Ebony Magazine

When in November 1945 John H. Johnson, a 27-year-old Black businessman with a vision and an abiding faith in himself, launched Ebony magazine, his timing couldn't have been more perfect. World War II had just come to an end and thousands of Black GIs who had helped "make the world safe for democracy" were returning to civilian life, ready to challenge racial discrimination at home.

"Ebony," says Publisher Johnson, "was founded to project al dimension of the Black personality in a world saturated with stereotypes. We wanted to give Blacks a new sense of somebodiness, a new sense of self-respect. We wanted to tell them who they were and what they could do. We believed then--and we believe now--that Blacks needed positive images to fulfill their potentialities."

Thanks to that winning formula, Ebony, whose name was the brainchild of the publisher's wife, Eunice W. Johnson, immediately captured the No. 1 spot as the most widely circulated and most popular Black magazine, a position it has been able to maintain for 50 consecutive years.

In keeping with its mission, Ebony began chipping away at old stereotypes and replacing them with positive Black images by highlighting the achievements of Black men and women that had heretofore been ignored by the general press. So systematic had been the exclusion of Blacks from the White-controlled media that many people, including--sadly enough--a fair number of Blacks, had serious doubts about Blacks' ability to perform as well as their White counterparts. Ebony helped change all that. With articles and dramatic photos, the new publication showed bow undaunted Black individuals were able to triumph over poverty and racial barriers and succeed in building viable careers in education, business, sports, the military, entertainment and the arts. While monitoring the ongoing saga of Black progress, the magazine also put its resources to work to show its readers that Blacks had a history to be proud of and that even during slavery, there were Black men and women whose heroic deeds helped in the freedom struggle and paved the way for future generations of Blacks.

As the Freedom Movement gained momentum in the late `50s and early `60s, Ebony became the mirror of the struggle of rights activists, both North and South, to desegregate rail and bus transportation, lunch counters, public schools, hotels and motels, the armed forces and housing. Frequently at the risk of their own safety, Ebony writers and photographers braved the menacing presence of racist sheriffs in order to bring readers firsthand accounts of the valiant battle for racial equality waged by Blacks in a recalcitrant South. Tragedies like the racially motivated murders of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, Chicago teenager Emmett Till, voting rights activists James Earl Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and four little Black girls, who were killed in the bombing of a church, were reported by Ebony. The magazine's civil rights coverage culminated in 1963 during the famous March on Washington, when an estimated 250,000 Black, and White demonstrators from around the nation converged on the capital to protest lingering segregation and to bear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaim "I have a dream..." Pulling out all stops, Publisher Johnson dispatched his entire editorial force of writers and photographers from the Chicago headquarters as well as the bureaus in New York, Washington and Los Angeles to cover the historic event. When in 1968, Dr. King was felled by an assassin's bullet, Ebony's veteran staff photographer Moneta Sleet Jr., who covered the slain rights leader's funeral, captured the grieving Mrs. Coretta Scott King and her youngest daughter, Bernice, in a photo that earned him the Pulitzer Prize, the first Black male so honored.

From the start, the magazine attracted talented writers and photographers. The first executive editor was Ben Burns. He was followed by Co-Managing Editors Herbert Nipson and Era Bell Thompson. When Thompson retired in 1970, Nipson became executive editor, backed up by Senior Editor Lerone Bennett Jr. and Managing Editors Hans J. Massaquoi and Charles L. Sanders. In 1987, Nipson retired after 38 years with Ebony and Bennett took over as executive editor, backed up by Massaquoi and Senior Staff Editors Lynn Norment, Walter Leavy and Laura B. Randolph. The first bureau chiefs were the late Allan Morrison, who headed the New York office, and Simeon Booker, who still heads the Washington, D.C., office.

In addition to articles by its own staff of distinguished writers and editors, such as Executive Editor and historian Bennett, the magazine has featured the works of countless internationally known authors. Over the years, Ebony readers have enjoyed articles by humorist and poet Langston Hughes, novelist James Baldwin, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Roots author Alex Haley, syndicated columnist Carl T. Rowan, poets Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks, and Dr. King, who during the `50s wrote Ebony's "Advice For Living" column.

In September 1963, Ebony published its first special issue in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary or the Emancipation Proclamation. The issue became an instant collectors item. A subsequent special issue in August 1965 delivered a broadside attack on racism