Robert L. Johnson | |
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![]() Johnson in 2018 | |
Born | Robert Louis Johnson April 8, 1946 Hickory, Mississippi, U.S. |
Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (BA) Princeton University (MPA) |
Known for | Co-founder of BET |
Website | Official website |
Robert Louis Johnson [2] (born April 8, 1946 is American entrepreneur, media magnate, executive, philanthropist, and investor.He is the co-founder of BET, which was acquired by Viacom in 2001 .[3] He is also the founder of RLJ Companies which is a holding company that invests in various business sectors. Johnson is the former majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.His company is listed d among the most prominent African-American businesses in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries[4]
Johnson was born in 1946 in French Camp, California.[5] His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a farmer . Johnson graduated from the University of Illinois in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in social studies . At the University of Illinois, Johnson became a member of the Beta chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity . He received a master's degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1972 .[6]
He married Shelia Johnson[7] in 1969 and have 2 children .They divorced in 2001 .Johnson dated Lauren Wooden, who is 33 years younger, in 2010.They married in May 2016, Greg Mathis officiated.[8]
... Robert Johnson became the first African American billionaire in 2000 after he sold the network to Viacom for $3 billion in stock and assumed swag. Since then, sagging Viacom and CBS stock, plus investments in real estate, hotels and banks ... have dragged Johnson's net worth to $550 million, we estimate.