When Albert Johnson acquired Ray Oldsmobile in Chicago in 1967, he became the nation's first black General Motors dealer, says Rusty Restuccia, who has researched and written extensively about the history of minority-owned dealerships.
Johnson died Wednesday, Jan. 13, at his Chicago home. He would have celebrated his 90th birthday on Feb. 23.
GM did not keep records on dealers' ethnic identity before 1971.
For 14 years before getting his dealership, Johnson worked as a hospital administrator by day and moonlighted as a car salesman.
In a 2008 interview with Automotive News, Johnson said he bought new cars from Noting Oldsmobile in suburban St. Louis for $300 to $400 more than their wholesale price and resold them. At the same time, he was petitioning Detroit automakers unsuccessfully to become a dealer.
Finally, he said, he appealed to Martin Luther King Jr., who took Johnson's case to President John F. Ken-nedy. Johnson opened his dealership four years after Kennedy's assassination.
"There was a great movement to award a franchise" to a minority entrepreneur, Johnson said. "I was in a good position."
In 1971, Johnson sold his Oldsmobile dealership and opened a Cadillac store in suburban Chicago. In 1994, he sold the Cadillac dealership and retired.
