$30M saves Ebony’s pix treasures

Black history was told. And now it is sold.

Four major foundations, led by J. Paul Getty Trust, will pay $30 million for for the photo archives of Ebony and Jet magazines and donate the treasure trove of images to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“This is great news and a relief to the black community,” former Ebony Editor-inChief Harriett Cole told the Daily News.

There was concern that by auctioning off Johnson Publishing Company’s storied photo archives, which chronicled 70 years of African-American history, that another black-owned media brand was losing its foothold in black culture.

But Thursday’s announcement means the collection will be in good hands.

Appraised for $46 million in 2015, the four million prints and negatives, include images of iconic figures like Lena Horne, Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe and Michael Jackson. Among the treasured photographs is Moneta Sleet Jr’s Pulitzer Prize winning picture of Coretta Scott King, cradling her daughter at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.

One photo in particular — of the brutally murdered body of 14-year-old Emmett Till from 1955 — put Jet magazine on the map.

The archives were assembled at a warehouse on the west side of Chicago to help pay off Johnson Publishing’s bankruptcy dept, which is reportedly between $10 and $50 million.

Ebony and Jet didn’t only cover the rich and famous. The magazines were founded by John H. Johnson, who took out a $500 loan secured against his mother’s furniture to open the publications in 1942. The magazines covered celebrities alongside the weddings, births and deaths of everyday people. Features such as “Jet Beauty of the Week” were popular in black households, college dorms and even prisons.