Karani Marcia Leslie Johnson Collection

Karani Marcia Johnson is a playwright; author; board member, secretary, and one of the founders of Compton 125; and former employee of CBS Television Network, Television City, Los Angeles (Paramount TV) where she was the first black female to become a videotape editor after she began her career in the engineering department in 1979. Karani worked as a video-tape editor for CBS for 44 years until her retirement.

After graduating from Northwestern University in radio, television, and film; Karani started her career in radio at WWEZ in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. She would then go on to work at WCPO, WKRC TV, and WCET-TV where she worked on editing replay clips for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. After moving to Los Angeles, Karani worked for ABC-TV and MCA Disco-Vision as a supervisor of disc mastering.

During Karani’s career at CBS she worked on the Montel Williams Show in 1991 until it moved to New York; edited the nightly news; was a recordist for “The Bold and the Beautiful” and the “Young and the Restless”; and was a promotion’s editor and coordination’s editor for CBS’ daytime and primetime, and CW line-ups.

Karani is also a playwright, authoring The Trial of One Short-sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae. Her writing career began at the Inner City Cultural Center where she won grand prize in a playwriting competition in Los Angeles for the aforementioned play. The play was performed in many cities such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans and was awarded the Chicago Jefferson Award, Black Theatre Alliance award, and New York Audelcos.

Karani has also written freelance scripts for TV and was honored by the Writers Guild of America for her script for “The Cosby Show”; and has written magazine articles such as: “Flimmaker Euzhan Palcy” , and “The Hattie McDaniel Monument: A Dying Wish is Honored” both for American Visions.