Ebony

Published continuously since 1945, Ebony is the largest U.S. mass-circulation magazine written by and for African Americans. With a circulation of more than two million, the full-color monthly, as well as the digest-size Jet magazine, is published by the privately held Johnson Publishing Company, one of the nation's largest black-owned businesses.

Ebony's first issue appeared on November 1, 1945, the brainchild of John Harold Johnson (1918–), who had been born into poverty in Arkansas. Johnson had acquired his publishing skills as the editor of a weekly news digest for the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, owned by Harry H. Pace (1884–1943). With a $500 loan using his mother's furniture as collateral (that is, pledging that the lender could have the furniture if he could not repay the loan), Johnson founded the Negro Digest in 1942. By the end of World War II (1939–45), he was envisioning a magazine that would present positive images to the African American community, believing that "you have to change images before you can change acts and institutions," as he wrote in Succeeding Against the Odds. Inspired by the success of mass-circulation periodicals like Life (see entry under 1930s—Print Culture in volume 2) and Look, each of whose formula was based on photographic images, Johnson wanted to create a magazine that glorified the accomplishments of Negroes (the term then commonly used to describe African Americans) in the United States and abroad.

Unlike other Negro periodicals that concentrated on social problems, Ebony focused on the community's success stories in the business and entertainment worlds. This approach was criticized by some as being elitist, but the magazine was warmly received by its readership. The first issue sold fifty thousand copies, and circulation doubled within the first year. Thanks to advertising support by white-owned companies, led by the Zenith Corporation, Ebony was soon able to attract the revenues it needed to become profitable.

Ebony strongly endorsed the civil rights movement (see entry under 1960s—The Way We Lived in volume 4) of the 1950s and 1960s. The magazine published newsworthy articles about the struggle for black empowerment in the United States and around the world. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) contributed articles as well as a regular column for the magazine. In 1969, one of Ebony's photographers, Moneta Sleet Jr. (1926–1996), became the first black male to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Johnson's daughter, Linda Johnson Rice (1958–), has succeeded her father as president and chief operating officer of the Johnson Publishing Company.

—Edward Moran

For More Information

"The Ebony Story." Ebony (November 1995): 80–87.

Johnson, John H., and Lerone Bennett Jr. Succeeding Against the Odds. New York: Warner Books, 1989.

Johnson Publishing Company.http://www.ebony.com/jpcindex.html (accessed February 20, 2002).

Pride, Armistead S., and Clint C. Wilson II. A History of the Black Press. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997.