Move Over Oprah: Meet the Other Black Woman Billionaire


By Blair Walker, Special to AOL Black Voices



When she's not managing her sports franchise, starting new businesses, raising her teenage children or preparing for her upcoming nuptials, African-American billionaire Sheila Johnson is busy converting history into herstory.


By now, most people know that her ex-husband, Robert Johnson, created Black Entertainment Television in 1980 and sold it to Viacom 17 years later for a princely $3 billion. Sheila Johnson, 56, wants it to be known that BET wasn’t a one-man concoction by any stretch of the imagination.


She personally signed for a $500,000 loan that got BET up and running, because between her and her then-husband, she was the one with a full-time job at the time. A former concert violinist, Johnson even taught violin lessons in their home to generate income during the early, lean days of BET.


For more than two decades she kept her role as BET's co-creator on the down low, because “it’s the way I was brought up. This was a man that I loved very dearly," Johnson says of Robert Johnson. "He's very intelligent and I wanted to help him."

"We both had this vision," she continues. "I felt that the best way we could both make it work was for me to do the trench work behind the scenes. I don't think that (competition) is healthy when you're both trying to put a company together. I wasn't the type of person who said, 'I have to have my name on this!'


Secure in her support role and determined to make their business idea work, Johnson even crafted some of BET's programming, which she enjoyed immensely. "I did the children’s programming part of it and I did community outreach, to make sure BET did its part in the community." Johnson recalls. She is particularly proud of BET's 'Teen Summit' program, which was axed in 2003. Johnson also takes pains to note that she was one of few higher-ups at BET who was critical of the hip-hop music videos that became the network's bread and butter.


"Why are these guys always calling us bitches?" Johnson wants to know of the rappers in the videos. “It’s just about the way that women are portrayed -- we’re simply sex objects. "That’s messing up a lot of young people, particularly women. You watch it over and over and over again and it becomes part of your psyche."


Johnson makes these observations without apparent rancor, but her easy-going demeanor clicks off when asked why her ex-mate eventually fired her from BET.


"Well, now you’re digging a little deeper than I want to go," she says firmly. “The way that everything happened at BET was highly personal, highly degrading. I don't want to talk about it -- it's not going to get me anywhere.


“I just want to let everyone know out there how happy I am,” Johnson says. “I’m very excited about everything that I’m doing. I’ve very excited about the future.”


It doesn't appear that future will include having to teach violin to support Johnson's daughter, Paige Johnson, 19, or her son, Brett Johnson, 15. When BET was sold to Viacom in 1997, making Bob Johnson a billionaire, the transaction also put nine zeroes behind Sheila Johnson's net worth.


“People tend to look to you for money all the time,” Johnson observes of her present economic status. "They think I just got the money without working for it -- they don’t understand the hard work that it took to get there. What you essentially learn how to do is say 'no.' You learn to not feel guilty about saying 'no.'"


Born in McKeesport, Pa., Johnson grew up in Chicago, the daughter of a neurosurgeon dad who was an accomplished pianist and an accountant mom who also played the piano. Johnson took up the violin, becoming so adept that she got a full ride to the University of Illinois, where she got degrees in performance and in education.


Three years ago when she and Bob Johnson divorced, her divorce hearing was presided over by Virginia judge William Newman, whom Sheila Johnson plans to marry next month. "We knew each other a long time ago," she says of Newman, whom she met in the late 1960s while they worked as actors with the Negro Ensemble Company. Johnson had taken a role abandoned by Denise Nicholas, of "Room 222" fame, in the play "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men."

Johnson said she and Newman did 98 performances together, and I never saw him again for 33 years.


Now, Newman is part of the future Johnson speaks of with so much anticipation, as is the Washington Mystics basketball team. In May, Johnson paid $10 million to become majority owner of the WNBA franchise. For an additional sum that Johnson's not at liberty to disclose, she also bought a minority stake in the Washington Wizards NBA squad, as well as the Washington Capitals, who play in the National Hockey League.


From a sports perspective, however, her main focus is on the Mystics. "I want to be the face of the Mystics," says Johnson, who is moments away from leaving her Virginia ranch for a flight to Indianapolis to see the Mystics play. "I'm trying to elevate the WNBA to a whole different level."


Johnson has started a Sheila C. Johnson Foundation, which she endowed with $27 million to address the health and educational needs of impoverished children. She's an active philanthropist, including a $7 million gift to the Parsons School of Design, which is part of the New School University in New York.


Johnson is also the chief executive of Salamander Hospitality, which is building a five-star resort and spa in Middleburg, Va., where Johnson lives and works. The Salamander resort and spa will have 120 rooms when its completed sometime in 2008.


Asked what she’d like folks to know about her, Johnson pauses half a beat before responding. "I am a woman to be reckoned with," she says, "a woman with passion, a woman who's strong, a philanthropist."


"And I am a happy person," Johnson adds. "There are a lot of unhappy rich people out there."

Selling BET made two out of one.

Each is taking different paths.

Hopefully, each will not only benefit their owners, but will help to build African America.

Both seem to be on that path.

PEACE

Jim Chester

quote:

Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
Selling BET made two out of one.

Each is taking different paths.

Hopefully, each will not only benefit their owners, but will help to build African America.

Both seem to be on that path.

PEACE

Jim Chester

We can only hope!