The Story of John H. Johnson (Part 1)

These are excerpts from the book, Succeeding Against the Odds, by John H. Johnson. This is Part 1. Hope you enjoy.

Commenting on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Johnson Publishing Company, the founder, John H. Johnson, re-echoed in his book, Succeeding Against the Odds, the mantra that there is no defense against an excellence that meets a public need and that nothing can permanently deny anyone who performs better at what he she does. In summarizing he concluded by saying, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the night.”

“For all these forty-five years,” I say, “for forty-five years, we have maintained that excellence knows no boundary and that the man or woman who builds a better mousetrap or sings a better song or preaches a better sermon cannot be ignored or denied.”

A reporter once asked me why I never take a real vacation, and I told him, “work is my vacation”.

Speaking extemporaneously at his induction into the Publishing Hall of Fame, John H. Johnson concluded his speech by saying, “For it is the most enduring element of our faith, that men and women are limited not by the place of their birth, not by the color of their skin, but by the size of their hope.”

John H. Johnson once asked Mayor Richard Daley what was the secret of his success, and he said, “I take care of the details, and the big picture takes care of itself.”

“A good general, always has another plan.”

Mary McLeod Bethune, the great woman leader, told me, “The darker the night, the brighter the stars.”

 “We struggled in the fifties to integrate the schools. We struggled in the sixties to integrate the lunch counters and ballot boxes. Now we’ve got to struggle in the eighties and nineties to integrate the money.”

Ronald Reagan’s daughter asks about my career and background, and I relate a few anecdotes. She tells me that I should “write a book.”

“I’ve been in the ditch, and I’ve been on the mountain-top, and, believe me, being on the mountaintop is better.”

We laugh the laugh of those who know and then tackle the last mountaintop taboo.

“Is there racism after the first $100 million?”

“Sometimes, when I’m sitting on top of the mountain, looking down into the valley, past my tennis court, my swimming pool, hot tub, and fruit trees, I think maybe I’m a White man. Then, when I leave the mountaintop and go down into the valley, the first White person I meet in effect calls me a nigger.”

    “Whenever, for example, there’s a new clerk at the grocery store, where I have my account, he invariably asks, ‘who do you work for?’ I can’t get mad with the clerks, for most of the blacks who come into the stores do, in fact, work for white people… so I don’t let it bother me. If I let things like that bother me, I’d be in a rage all the time.’’

Speaking as one of the two recipients of the 1988 “Salute to Greatness” awards, “in appreciation of your commitment to fulfill Dr. King’s Dream, John H. Johnson recalled the dream of an Arkansas mother and son, we he said, “As a young boy growing up in the segregated town of Arkansas City, Arkansas, where Blacks could only work as domestics or labourers on the Mississippi River levee, I never thought there would be a night like this.

‘’Watching my mother work as a cook in a levee camp for five years so we could get money to go to Chicago, where I would attend high school because there was no Black high school in Arkansas City, I never thought there would be a night like this. [Applause.]

‘’My mother never went beyond the third grade. Yet she was the best educated person I ever met. She was daring, she was caring, and she believed you would do anything you wanted to do, if you tried. She gave me the faith and that hope, and that has guided my life.

‘’I couldn’t fail her… for she had sacrificed too much for me….

‘’She worked as a domestic, but when her money ran out and she couldn’t even find work as a domestic, my whole family went on welfare for two long years. I know you know that during those difficult years I never thought there would be a night like this.’’

To the children and grandchildren of slavery, slavery was pain in the flesh, horror in the mind, nightmares in the night.

Survival is in my blood. It’s in my nerves and muscles. For I am a descendant of people who were so tough that nothing – neither slavery, nor the River – would destroy them.

I learned how to work before I learnt how to play.

We thought the way we lived was the way people were supposed to live.

I shared my mother’s faith. I believed in the plastic power of the possible.

I believed with her that the possible, the thing that can be, greater than is actual.

But a little hard evidence never hurt any true believer. And Paris Frazier’s car and indoor toilet were concrete motivations that were more persuasive than a thousand lectures and sermons.

All through this period, all through the late twenties. As America moved toward the stock market crash and the Depression and the New Deal, I was looking for somebody or something that could help me reach my goal. I didn’t even know then what I wanted. The only thing I knew was that I wanted something different from the dirt, sweat, and pain around me.

There was nothing magical or unique about this situation. There comes a moment in every person’s life when he or she stands at an intersection of two roads, one of which leads up and the other down. And the choice he makes at that moment defines him forever.

‘’You’re going to stay in the eighth grade,’’ she said, ‘’until we’ve got enough money to go to Chicago.’’

The wisdom of this move was plain, even then. But that didn’t make it any more palatable to a sensitive young boy who had to go back to his old school and sit in the same room with younger boys and girls he had once scorned.

People laughed at us, not for the first time or last time. Neighbors told my mother that she was crazy to make sacrifices for a boy who would never amount to anything anyway. My mother said nothing. She kept on working and dreaming and saving.

She believed that there was a solution to every problem, and that the solution was in God’s hands, not human’s hands. But she believed also, and with equal fervor, that God helped those who helped themselves.

As the catcalls and criticisms mounted, she told me to pay no attention to the doubters. ‘’Victory’’, she said, ‘’is certain if we have the courage to believe and the strength to run our own race.’’

If as W.E.B DuBois said, the worst thing in the world is to be poor in a rich country, the next worst thing is to be the poorest person in a poor country.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

What this meant on a practical level was that Supreme, like other Black businesses, was more than a business. It was a statement, a petition, a demonstration, and an argument.

That’s what Booker T. Washington meant when he said:  ‘’One farm bought, one house built… one man who is the largest taxpayer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully… one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one office well filled- these will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause.’’

I concluded that the two most important questions about every decision are one, will this help me and, two, will this get me in any trouble? Of the two questions, the latter is the most important.

There was another lesson that has served me well, and that is that history, money, and all the forces of the universe are on the side of the man or woman who sets a goal and works night and day to achieve it. That person may not win today. He may not win what he wants to win – which may not be, in the long sight of history, what he or she needs to win – but if he continues to work and will, he can’t be denied.