Celebrating 75 years of Ebony magazine
Ebony is back. Head over to ebony.com and you’ll see the same kinds of glamorous and inspirational photographs and stories of Black celebrity life that made Ebony magazine a staple in nearly every African American household and beauty salon for more than seven decades, up to 2019. ⬤ Founded by John H. Johnson in 1945, the monthly Ebony and pint-sized sister Jet, a weekly that debuted in 1951, pioneered the representation of Black America in the media at a time when the vibrance of the community was mostly overlooked by mainstream journalists.
Chicago-based Ebony unabashedly documented more than three-quarters of a century of Black excellence, achievement and social justice. A collection of more than 4 million negatives and prints from the Ebony and Jet archives was acquired in 2022 by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Getty Research Institute.
“(The magazines were) my generation’s Facebook and Instagram, because it was where we got information on newsmakers – not just celebrities, but athletes to activists, community leaders and scientists,” says Lavaille Lavette of marketing company The Lavette Group and author of “Ebony: Covering Black
America,” published in 2021 by Rizzoli New York, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the magazine.
“There’s a spread I included that was the March on Washington,” she says of the 304-page coffee-table book, which features more than 600 magazine covers.
“Ebony had extensive coverage, especially the pictures, that other news outlets didn’t capture (in) the way that the photographer and the writers of the articles captured during that particular moment in time,” Lavette says.
Johnson died in 2005. With his daughter Linda Johnson Rice at the helm, the magazine and its editors continued to make bold statements. For the
September 2013 issue, after George Zimmerman was acquitted by a Florida jury in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Ebony published four separate covers. Three of them showed celebrities – director Spike Lee, basketball star Dwyane Wade and actor Boris Kodjoe – and their children wearing gray hoodies, as Martin was the night he was killed, with a cover line reading “We Are Trayvon.” A fourth cover showed Martin’s family: mother Sybrina Fulton, father Tracy Martin and brother Jahvaris Fulton.
Less than a year later, Jet ceased print publication but continued as a digital brand. In 2016, Johnson Publishing sold Ebony and Jet to Black-owned private equity firm Clear View Group, with Rice named as chairman emeritus.
Ebony, which once had a print circulation well more than 1 million, ceased printing in 2019, the same year CVG filed for bankruptcy.
Ebony relaunched in 2021 as a digital publication under the ownership of former NBA player Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman.
Bridgeman has stated that he is focused on reclaiming the magazine’s influence on the culture while expanding the brand into other industries.