In late 1966, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, George E. Johnson, the founder and CEO of the Johnson Products Company (JPC), was one of the most successful Black entrepreneurs in America. After starting the Chicago-based, Black haircare company JPC with a $250 loan in 1954, Johnson now controlled nearly 50 percent of the professional relaxer market and had annual sales of around $5 million. Just a two-year-old when his family moved to Chicago from Mississippi during the Great Depression, Johnson had recently opened a gleaming new 30,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility on two acres of land in the southside of the Chicago.
