted to borrow \u200cthe money \u2060for a family vacation. <\/p>\n

\u201cI knew this request (for a vacation loan) wouldn\u2019t rattle [the loan officer\u2019s] belief that he was superior to me. Nor would it challenge his stereotypes of Black men as subservient or unintelligent,\u201d Johnson recounted in his 2025 memoir, \u201cAfro \u200bSheen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some \u200bof the company\u2019s first major \u2060brands, including Ultra Wave for men and Ultra Sheen for women, were introduced as hair-relaxing products designed for home use, to achieve straight and wavy hair styles popular in the 1950s and early 1960s.<\/p>\n

As Black Power \u200bconsciousness gave rise to an increasing preference among Black people for a more natural hair texture and look \u200bthat did not \u2060seek to mimic the styles worn by whites, Johnson\u2019s company adapted with the advent of its Afro Sheen Blow Out kit in the late 1960s, according to BlackPast.org.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s Classy Curl helped consumers achieve the \u201cJheri curl\u201d perm first popularized by white hairdresser-chemist Jheri Redding. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Johnson\u2019s venture began to struggle \u2060as it \u200bfaced competition from large hair care and cosmetics companies such as Revlon that \u200bsought to grab market share in the increasingly lucrative African American hairstyling business.<\/p>\n

After the Johnsons divorced, ownership of their business changed hands a number of times before a majority African American investment \u200bfirm acquired the business in 2009 from Procter & Gamble.<\/p>\n

Read more Democratic hopes to win back the Senate hang by a thread as Graham Platner weighs dropping out<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George E. Johnson, the pioneering Chicago entrepreneur whose company transformed Black hair care in the US with brands \u200bincluding Afro Sheen, Ultra Wave and Classy Curl, died at age 99.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGeorge E. 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