Johnson: First Black dealer for GM helped guide others

Albert Johnson petitioned for more than a decade before he became the first Black dealer for General Motors.

Johnson entered the car business by balancing a job in hospital administration with being the "salesman who sold from a briefcase" at Noting Oldsmobile in Kirkwood, Mo.

He was not permitted to sell from the dealership premises in 1954, according to African-American New Car Dealers, a historical database created by former Ford Motor Co. executive Rusty Restuccia.

"I sold more cars in a year than three of our salesmen put together," Johnson told The History Makers, a collection of oral histories capturing the Black experience.

Johnson spent 15 years asking to lead a GM dealership, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2008 Johnson told Automotive News that he appealed to Martin Luther King Jr., who took Johnson's case to President John F. Kennedy for help petitioning the Detroit automakers.

He succeeded in 1967, taking over a struggling Chicago Oldsmobile dealership and becoming the first Black dealer for GM.

He turned the dealership around in a year, according to the Sun-Times, and remained there until 1971, when he took over a Chicago Cadillac dealership. He relocated the dealership to Tinley Park and built new facilities.

He sold the Cadillac dealership in 1995, concluding a 41-year career in the automotive industry.

Along the way, he was a catalyst for the establishment of the first minority dealer organization in 1970 and played a foundational role in GM's Black Dealer Advisory Council, which helped establish the General Motors Minority Dealers Association.

His suggestion for minority dealer training encouraged GM to create a minority dealer academy in 1972.

Johnson was given the Time Magazine Quality Dealer Award in 1974.

Johnson was also an activist, campaigning for Chicago's first Black mayor and making the first large donation to Barack Obama's Senate campaign, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He was a lifelong member of the NAACP.