Ebony

Founding a Black Publishing Empire

John H. Johnson was born in Arkansas City, Arkansas, in January 1918, the grandson of enslaved people. His mother worked hard to save enough money to buy a train ticket for the family to the north because there was no high school for black students in Arkansas City. Johnson graduated as class president and with academic honors from Wendell Phillips Academy High School on the south side of Chicago and attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

In 1942, after putting up his mother's furniture as collateral for a $500 loan, Johnson began his publishing career with Negro Digest and Black World, and, with his wife, took the first steps toward establishing what would become one of the most successful black-owned businesses in the world, Johnson Publishing Company.

Ebony's Birth and Popularity

Three years later, Johnson launched Ebony (a name suggested by his wife Eunice); the first issue sold a meager 25, 000 copies. With the help of Benjamin Burns, Ebony‘s white and Jewish coeditor, the second issue sold 200,000 copies. To capitalize on what historian Adam Green called “the market turn in African American life” and to emphasize the broader complexities of the black political and consumer culture of the postwar era, the magazine's initial success relied on several stock features. The magazine regularly ran features on exemplary individuals from the sporting world, Hollywood, and literary world, such as world heavyweight champion Joe Louis, author Richard Wright, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Fame became a celebrated virtue in the magazine.

Ebony also had an appetite for racially evocative culture and arts. It regularly posted stories on fashion, dancing, and performance pieces that were more than a mere catalog of the week's best box-office hits. Headlines such as “African Influences on Fashion” (July 1948), “Dred Scott's [Page 750]Children” (April 1954), and “Female Impersonators” (March 1948) always pushed the envelope, showing a commitment to showcasing the “zesty” (February 1946) side of African American cultural production. Ebony also evidenced a commitment to interracial dialogue and fellowship. Coverage such as “Famous Negroes Who Married White” (1949) and “Whites Who Sing Like Negroes” (1951) captured these topics and showed that the cultural meaning of blackness and interracial dialogue were ever-evolving phenomenon.

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