Born in Hickory, Mississippi in 1946, Robert L. Johnson began the first and only cable television station that offers programming that is directed specifically to African Americans. Today Johnson is the chairman and founder of RLJ Development. He was formerly a majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats basketball team.
Johnson has the distinction of being the first African American to have accumulated a net worth of over one billion dollars. In 2001 he became the first person of African American heritage to be listed on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people. (Aside from the black Canadian businessman Michael Lee-Chin who made it to the list the same year, and who is also of Chinese-African descent.)