WCN TRANSMEDIA GROUP SALUTES THE SHIELA CRUMP JOHNSON, FILMAKER "A POWERFUL NOISE"
Those who never took the trouble to find out more might have heard of Sheila Crump Johnson as the former wife of longtime Black Entertainment
Television (BET) chief executive Robert L. Johnson. That designation, however, ignores Sheila Crump Johnson's long and varied record of accomplishments of her own, before, during, and after her marriage. One of those accomplishments was the co-founding of BET itself, which the two Johnson spouses created together and expanded into a broadcasting empire. After the couple's divorce in 2002, Johnson became the first African-American female billionaire in the United States. She then gained recognition for giving large amounts of her money away.
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A POWERFUL NOISE BACKGROUND: SYNOPSIS
Hanh is an HIV-positive widow in Vietnam. Nada, a survivor of the Bosnian war. And Jacqueline works the slums of Bamako, Mali. Three very different lives. Three vastly different worlds. But they share something in common: Power.
These women are each overcoming gender barriers to rise up and claim a voice in their societies. Through their empowerment and ability to empower others, Hanh, Nada and Jacqueline are sparking remarkable changes. Fighting AIDS. Rebuilding communities. Educating girls.
Hanh learned that she had contracted HIV after her husband and daughter died from AIDS. Bouncing back from despair, she started a selfhelp group in Vietnam, called Immortal Flower, to give people living with HIV/AIDS a place for support, counseling and health care. Hanh provides prevention awareness to the public, as well as medical assistance to affected families. Her goal is to stop the burgeoning AIDS crisis and to prevent stigma and discrimination against survivors.
Nada is a working mother of three children. As a refugee, she survived the Bosnian War. Her women’s association, Maya Kravica, is helping ease hostilities between Serbs and Bosniaks (Muslims) in a region marred by war crimes and massive destruction. Nada is building an agricultural cooperative to offer employment opportunities for war widows, and fair trade markets for families to sell their crops and livestock.
Jacqueline, better known as “Madame Urbain” fights forced labor practices in the slums of Bamako, Mali. Madame Urbain stands up for the rights of powerless girls who are often abused in the workplace or on the streets of the big city. Her organization, APAF, provides girls a basic education, teaches them vocational skills and places them in safe jobs.
Madame Urbain’s work has begun to change perceptions about the importance of education and the role of women in Malian society.
A Powerful Noise takes you inside the lives of these women to witness their daily
challenges and their significant victories over poverty and oppression.
Their stories are personal yet illustrate larger issues affecting millions of marginalized women worldwide.
A Powerful Noise is a meditation on the inherent potential of women to change the world.
Johnson was born Sheila Crump around 1949 in the Chicago, Illinois, suburb of Maywood. Her father was a neurosurgeon. Johnson attended Irving School in Maywood and graduated from Proviso High School in 1966. She was a member of the cheerleading squad at Proviso, but her heart was in music. She aspired to a career as a concert violinist, and she would sometimes get up at midnight, after the rest of the family had gone to sleep, to practice her violin for hours in the kitchen of her home. "I realized that after I graduated from high school, I always had a drive in me that desired to be the best that I could be," Johnson said in a 2002 speech at the State University of New York at Morrisville, as quoted by the New York Times. "But still, I believed you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Concentrated on Music
Majoring in music at the University of Illinois, she rose to the rank of concertmaster in the Illinois All-State Orchestra. It was at Illinois that she met Robert L. Johnson. The romance flowered,
and the two were married in 1969 after Robert abandoned a graduate scholarship at Princeton University to move back to Illinois so they could be closer to each other. After Sheila's graduation in 1970, the couple moved to Washington, D.C.
At first, Johnson worked as a researcher in the office of New York Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits, but she soon got a job teaching music at a private school, the Sidwell Friends School. As her husband became involved with the then-minuscule world of cable television, she sometimes helped the family make ends meet by giving music lessons at their home.
It was in the field of classical music, before she ever became involved with BET, that Johnson's ability to think big first showed itself. In 1975 she founded a 140-member youth orchestra, Youth Strings in Action. The group was invited to perform in the
Middle Eastern nation of Jordan, and the trip went off well enough that Johnson won an appointment as cultural liaison to Jordan for the United States Information Agency, a governmental entity that worked to foster cultural exchanges and display American culture around the world. Johnson helped set up Jordan's first national music conservatory, and she was given the country's top educational award by Jordan's King Hussein. Johnson later authored a music textbook for student violinists, and for a time she served on the board of trustees of New York's Carnegie Hall.
Co-founded BET
By the early 1980s, the BET cable network had taken shape and was beginning its meteoric growth. Its founding was a joint enterprise on the part of both Johnsons, and when BET was sold to cable giant Viacom in 2002, even as both their personal and business relationships had become acrimonious, they split the proceeds of the sale equally. In the early years, BET was noted for a variety of programs showcasing the best of African-American culture. Sheila Johnson had a hand in several of those, forming an in-house hip-hop chorus and personally creating the weekly "Teen Summit" talk show, featuring up-front discussion of problems such as the threat of AIDS.
Johnson's official title at BET was executive vice president for corporate affairs, but she was an equal partner with her husband in many respects. Family friend Susan Starrett told the Washington Post that the billion-dollar Johnson fortune couldn't have been built without her work, and Johnson herself, asked by the Post whether she had played a supportive role in her husband's career, answered "Why, yes I did. I always put him first. I knew who he was. I know who he is. I was his best friend and his biggest supporter. I believed in him before he believed in himself."
Yet Johnson was dissatisfied with her role. "I detested that, living up under the cloud of Wife Of. I could not stand going to places, and everything was focused on the man, and the wives were sitting around, like they don't exist. Don't. Exist," she told the Post. Too, she felt alienated by the increasingly raunchy direction of BET's programming in the late 1990s. Some felt she played the role of the conscience of the company, and on a day-to-day basis she was more likely to be found listening to the music of classical composer Maurice Ravel than taking in one of BET's bump-and-grind musical productions. As the Johnsons' marriage deteriorated amidst rumors of Robert Johnson's affair with one or more subordinates, Sheila Johnson (who later lamented to the Post that her husband "had a body count") was fired by her husband in 1999.
Read more: Sheila Crump Johnson Biography - Concentrated on Music, Co-founded BET, Turned to Equestrian Lifestyle, Generously Gave Away Millions http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2418/Johnson-Sheila-Crump.html#ixzz1Gs7dlXpI
I share your vision and applaud your many accomplishments. Many years ago, I studied classical music, became a surgeon, and have created an entertainment company and nonprofit with the intention of inspiring young girls through mentorship. I will help your efforts in any way I can. Feel free to check out our websites at reachupworld.com and brandisworld.com.
ReplyDeleteJoan Oloff