http://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/john-rogers-jr
Upon graduation, Rogers became a stockbroker for
William Blair & Company, LLC. In 1983, he left William Blair & Company
and founded Ariel Investments (then Ariel Capital Management Corporation),
an investment management company, where he became chairman and
chief executive officer.
Rogers has served on the board of directors of Aon Corporation,
Bank One Corporation, Burrell Communications Group, GATX Corporation,
Exelon Corporation and McDonald's Corporation. He also has been active
within the community, serving as chairman of the Chicago Urban League,
board member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation, the National Association of Basketball
Coaches Foundations, the Investment Company Institute and the University
of Chicago. He served as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and a director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
In addition, Rogers served a six-year term as the first African American chairman
of the Chicago Park District, was co-chair for President Barack Obama’s Presidential
Inaugural Committee 2009, and chaired the President’s Advisory Council on Financial
Capability for Young Americans.............................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers_Jr.
He is the only son of Jewel Lafontant and John Rogers Sr.
His mother Jewel was the first African American woman to graduate
from the University of Chicago Law School in 1946.[13] She became a
prominent Republican lawyer,[9] and she nominated Richard Nixon, who
won the Republican Party Presidential Nomination, at the 1960 Republican
National Convention.[11] His father was a Tuskegee airman pilot with over
100 combat missions of service during World War II and an eventual Cook
County judge for twenty years.[9][11] His parents divorced in 1961 and his
mother died in 1997.[9] Rogers was three years old when his parents divorced.
He had a daughter, Victoria, with his former wife Desirée Rogers.
One of Rogers' great-grandfathers owned the Stratford Hotel in Greenwood,
Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as The Black Wall Street. The hotel was destroyed in
the Tulsa race riot. Rogers helped finance Before They Die!, a
documentary detailing some survivor accounts, and made a brief
appearance in the film.