MAGAZINES: Ebony at 50

▪ 1996

      It was 1945 and World War II had ended when the premiere issue of Ebony magazine hit the newsstands in November. The brainchild of Johnson Publishing Co. founder John Johnson, Ebony (so christened by Johnson's wife) was the second publication to evolve from the company that had begun just three years earlier with $500 and a dream. As a 24-year-old newspaper editor in 1942, Johnson borrowed the money to produce Negro Digest, the flagship publication of his fledgling company. The magazine chronicled a sampling of events taking place within the black community that went largely unreported by the mass media. Three years later Ebony, a sister publication, was born.

      "Ebony," explained Johnson, "was founded to project all dimensions of the Black personality in a world saturated with stereotypes. . . . Blacks needed positive images to fulfill their potentialities." Never intended as a black version of such weeklies as Time or Newsweek, Ebony was a monthly with a photo-editorial format and was designed to infuse a much-needed sense of self-esteem into the black community by illustrating in words and pictures the varied accomplishments of the African-American populace, thereby replacing negative images with positive ones. In the 50 years from the magazine's inception, it annually claimed the number one position as the most widely circulated and popular magazine of its kind.

      Ebony's original press run was 25,000 copies (but another 25,000 copies had to be quickly printed in order to meet demand). By 1995 Ebony was available in more than 40 countries, reported a monthly circulation of two million copies, and gauged its overall monthly readership at 11 million people. Linda Johnson Rice, Johnson's daughter, served from 1987 as president and chief operating officer of the corporation, which had annual revenues in excess of $250 million in 1995 and reached, through its publications, more than half of all African-American adults across a broad spectrum. Rice once remarked, "I guess we have been successful and have been number one for so long that I believe fundamentally we must be doing something right."

      In addition to the magazine's focus on family, relationships, fitness, and finances, Ebony had over the years featured articles written by such well-known figures as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks. In keeping with this tradition, the magazine's 50th-anniversary issue contained articles written by Coretta Scott King, Maya Angelou, and four U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton. (ANTHONY L. GREEN)

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